The Windows OS Thread - Formerly THE OS for gamers and normies, now sadly ruined by Pajeets

[General Emílio Médici]

Anyone got any experience on setting up Windows 98 and 95 on a VM? I am trying to get a project going where I would like to have Windows 98 SE on a virtual machine but it really isn't playing nice at all. The graphical aspect in particular, as the VM is stuck on 640:480 and quite laggy with the mouse inside. The only real suggestions I have seen are using a abandoned open source driver thing that seems to not work well, or some ancient driver manager thing called "Scitech Display Doctor" which similarly doesn't work well and is a timed trial that runs out in 21 days and I would rather not remake the VM every 3 weeks.

 

[Slav Power]

lso powertoys sucks lol. I tried it once and there's like only one real """useful""" tool while everything else is just a fucking memory hog.

Eh, idk. FancyZones is a great idea but it's ruined by being sluggish to configure on the fly, but it's very quick to tile windows. File Locksmith is a nice alternative to the proprietary LockHunter, Keyboard Manager actually works and somehow manages to overwrite MS' hardcoded keyboard shortcuts.

PowerToys Run sucks like most keyboard launchers, where it's not instant to open and search, and has a limited amount of extensions. That's the reason I use Keypirinha despite it being outdated and closed source, because it works instantly and has a rich selection of extensions. It sucks that there aren't many alternatives because keyboard launchers are the shit, to the point where I don't ever need to look into the start menu anymore. At best I'll go into the start menu folders to add/remove shortcuts for the keyboard launcher.

As for the memory hog issue, it's not that bad IMO. The main process uses less than 100MB, and pretty much all modern software uses more than that, and all the modules you can turn on and off depending on what you want to use.

Anyone got any experience on setting up Windows 98 and 95 on a VM? I am trying to get a project going where I would like to have Windows 98 SE on a virtual machine but it really isn't playing nice at all. The graphical aspect in particular, as the VM is stuck on 640:480 and quite laggy with the mouse inside. The only real suggestions I have seen are using a abandoned open source driver thing that seems to not work well, or some ancient driver manager thing called "Scitech Display Doctor" which similarly doesn't work well and is a timed trial that runs out in 21 days and I would rather not remake the VM every 3 weeks.

Modern type 2 hypervisors aren't especially great for Win9x, especially VirtualBox because VirtualBox sucks ass. Your best option would be VMware Player, but even then the support for Win9x guests is limited, and you won't have 3D acceleration if you want to play legacy games.

Your other options are as follows:
DOSBox-X - A DOSBox fork that greatly expands upon it's capabilities, such as being able to run 9x guests with Voodoo graphics. It's less demanding than the alternatives, but it's less accurate and more unstable.
PCem/86Box - These are true x86 emulators. They emulate the motherboard, CPU, any addon cards and so on. Configuring a VM is like assembling a retro PC. They're the most accurate, but also most demanding, requiring good modern CPU's with high single thread performance, with full speed Pentium II emulation still being impossible even on the best single thread CPU's on the market.

86Box is a more active fork of PCem that aims for higher compatibility at the cost of lower performance, but it also has more features and components than PCem. I have a 98 SE machine, Super Socket 7, Pentium MMX 266MHz, and as far as I'm aware this is the best I can emulate on my i5-12400. ACPI doesn't work but I haven't tried setting it up, and it was broken in the 90's anyway.

In both DOSBox-X and PCem/86Box you will need to source old drivers for specific hardware from the day, so VOGONS is a good place to look for all the 3dfx, Creative and other drivers. You're not using a type 2 hypervisor that "cheats" and has to use it's own tricks to make the guest OS run as intended, you're getting closer to running a genuine PC compatible. And always remember that you're running a legacy OS, so don't expect it to support modern standards of computing. My 86Box machine can just about run in 1024x768@32Bpp with a Voodoo 3, AKA the highest end video cards of the day.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

Modern type 2 hypervisors aren't especially great for Win9x, especially VirtualBox because VirtualBox sucks ass. Your best option would be VMware Player, but even then the support for Win9x guests is limited, and you won't have 3D acceleration if you want to play legacy games.

These aren't meant to play any games, only really run some mega outdated software and some tinkering so that limitation isn't much of a issue. What I mainly want is 1024x786 at 40fps+ and then I am set. I think 86box is gonna work fine.

 

[Slav Power]

These aren't meant to play any games, only really run some mega outdated software and some tinkering so that limitation isn't much of a issue. What I mainly want is 1024x786 at 40fps+ and then I am set. I think 86box is gonna work fine.

Yeah 86Box will be the best choice for that. Though you're not gonna have a buttery smooth experience like you have under native Windows 10/11, lower your expectations since you're still running legacy software. My install with a Voodoo 3 has a laggy UI anyway because that's just how Win9x is. Back when you had CRT's all of that lagginess was probably neatly smoothed out, but now you're pumping it out onto a modern LED screen so it'll look choppy and laggy.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

I just put it down and tried it a bit. You weren't joking about the "assembling a retro PC" part it literally requires me to pick each component and such down to motherboards. Sadly I also found out the PC I want this to run on probably cannot handle the low level emulation of a 266mhz Pentium 2 (if I understand the program correctly, the percentage on the upper right corner of the screen which was solid 100% on the default IBM PC machine went down to like 40 to 45 on the Windows 98 specs, that means that it is running half speed right?) so I might need to make it either a quite slow 98 or just go for a 95 install.

 

[Slav Power]

I just put it down and tried it a bit. You weren't joking about the "assembling a retro PC" part it literally requires me to pick each component and such down to motherboards. Sadly I also found out the PC I want this to run on probably cannot handle the low level emulation of a 266mhz Pentium 2 (if I understand the program correctly, the percentage on the upper right corner of the screen which was solid 100% on the default IBM PC machine went down to like 40 to 45 on the Windows 98 specs, that means that it is running half speed right?) so I might need to make it either a quite slow 98 or just go for a 95 install.

I told you, even the top of the line CPU's of today cannot handle stable Pentium II emulation. And I'm talking i9-14900k. It's very demanding, especially with 86Box's levels of accuracy. And yes, that performance is the emulation speed. If it falls down below 100%, you're struggling with the chosen emulated CPU and it's frequency.

You'll have to settle with a Pentium MMX that your actual CPU can emulate at a steady 100% or you'll have to look for something else. Maybe a DOSBox-X setup? Or settle down with PCem that performs better at a cost of lower accuracy?

By the way, you can try seeing if my setup will work well:
Machine type: Super Socket 7
Machine: [ALi ALLADiN V] ASUS P5A
CPU type: Intel Mobile Pentium MMX
Frequency: 266
Memory: 128MB
Display: [AGP] 3dfx Voodoo3 3000
Sound: [ISA16] Sound Blaster 16

It handles the desktop well and can run Tomb Raider II at full speed in 1024x768 without issues. Just remember that you'll have to source and install drivers for the 3dfx and the Sound Blaster, much like you'd have to with a real machine.

 

[BirdUp]

can modern hardware run windows xp
i dont mean emulation i mean installing it as an os

 

[Slav Power]

can modern hardware run windows xp
i dont mean emulation i mean installing it as an os

Nope, shortly after it's abandonment in 2014, Intel, AMD and Nvidia dropped support for XP drivers, essentially dropping support for the entire OS. Without the drivers for the chipset, motherboard components and graphics you can't do shit.

So if you want to build a retro gaming PC, you'll need to look into which components are newest, most powerful, and still have working WinXP drivers available. You sure as hell won't be able to run a 4090 on XP. The 10 series was the first one to have zero XP support.

 

[seri0us]

I don't need a troon OS that can't handle team green.

It's the other way around. Nvidia not supporting Linux to the same standard as Windows and "the community" trying to fill in the rest by reverse-engineering.

Though I do understand that if Linux or any other tool won't work for you then it really doesn't matter who's "at fault".

 

[SilentDuck]

I just put it down and tried it a bit. You weren't joking about the "assembling a retro PC" part it literally requires me to pick each component and such down to motherboards. Sadly I also found out the PC I want this to run on probably cannot handle the low level emulation of a 266mhz Pentium 2 (if I understand the program correctly, the percentage on the upper right corner of the screen which was solid 100% on the default IBM PC machine went down to like 40 to 45 on the Windows 98 specs, that means that it is running half speed right?) so I might need to make it either a quite slow 98 or just go for a 95 install.

Win98 will work on Pentium 4 machines if you want to go bare metal and can find one for free or nearly free. Depending on the BIOS you can turn off various levels of caching and CPU cache slowing it down to P2, Pentium or cripple it to 386 levels of performance. Emulating win98 is basically a root canal that never ends.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

Win98 will work on Pentium 4 machines if you want to go bare metal and can find one for free or nearly free. Depending on the BIOS you can turn off various levels of caching and CPU cache slowing it down to P2, Pentium or cripple it to 386 levels of performance. Emulating win98 is basically a root canal that never ends.

Sike the machine I wanna replace is a old and falling apart Pentium 4. So yeah, I know it works but not really a good alternative.

 

[Slav Power]

It's the other way around. Nvidia not supporting Linux to the same standard as Windows and "the community" trying to fill in the rest by reverse-engineering.

And then on the opposite side, AMD isn't supporting Windows to the same standard as Linux, because they don't seem to exactly feel that maybe catching up with widespread and easy support for ML GPU acceleration under the most popular OS would be a good idea with how big the market is right now.

Windows users end up paying for Nvidia because they're the ones that have easy ML support, while AMD is losing out on that market despite having a good chance to be much more competitive in this segment and earning some good cash. But now that's four threads worth of rambling topics in one post.

 

[The Ugly One]

And then on the opposite side, AMD isn't supporting Windows to the same standard as Linux, because they don't seem to exactly feel that maybe catching up with widespread and easy support for ML GPU acceleration under the most popular OS would be a good idea with how big the market is right now.

Windows isn't the most popular OS with people actually making money from AI/ML. RHEL is. Datacenter GPUs for training AI models are a billion dollar business now. Home hobbyists with gaming cards are an afterthought. AMD doesn't care what you want because you're not going to buy a $1.5m server cabinet with 32 MI300s. Windows drivers for ROCm may eventually come, but right now, the focus is on catching up to NVIDIA where the real money is.

 

[Faceless Whore]

Crossposting this since it's Windows related (also archive):

This guy has made an extensive list on how much Windows 11 sucks

(And if you think this is a psyop to promote Linux he did a gigantic list of why Linux is gay (A) too.)

Spoiler: more insufferable Linux sperging

I saw this link was in fact posted earlier in this thread:

btw, Linux is fucking terrible for desktop environments, just fyi

I just want to state that this is as unfair as me posting about Windows' problems and security issues and saying "WINDOWS IS FUCKING TERRIBLE FOR DESKTOP ENVIRONMENTS FYI".
Tons of people use Linux as their desktop just fine, including for things like gaming (and not just gay open source games or indy shit but AAAs and MMOs), streaming, programming, etc. I looked at that list and a lot of problems are niche things that you won't encounter in everyday ordinary use, just like the Windows list. Both systems have their shitty issues but they work fine most of the time for most people.

I respect that most Windows users aren't interested in Linux, but I don't like it when Windows users who don't know anything about Linux and have never used it read things like this and promote whatever monstrous fantasy they've conjured in their head as factual.

And btw Josh's streaming machine is a crashing PoS because he uses Arch Linux which focuses on releasing the newest and therefore most unstable code. It's almost the equivalent of signing up for Windows preview versions that are buggy as fuck and naturally going to crash all the time.
There are versions of Linux that focus on stability and don't break every time you click a button.

 

[WelperHelper99]

It's the other way around. Nvidia not supporting Linux to the same standard as Windows and "the community" trying to fill in the rest by reverse-engineering.

Though I do understand that if Linux or any other tool won't work for you then it really doesn't matter who's "at fault".

And then on the opposite side, AMD isn't supporting Windows to the same standard as Linux, because they don't seem to exactly feel that maybe catching up with widespread and easy support for ML GPU acceleration under the most popular OS would be a good idea with how big the market is right now.

Windows users end up paying for Nvidia because they're the ones that have easy ML support, while AMD is losing out on that market despite having a good chance to be much more competitive in this segment and earning some good cash. But now that's four threads worth of rambling topics in one post.

Really thats just why I want a Windows/Nvidia rig. It'll do what I need, even a little bit of ML if I want to make a goofy picture- and the bullshit hoops I I have to go through is FAR lower. I'm not setting up a server where Linux might be nice. I want to check email, web surf, play games, watch YouTube in 1080p, and use Word. Windows can and will do all of that like it always has.

 

[Leaded Gasoline]

Trying to run any modern OS with modern software on a 2008 CPU is a fucking joke. Your browser alone is so massive it'll be shitting itself even on the most lightweight Debian setup.

bullshit. windows 10 runs just fine on 45nm C2Qs/socket 771 xeons, modern software also runs flawlessly if it doesn't need AVX

 

[Slav Power]

bullshit. windows 10 runs just fine on 45nm C2Qs/socket 771 xeons, modern software also runs flawlessly if it doesn't need AVX

You know, just because I can run Stable Cascade on my 1060 doesn't mean it's a good experience and that I don't need a better GPU. Unless you have this Linux user mentality where you're fine with waiting 10 minutes to do something that takes 5 seconds on modern hardware because "it still works" and "you don't actually need more".

 

[Leaded Gasoline]

You know, just because I can run Stable Cascade on my 1060 doesn't mean it's a good experience and that I don't need a better GPU. Unless you have this Linux user mentality where you're fine with waiting 10 minutes to do something that takes 5 seconds on modern hardware because "it still works" and "you don't actually need more".

when was the last time you used one of these old CPUs? a few months back i was using one for my main PC just to see how slow your CPU has to be for stuff to start chugging

this piece of shit doesn't even have L3 cache but guess what? windows 10 runs smooth, web browsing is responsive and games will usually hit stable 30fps

Unless you have this Linux user mentality where you're fine with waiting 10 minutes to do something that takes 5 seconds on modern hardware because "it still works" and "you don't actually need more".

linux users were like this 10 years ago, when they were all losers using shitty core 2 duo laptops
they are actually more of dishonest faggots now than before, constantly switching between "old hardware runs better on linux" and "your hardware sucks, buy something better" in order to defend their beloved OS when shit inevitably goes wrong

 

[Blue Miaplacidus]

I had an issue with a USB port that Win 11 would "helpfully" power down until I told it that no, I want this USB port to always have power. Perhaps that's the issue with your audio panel. It's buried somewhere in device settings if there is a power-down option.

You helped me narrow down the problem and fix it. Well sort of, I still don't understand because I'm pretty dumb. For some reason in high performance power mode it was sleeping the audio streams but nothing else, I guess because a fullscreen window was open, I don't know. Turning to balanced, or setting the time to never/longer prevents the issue from happening. I'm not entirely sure why this is happening, I might just wipe the partition and re-install. Maybe I fucked something up somewhere accidentally.

 

[Gargamel]

shitty core 2 duo laptops

10 years ago they were getting long in the tooth, but still usable and well-supported by Linux and also generally Windows XP as well.

About that time I had just gotten a used ThinkPad X220 with a Sandy Bridge i5 and thinking what a system. Now writing this post on it's fourth successor, my current ThinkPad X230 with an Ivy Bridge i5, slightly more usable than a Core 2 Duo was in 2014, and only thanks to Linux.

Anyone remember the ASUS Eee PC? The epitomy of dogshit slow and Linux. Even I wouldn't use one, even when they were new.