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Originally Posted by mid
From a starting point of that age, I definitely agree that you're better starting afresh than trying to upgrade it to a modern standard. However, I thought the aim was to get a machine that was no longer infected with assorted nefarious malware, rather than upgrading to something faster.
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I do see that alot. Mostly the younger generation that download anything and everything, and when the computer gets riddled with viruses and ad/spy/maulware, they scream that the computer sucks and they need a new one. Lucky for me, the parents want to try and fix the problems, not toss out a new nachine because the kids don't want to bother with even the basics of security.
And some of these viruses/spyware are real nasty. I just had one machine that changed all .exe extensions to .lnk extensions. I did manage to fix the extensions , but the damage to the software was too extensive. All you can do at that point is recover the files and start over.
Could I have fixed it? Sure, but for the amount I would have to charge, the customer would have been better off buyng a new computer.
As far as the OP is conserned, he might as well upgrade. Win98, while not a bad OS, is obselete. I'm supprised that so many people still support it. But that is changing, and I give it another year before the software vendors drop all support for it.
Of course, XP has it's share of problems, but it's alot more stable than anything MS has come out with. As far as the virus/spyware problem, until Microsoft stops embedding everything into the OS, you'll always have the potential for infection. Placing everything into the OS is not the way to run a secure OS.
There are ways to slow the virus/adware problems. Just using another browser will cure 90 percent of this problem. I can't stand using Explorer anymore. It's nice to be able to surf the web without a hundred popups every 10 minutes. Even using a pop-up blocker in explorer doesn't work anymore or not as well.