Windows 98 Second Edition

Windows 98 is a continuation of the Windows 95 product. The major change is an insanely heavy focus on web integration. The help system, many applications, and even the desktop are redesigned to make use of Internet Explorer. Windows 98 runs on top of the same "MS-DOS 7.1" with FAT32 support as Windows 95 OSR2, and it includes support for USB. Windows 98 had two major releases - a First Edition and a Second Edition. It was followed up by Windows ME.

If a download does not include a boot disk, please see Microsoft Windows Boot Disks

If the listed serials below do not work for a specific release, please see the Serials thread

Other Windows Versions:
| 1.0 | 2.x | 3.x | NT 3.x | 95 | NT 4.0 | 98 | 2000 | ME | All |



Screenshots

Release notes

Windows 98 Second Edition is an update to the original Windows 98 that includes improved modem and sound/audio card support through the Windows Driver Model, improved USB support, Wake on LAN support, FireWire DV camcorder support, and SBP-2 Mass Storage device support. Internet Explorer 4.0 was also upgraded to 5.0 and Internet Connection Sharing made its debut. DirectX 6.1 was also included with DirectSound improvements. Windows Media Player 6.2 was also shipped replacing the old classic Windows 3.x/95 "Media Player" that originated with the Windows 3.0 MMC Extensions.

Windows 98 Second Edition can be updated with the Microsoft .NET framework version 1.0, 1,1 and 2.0. The Visual C++ 2005 runtime is the last to carry Windows 98 support. The last version of Internet Explorer that can be installed on 98 SE is 6.0. Other available upgradeable components include DirectX 9.0c, Windows Installer 2.0, GDI+ redistributable, Remote Desktop Connection (XP 5.1), and Text Services Framework. The last version of Microsoft Office capable of running on Windows 98 is Office XP.

Installation instructions

Hardware requirements can be bypassed in the setup with the undocumented /nm setup switch. This will allow systems as old as the 80386 with 8MB of RAM to run Windows 98 (although this will be far from optimal)

Important: Only the OEM Full version is bootable. All others require an appropriate Windows 98 Boot Floppy.

Note: VMWare and VirtualBox can be problematic with Windows 9x. You may need to disable various acceleration features first, or consider emulators like x86Box or PCem.

To speed up installation, and to avoid numerous problems, copy the win98 folder to a folder on the hard drive (such as c:\win98) and then run setup from there.

Wanted: Floppy version

Product type
OS
Vendor
Microsoft
Release date
Tue May 04 1999
End of life date
Sun Jul 09 2006
Minimum CPU
486DX @ 66 MHz
Minimum RAM
16MB
Minimum free disk space
250MB
User interface
GUI
Platform
Windows
Download count
990 (898 for release)
  • RW9MG-QR4G3-2WRR9-TG7BH-33GXB
  • RC7JH-VTKHG-RVKWJ-HBC3T-FWGBG

Downloads

Download name Version Language Architecture File size Downloads
Windows 98 SE Update (FE to SE) SE (FE to SE) Upgrade English 542.37MB 95
Windows 98 Second Edition (OEM Full) SE (OEM Full) English 544.44MB 361
Windows 98 Second Edition (Retail Full) SE (Retail Full) English 545.84MB 121
Windows 98 Second Edition (Retail Upgrade) SE (Retail Upgrade) Upgrade English 545.83MB 15
Windows 98 Second Edition (Select) SE (Select) English 544.56MB 20
Windows 98 Second Edition (VMWare) SE English 425.35MB 70
Windows 98 Second Edition [Czech] (OEM) SE (OEM) Czech 480.24MB 5
Windows 98 Second Edition [Dutch] (OEM) SE (OEM) Dutch 478.8MB 5
Windows 98 Second Edition [Finnish] (OEM) (ISO) SE (OEM) Finnish 478.28MB 6
Windows 98 Second Edition [French] (Fujitsu-Siemens OEM) (ISO) SE (OEM) French 543.55MB 6
Windows 98 Second Edition [French] (OEM) (ISO) SE (OEM) French 541.45MB 1
Windows 98 Second Edition [French] (Retail Upgrade) (ISO) SE Upgrade French 542.06MB 1
Windows 98 Second Edition [German] (OEM) SE (OEM) German 516.11MB 37
Windows 98 Second Edition [Greek] (OEM) (ISO) SE (OEM) Greek 568.66MB 2
Windows 98 Second Edition [Hungarian] (OEM) SE (OEM) Hungarian 478.77MB 2
Windows 98 Second Edition [Italian] (ISO) SE Italian 478.36MB 15
Windows 98 Second Edition [Japanese] (Retail) SE Japanese 389.12MB 11
Windows 98 Second Edition [Korean] SE Korean 230.86MB 3
Windows 98 Second Edition [Norwegian] (OEM) SE (OEM) Norwegian 479.45MB 0
Windows 98 Second Edition [Polish] (OEM) (ISO) SE (OEM) Polish 570.01MB 5
Windows 98 Second Edition [Portuguese-Brazil] (OEM) (ISO) SE Portuguese-Brazil 478.44MB 13
Windows 98 Second Edition [Portuguese] SE Portuguese 479.29MB 1
Windows 98 Second Edition [Russian] SE Russian 480.11MB 22
Windows 98 Second Edition [Slovak] (OEM) (ISO) SE (OEM) Slovak 479.13MB 0
Windows 98 Second Edition [Slovenian] SE Slovenian 478.91MB 0
Windows 98 Second Edition [Spanish] SE Spanish 505.91MB 59
Windows 98 Second Edition [Swedish] (Select) SE (Select) Swedish 481.16MB 0
Windows 98 Second Edition [Trad. Chinese] (OEM) (ISO) SE (OEM) Trad. Chinese 223.12MB 11
Windows 98 Second Edition [Turkish] SE Turkish 480.47MB 11

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