[[Translated to English by Andrei Stolbov]] [Intro]
In my previous video about using Windows 98 nowadays I had briefly shown some of Windows 98 bootlegs. There was: Windows 98 TE, Windows 98IF and Windows OLEG.
I think the first one wouldn’t be so interesting to review. The third one, I’d reviewed two years ago, however the second seems to be a more interesting one.
As I’ve mentioned before, this project is called “Windows 98IF”. The first version was released on March 26th of 2007, almost 15 years ago before this video was made.
This project focuses on improving original Windows 98 by applying some patches, bug fixes, addons and replacing default Windows components.
Beyond that, the OS comes with a big set of drivers, such as graphics drivers, sound card drivers, controllers and other equipment.
Most of the times, it also includes pre-installed manufacturer software for graphics and soundcard drivers, like the NVIDIA control panel or AudioHQ for sound cards called SoundBlaster.
And other stuff, but we’ll discuss it later.
The author of all this is Igor Fedorenko. Besides the Windows 98IF project he localizes Windows 98 software, made a Windows 98 drivers collection, created the project “Build Windows 98 yourself”, and also distributed his own program called “BUST”.
Last time it was released on October 10th of 2019, however until now the project is still active and receives updates, as you can tell by the page with version history.
There’re many versions of this project and for the most part they only differ in having different components or interface, however, there’re some more interesting variations of it: so-called “matryoshka-builder”, canonical, 98IF and ultimate.
“Matryoshka-builder” is based on the version "98IF-", but you build the system out of components by yourself.
This principle is like: “remove the stub, put the component”.
By that I mean Windows 98 installer checks for INF-files, which contain paths of the components, settings of the components and, of course, the components itself.
As soon as the installer checked for INF-files and parsed the content of it, it adds the needed component to the “Select components” menu, and then, you can select it from there.
Canonical variation contains only applications distributed by Microsoft.
Some default programs were replaced by better and more popular software.
For example, in the ultimate version instead of “Compressed Folders” it has file archivers such as 7-Zip and WinRAR; instead of Media Player Classic, which comes with the ultimate version, it has built-in Windows Media Player 9.
So, I hope, everything in general is clear about it.
"98IF-" version contains only the core of the system and some of the drivers. The size of it is smaller than 100Mb.
It’s fully empty, and there’s even no “notepad”.
Ultimate, as you can tell, comes with lots of additional software, patches, bug-fixes, drivers and so on.
Though the size of it is still pretty small: 600Mb. In this video, we’ll take a closer look at this one.
Let’s insert the disk image into VM. Here we can see the boot menu, which has some interesting options: we can boot directly into clean MS-DOS 7.10, choosing the normal variation or variation modified by the author.
In custom variation there’re different CD-ROM drivers and different mouse support implementation.
Also, here you can run some disk partitioning utilities like Acronis Disk Director or Norton Partition Magic.
Lastly, it has a file manager Volkov Commander and drive scanning utility.
Actually, you have the opportunity to install the system automatically.
How it works?
The thing is, it’s just a batch script, which before the automatic installation looks for free partition, if there’re no any of them, the script opens disk utility and terminates.
If it finds the partition with Windows installed on it, it will notify us that the already reserved partition will be renamed, the recycle bin and registry settings will be fully deleted.
Kinda reminds me of the purpose of 'Windows.old" folder in modern Windows.
If everything went well, it copies the answer file (unattend file) and runs the installer.
After these steps the installation continues automatically.
Besides this, the script contains commented lines of code with all variants of Windows 98 license keys.
We’ll choose the manual install, because I think I can do all this by myself.
Before installation it’ll check the drive for any possible errors.
After scandisk, the installation window appears and, as you can tell, the logo above and text is replaced. It says that “the operating system is essentially improved”.
Well, we’ll see that…
Then it displays a pretty interesting looking license agreement: ...
“That you got the opportunity to use the software from this distribution DOESN’T MEAN AT ALL THAT YOU GOT THE RIGHT TO."
Well, I have a lot of questions regarding what I’ve just read. Like, “if I downloaded this distribution then I completely don’t have the right to use included software from it? Does it make any sense?”
I’m sorry for dumb questions, let’s move on.
In my opinion, the most interesting stage of installation is selecting components.
The list of components is arranged and compared to Windows 98 includes lots different of them: Total Commander, Far, MS Office, Archivers, AVs, Video and sound, Utilities and so on.
It contains everything but the kitchen sink :D
FAR - is a file manager, nothing fishy about it
Group of MS Office components lets us separately install parts of MS Office 97: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Visio...
...and their other advanced components like formula editor, help-files for every component, tools for working with HTML pages in Word, you can customize anything you want.
You may also notice that the title over all Office components has “IF” in brackets. As I’ve said before, the author besides distributions makes translations and other projects.
And I’m 100% sure that the Office package will be already activated.
Available MS-DOS components are: DOS Navigator, Archivers for DOS, Image viewers for DOS, Drivers for DOS and other stuff for MS-DOS 7.10.
Why MS-DOS 7.10 exactly? Because this version of MS-DOS is used for Windows 98.
Group of components for Total Commander contain the file manager itself and lots of additions for it, which you can install separately.
Thereof AV’s it suggests ADinf - disk scanning tool, which can interact with different AV’s, ClamWin - free antivirus scanner for old Windows operating systems.
And if I’m not mistaken, it’s databases are still updated daily.
Thereof archivers you can install CabArc for .CAB archives and 7-Zip, WinRAR.
If we talk about other utilities it has CCleaner, KernelEx for running modern software in Windows 98, Java, Norton programs and Paragon for NTFS partition support. We’ll take a closer look at this after installation.
If we don’t choose any components, it will take 1332Mb of space with 2Gb of hard disk.
After the components selection menu, there goes the standard stages of installation like choosing the username, location and other stuff.
Next comes the process of installation. It will take a while, you know.
They also changed the installation messages. They’re not telling us to sit and relax, waiting until all this will be installed. They’re telling us about the difference between Windows 98IF and Windows 98.
Later on they’ll show us the list of changed components, what devices it supports: there’s a USB support;...
...what official and unofficial updates are included; they show what components were taken from Windows XP, Windows ME, from Office 2003 for Office 97.
As I read all this, I want to hope that it’ll all work nicely, not like total crap.
They also tell us what codecs for multimedia were added or updated, and which ones were removed;...
...tell us about Internet Explorer 6.0 browser update, even though it’s not needed, because I’d like to use Opera, but anyways, it’s not necessary to install it
Just pause the video, if you want to read more messages.
The setup and configuration of the system took a small amount of time, then it shows us the log in screen. Symbolically, the text on desktop wallpaper says “Windows Pirated Edition”.
After logging into the system it displays a bunch of windows with settings: from text recognition program, ZoneAlarm firewall, antivirus, ADInf program and WinPopup.
After logging into the system it displays a bunch of windows with settings: from text recognition program, ZoneAlarm firewall, antivirus, ADInf program and WinPopup. When we finally close all of these windows, we can begin to review.
The first thing that catches your eye is a new standard theme and fully new system icons.
You can easily bring back the standard Windows 98 theme, but it’s not easy to return back standard icons - you should have a separate .cab-file and install this manually.
Default Windows 98 Desktop themes [for example: More Windows and Travel] was permanently deleted.
Standard Windows 98 wallpapers are still included, but they’d also added quite a few more of them.
Screensavers like “Marquee”, “Mystify” and OpenGL-based screensavers are available. You can also find a few more screensavers like “Flame”, “Matrix” and “ORT channel clock (Russian TV-channel)”.
All devices work fine: it did find video adapters, sound cards, network cards, it even found the USB-controller.
I know, we’re testing it on VM, but I have also tested it on 86Box, on the real Pentium 4 motherboard, and there it almost did work correctly.
Why almost, you may ask?
The thing is, it didn’t succeed very well on picking the right drivers on my Pentium 4 PC, but it was obvious to expect it.
I’m talking about the improved VGA driver - VESA VBE and it has one problem…
"Here, look. We have a MiniportVBE-Standard Video Adapter, so it's..."
"Not a standard VGA driver, but such a redesign."
"System couldn't find any drivers for my video card, so it used these standard enhanced ones."
"And if you run MS-DOS mode..."
"Then it turns out the following."
"That is, the picture is stupidly "crashed" and monitor says that it is not "optimized mode"; that is, the monitor reports that...the frequency...seems...to be broken."
"And there's nothing we can do. If I type exit, nothing happens. "
"It's going to be just like this."
"Oh, the cursor ran someplace." :D
"I move the mouse... and the cursor is so crooked..."
Now, let’s talk about the programs.
We’ll start with ones in the tray icon: Punto Switcher autocorrects the keyboard layout, shows the currently selected keyboard layout.
There’s a program called Kleptomania, which is used to convert a screen image to text, but it seems like it doesn’t work that well.
KeyX makes working with windows more comfortable, like in modern Windows distributions.
By holding Win+Right you can maximize the window, by holding Win+Down you can restore the window size or minimize it, so, it’s like in modern Windows versions.
X-Run for running games and applications, but i don’t understand why it’s needed,...
...and CLCL clipboard viewer.
So, let’s move on to the Start menu.
There’re much of it, so we’ll take a look at some of them.
We had already discussed the AVs and archivers, we’ll firstly start with audio and video software. Sound Forge and Wavosaur are used for audio editing, mpTrim for cutting mp3s,...
...VirtualDub for screen capture, Windows Movie Maker, programs for customizing codecs, standard media players including Winamp, Media Player Classic, GOM Player.
Thereof graphic editors there’s Photoshop 7.0, Paint, Microangelo for creating icons and animations, image viewers - Imagine and IrfanView.
You can find here Daemon Tools for imaging, Nero Express, Nero Burning ROM and other things for CDs.
Distribution includes standard Windows 98 games, a game called “Lines”, Worms 2, Warcraft 2: original and patched.
I don’t quite understand why Warcraft 2 has to be patched, because I don’t really play games, if you have any idea, write in the comments below.
PDF/DJVU viewers are: Foxit PDF Reader, WinDjView and ICE Book Reader.
For browsing and instant messaging there’re Internet Explorer 6, Opera 9.6, ICQ/Jabber-client Miranda, standard programs e.g. Outlook Express, Phone Dialer, Remote Desktop and NetMeeting.
There’re also lots of different utilities: SbRunScr - a tool for desktop customization, custom task managers, Recuva for file recovery and utilities like Norton WinDoctor and Speed Disk.
Throughout the video are happening some annoying lags, like while rendering windows and the entire system GUI rendering.
Seems it’s somehow related [my opinion] to the very high speed of the processor, which the emulator generates. You may experience this lag (or bug?) on Windows 98 running on a virtual machine.
However, it runs on 86Box without any such issues at all.
As I’ve mentioned before Windows 98IF has patches for increasing the 1152 MB RAM limitation,...
120 GB+ drive support; NTFS support,...
...including all system updates from Microsoft for Windows 98 and a special authors update for nowadays time zones.
In conclusion, some of you may consider this project as another example of a shitty Windows bootleg, otherwise, it might be considered as a pretty good implementation.
Some of you, on the other hand, may ask “what the hell is this all about? what’s the purpose of it?”
If we exclude all random software from it, leaving only the patches and components, it can be rated well for that time.
Although, I don’t think someone would use it on real hardware. But, if someone wants so, it’s always welcomed.
What do I think about this?
Well, I’m a bit confused about it, because at some point it’s an interesting looking project, from another point of view I don’t quite understand why exactly it was made.
However, I like the fact there’re still passionate people, who develop projects like this. It means people remember Windows 98, even though it's been a long time since Windows 98 was released.
You can write down your opinion in the comments below.
This is it! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate this video, if you like my content, it’s always a big pleasure for me to see your opinion.
See you next time!
[[[Translated to English by Andrei Stolbov]]]