Not really sure which programs will still work, even 20 years ago I can only remember using email and lesser extent ICQ and MSN messenger oh and I spose Napster.
Don't know/care if these can still work.

You can use old browsers (something that is kind of interesting for me) using a proxy service.
WebOne - proxy for old browsers to make them Web 2.0-capable

chinny22 wrote on 2023-01-23, 12:08:

Not really sure which programs will still work, even 20 years ago I can only remember using email and lesser extent ICQ and MSN […]
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Not really sure which programs will still work, even 20 years ago I can only remember using email and lesser extent ICQ and MSN messenger oh and I spose Napster.
Don't know/care if these can still work.

You can use old browsers (something that is kind of interesting for me) using a proxy service.
WebOne - proxy for old browsers to make them Web 2.0-capable

Why is the internet not working all of a sudden? Putting aside what I was asking at the top. The concern now is to at least just load Google.com. The browsers I have installed are Opera 10.01 and RetroZilla. I think I need the instructions again on the security settings. By the way my LAN cable is plugged into a router on the other side. Please advise, I don’t know why Google stopped connecting.

Almost a decade ago, there was an older TLS being deprecated all across the web, as well as security certificates expiring - and that was trouble for XP.

Good luck with the matters of security on this machine... Norton discontinued xp support in 2020 and i'd imagine most other "mainstream" security packages have done the same.
Apart from that, looking at old pages on wayback machine should be fun on your retro PC.

Vic Zarratt wrote on 2023-01-25, 02:07:

Good luck with the matters of security on this machine...

And what, at least one modern virus will work under Windows 9x\Me? I highly doubt it. They are now written more likely under Windows 10 \ 11, well, 7 maximum, even XP is already in doubt. And in Windows 98 you will get something like "There is no function such and such in Kernel32.DLL. Update Windows and try again" 😁

Well, for old viruses, there are old antiviruses, such as ClamWin, which already contain everything in their databases probably known old viruses. Unless, of course, these viruses are still somewhere in the network (I have not seen it).

Yeah, because malware authors are very concerned about security and support recent operating systems only.
I'm sure they also follow Microsoft's recommendation and stop supporting older systems once they go EOL.
Of course, they do use the most current Visual Studio releases for best user experience.

DoZator wrote on 2023-01-29, 13:58:

Vic Zarratt wrote on 2023-01-25, 02:07:

Good luck with the matters of security on this machine...

And what, at least one modern virus will work under Windows 9x\Me? I highly doubt it. They are now written more likely under Windows 10 \ 11, well, 7 maximum, even XP is already in doubt. And in Windows 98 you will get something like "There is no function such and such in Kernel32.DLL. Update Windows and try again" 😁

Well, for old viruses, there are old antiviruses, such as ClamWin, which already contain everything in their databases probably known old viruses. Unless, of course, these viruses are still somewhere in the network (I have not seen it).

I saved a bunch of p3/p4 xp towers from going to africa, so there is a chance that not very computer and/or virus on the www is going to be written for the latest MS fandango. All that i can say to the OP is that, depending on where they live it might be difficult to attain antimalware and such.

For educational purposes, I tried to run some of the latest high-profile viruses in a virtual machine and on Windows XP some of them still somehow worked, on Windows 7 almost everything worked, and on Windows 98 none of them (At least without KernelEx, which is disabled by default). Giving errors, approximately as I gave above.

The thing is that the target audience of Windows 98 is too small for the authors of malicious programs to have to be so perverted. They compile not with the newest, but with what still works in XP\Vista\7. Absolutely not caring about compatibility with 9x. They are guided not by the recommendations of Microsoft and EOL, but by the popularity and prevalence of the OS on the Internet. This was already five years ago, and maybe earlier (I did not check). Now it's probably still "worse", the spread of Windows 10 \ 11 makes you adapt more to them. What's the point of writing an expensive virus for two and a half cripples?

I just tried it on purpose, downloaded the last three virus files detected in 24 hours. None of them worked under Windows 98:

In Windows XP NINJA earned. And Clip1.exe refused to work at all on a 32-bit system 😀
vbs.exe wanted .NET Framework v4.0.30319 or higher (which I naturally don't have in XP, and even more so in 9x).

This is what the overall picture looks like. Modern viruses are written for x64 platforms, for the new .NET Framework, the rest want at least Windows XP (or higher).

For example, you can give several names of modern viruses that have made a lot of noise in the computer world over the past five years, I will try to test them on my own (In a virtual machine, of course, with the network off). And none of them will work under Windows 98 with a guarantee of almost 100%.

And to protect against old viruses, as I wrote above, you can install ClamWin with fresh databases, in which all known viruses of the past are already included (And modern ones are still included). Although these old viruses are already very difficult to find on the Internet (If you don’t search purposefully).

So, it seems to me that it is more worth warning about the virus danger to those who are going to install Windows 10 than to those who want to use 9x in 2023... When no one has been optimizing viruses for 9x for a long time, but under Windows 10 - in first of all, because this is now the main target system (It is on it that the most gullible simpletons sit, from whom it is easiest to get money by encrypting files or introducing some kind of miner). It will be at least honest and closer to the truth.

Yes, besides, do not forget about the existence of VirusTotal.com, with which you can check a suspicious file under Windows 98 with the best antiviruses, without having to install them on your computer:
https://www.virustotal.com/old-browsers/

beachboy1122 wrote on 2023-01-24, 18:37:

Please advise, I don’t know why Google stopped connecting.

http://www.google.com should work right out of the box still using IE6 and Windows 98. However, clicking on any search result none of the sites will be working, as you will be redirected from HTTP to HTTPS. (Nowadays HTTPS won't work any more in IE6 though).

Using Retrozilla, you'll need to activate two settings in "about:config" to enable support for modern HTTPS connections, which are:

1security.ssl3.ecdhe_ecdsa_aes_128_gcm_sha256 = true
2security.ssl3.ecdhe_rsa_aes_128_gcm_sha256 = true

Alternatively you could also download a version having these settings already included:
http://www.creopard.de/download/detail/retroz … la-tls12/45.htm (you can also open this URL in IE6 using Windows 98 )