buckeye wrote:

Are there any system utilities out there for Windows 98 worth getting? Only one I'm aware of is from Norton but don't recall if it was of any use or not. I'm not talking about anti-virus stuff as the pc isn't connected to the internet, just "pc optimizing" utilities or whatnot.

Good God, no!

gdjacobs wrote:

buckeye wrote:

Are there any system utilities out there for Windows 98 worth getting? Only one I'm aware of is from Norton but don't recall if it was of any use or not. I'm not talking about anti-virus stuff as the pc isn't connected to the internet, just "pc optimizing" utilities or whatnot.

Good God, no!

I take it that's a "subtle" way of saying "leave well enuff alone"?

Speeddisk include in Nortons was pretty good alternat to defrag. Disk doctor as well back when floppies were still used a lot.
But for the most part nah, even Win98 Plus! was moistly bloat

buckeye wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

buckeye wrote:

Are there any system utilities out there for Windows 98 worth getting? Only one I'm aware of is from Norton but don't recall if it was of any use or not. I'm not talking about anti-virus stuff as the pc isn't connected to the internet, just "pc optimizing" utilities or whatnot.

Good God, no!

I take it that's a "subtle" way of saying "leave well enuff alone"?

A good number of "system helper" utilities in Win 98's golden years were actually spyware, adware or other malware.

I have forgot what the sysinternals groups utilities were called then, maybe they were in the plus pack... or was it called the power pack or something.

buckeye wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

buckeye wrote:

Are there any system utilities out there for Windows 98 worth getting? Only one I'm aware of is from Norton but don't recall if it was of any use or not. I'm not talking about anti-virus stuff as the pc isn't connected to the internet, just "pc optimizing" utilities or whatnot.

Good God, no!

I take it that's a "subtle" way of saying "leave well enuff alone"?

In my opinion, Norton utilities during the Windows era regressed to being a PC decelerator as time moved on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umDr0mPuyQc
Jokes aside
I like Tweak UI, it isn't "performance optimizer" but i think thats really nice to "optimize the use" of Windows 9x (i kind of used for a while in xp too)
i kind of also made use of one cleaner, i'm really trying to remember the name.
And if you are doing a fresh install and wanna your Windows 98 a little bit snappier i recommend using 98 Lite.

gdjacobs wrote:

In my opinion, Norton utilities during the Windows era regressed to being a PC decelerator as time moved on.

Yeah that, they went from being a DOS era giant to mediocre money grubbers making bloat.

These are system utility for win 98
ASD.EXE Automatic Skip Driver
CLEANMGR.EXE Disk Space Cleanup Manager
CVT1.EXE FAT32 Drive Converter tool
DEFRAG.EXE Disk Defragmenter (includes application optimizer)
DRWATSON.EXE Dr. Watson Diagnostic tool - log and diagnose errors
HWINFO.EXE hardware diagnostics utility
REGEDIT.EXE Registry Editor
RSRCMTR.EXE Resource Meter
SCANDSKW.EXE Scan Disk
SCANREGW.EXE Registry Checker - performs daily automatic vital backups of the Registry and the System files (SYSTEM.INI and WIN.INI)
SIGVERIF.EXE Signature Verification tool
SMTIDY.EXE Tidy Start Menu tool (cleanup Start Menu)
SYSMON.EXE System Monitor
TASKMAN.EXE Task Manager
TUNEUP.EXE Maintenance Wizard
VCMUI.EXE Version Conflict Manager
WINIPCFG.EXE TCP/IP Configuration tool
WINOUP.EXE WinPopup network messaging tool
WINREP.EXE Problem Report tool (if you contact Microsoft support)
WINVER.EXE Windows Version
WSCRIPT.EXE Windows Scripting Host
WUPDMGR.EXE Update Manager (Internet connection required)

I don't use any of those 'system cleaners or optimizers' but for 98SE you can run msconfig and tweak your startup programs. That could help a bit. Another thing is disable window animations and use classic folders in Explorer

There was an old version of CCleaner for Win98 but if I remember, it didn't do anything more than what MS provided.

Ah, powertoys is what I was thinking of... http://aumha.org/a/powertoy.php

buckeye wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

buckeye wrote:

Are there any system utilities out there for Windows 98 worth getting? Only one I'm aware of is from Norton but don't recall if it was of any use or not. I'm not talking about anti-virus stuff as the pc isn't connected to the internet, just "pc optimizing" utilities or whatnot.

Good God, no!

I take it that's a "subtle" way of saying "leave well enuff alone"?

Yes, leave well enuff alone and stay away.

Don’t install any type of utility type in Windows 95/98. In my opinion the last good Norton Utilities was Norton Utilities 8 for DOS.

What killed the utility scene was that Microsoft started putting a lot of what those utilities did into Windows. Things like undelete, disk defragmenters and such. Other stuff just started to become irrelevant. For example, disk compression software. Why bother compressing your HD, just buy a bigger one. 😀 Since they became irrelevant, I think they started to put more and more bloat in their software to try and justify you buying it. Things like Norton Crash Guard? What did that ever do? My program still crashed. 😀