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Good luck trying to run games on Windows 98 or Me. Even Windows 2000 has only a selection of games which work on it. It's not like Windows XP where you can be sure that practically every game will work.

Also be aware that your 6800GT will be using 'old' drivers (Since NVIDIA have stopped producing drivers for those systems now), so you won't be getting what you pay for out of it.

Windows 98 and Me has an issue with larger hard drives as well (I think your hard drive will be a 32GB FAT32 partition, or something similar). I'm reasonably sure that theres an update for this though (Windows Update), but I'm not sure how it will re-gain your space.

I don't recommend this at all, It's much better for you to get Windows XP Home.

I wouldn't bother leaving that much RAM in the box since 9x can't utilize that much anyway. Memory optimization wasn't on the high priority for 98 machines and there are proven stability issues.

You can load on the unofficial windows 98se patch or limit memory manually via MSCONFIG but I've still seen stability issues with that much RAM in a 98 machine.

Sure, you can install Win9x on that. I agree with Well.. and others when they say "Why not XP?". An NT-based OS would be much, much better than a 9x series. (Y)

(oh, and of course I would also agree with Well... when he mentioned Linux, but I would hate to be accused of bashing Microsoft again) ;)

Your question is 'Can I run Windows 98/Me on this system. The answer is YES. If you look at the specifications of Windows you'll see the basic requirements are met.

... albeit not very well managed.

Personally, i dont see why it wouldnt work, although theres alot on that system that Windows 9X possibly wouldnt be able to take advantage of.

And are you sure 9X is the right choice for gaming?

Most PC games are designed for Windows XP, solely. Some are Windows XP/2000, but 99% are XP-only.

I've not seen any recent (Say, 5 years) PC game which has been made compatible with Windows 98/Me for a long time.

You cant' just play any game you like, you'll have to go for older titles.

  • 2 weeks later...

There are lots of reasons to Run Windows 98SE as a "gaming system" VS. Windows XP.

Judging by the age of his system, it may have been replaced by a newer system and he just has this system sitting there wasting away. There's no harm into putting it into good use. However, as other posts have said, There is way too much ram in that system and the hard time would be too big. I'm not sure how much 98SE/FAT32 can handle, but I know for a fact I did have a 40 GB in my 98SE system at one point.

I am still running Windows 98SE on one of my computers, in fact, I am posting from it now. The reason I still have it is for old games that won't work well on XP or in VMWARE/Virtual PC. Plus, I LOVE the old OLP3 MIDI sound sometimes. Plus, even if I could get them running in Virtual systems/XP... the system won't support 800X600 VESA Mode's. I've ran Duke 3D in Virtual PC and the Music sounds horrible by the emulated OLP2 chip and had very slow FPS with the emulated Trio64 PCI Video Card.

The specs of my 98SE system are:

PII 350 Mhz

15 GB HDD

192 MB Ram

Sound Blaster AWE64 ISA

16MB Nvidia TNT AGP

40X CDROM Drive

56k Modem Blaster

10/100 PCI Ethernet

17" CRT Monitor

I do think I am going to replace it with a somewhat faster computer (Low end PIII) and dual boot XP and 98SE.

Oh, Of course I still have a high end system. I have a computer in the other room with a 256MB Video Card, 2 GB Ram, 500 GB Hard Drive, 22 Inch LCD. I just still like play old games here and there.

  • 2 months later...
  • 4 months later...
  • 5 months later...
The specs of my 98SE system are:

PII 350 Mhz

15 GB HDD

192 MB Ram

Sound Blaster AWE64 ISA

16MB Nvidia TNT AGP

40X CDROM Drive

56k Modem Blaster

10/100 PCI Ethernet

17" CRT Monitor

The specs of this system are a lot like the specs of my Windows 98 box...

Pentium III 550 MHz

10 GB HDD

192 MB RAM

ESS AudioDrive

8 MB ATI Rage 64

16x48 DVD Drive

56k 3Com Modem

10/100 Intel PRO/100 Ethernet

17" LCD (shared with my Mac)

Dualbooted with Windows 2000

  • 4 weeks later...
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