Basically, I want a ISO of Win98SE with all the performance, internet access , USB support available(2.+), without all the unnecessary stuff.
I will not need to play old school videos.
But I do want ALL sound options that do not slow boot and win mouse responsiveness.
I very welcome some replies.

That was always the nature of the beast.
If you dont want the slow down dont install the updates. If you want what features the updates give you then the slow down is part of them because they take disk reads and CPU power to run them.

Its like a duck complaining about webbed feet.

IE4/IE5 usually are the big performance altering ones (especially with IE5 vs win95) as they do replace some core components.

That brings back memories of assembling a PC for my sister aeons ago.
It was a Pentium system meant for a bit of web browsing, school works and playing jump&runs.
From what I remember, I tested both Win95 and 98SE.

When test playing SRB2 1.08 (?), the Win95 installation had 10 fps more.
However, Win95 was unusable for daily use at the time.
By early 2000s, it had to be 98SE, at very least.

PS: She got an used iMac a bit later, running OS X.
It served as a temporary solution until she had a netbook, if memory serves.

I would guess most patches/security fixes add complexity to the code. Implement like 100 fixes in a service pack and that starts to add up.

Yes, well possible.
Back in the day, users talked about using 98Lite, which uses Win95 explorer.

There is a "tweak" package that will replace Win98 UI with the one from Win95 (which is much faster) - can't remember what it's called right now.

KLund1 wrote on Yesterday, 10:01:

Basically, I want a ISO of Win98SE with all the performance, internet access , USB support available(2.+), without all the unnec […]
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Basically, I want a ISO of Win98SE with all the performance, internet access , USB support available(2.+), without all the unnecessary stuff.
I will not need to play old school videos.
But I do want ALL sound options that do not slow boot and win mouse responsiveness.
I very welcome some replies.

It has been benchmarked that USB 2.0 support can certainly slow down your computer. What combination of USB to use in Win9x and the impact is up to debate. But it's pretty much a guarantee to take a hit, some combos more, and some less.

As was mentioned, IE updates, especially IE4 also can slow down your system. This was known then, which is why guides have long been done to remove IE from windows.

I guess an obvious rule of thumb, each release of Windows is slower. Updates can be problematic as has been mentioned. You can go to Win95A (or B, guides have been made that are excellent) for the leanest system. Or you can go with your newest system of choice, most people use Win98SE, but I also like WinME (most up to date of the Win9x class) using a much newer system with the fastest processor you can handle to mitigate the effects of having nice things and Windows slowing down. Mind you, alot of people do really get rid of USB just for the purpose of getting a faster system. So I think you would like a beefier system. I don't think USB is important at all, and I'd personally go with Win95 B for a pretty solid, down to metal system that's covers almost everything that requires 9x.

So it's really a discussion of what you want to run for software and hardware. If you want nice things, specs have to be bumped in OS and HW to do it right. I am not sure what you want to really run, so advice is very general.

I guess an obvious rule of thumb, each release of Windows is slower. Updates can be problematic as has been mentioned.

There are exceptions to the rule, though. 🙂

Windows 3.1 was more efficient than Windows 3.0.
However, the added complexity had compensated for it.

Windows for Workgroups 3.11 was quicker than the original release.
It also moved everything to Protected-Mode, enhancing overall stability.

Windows NT 3.1 was a memory hog, it needed something like 16 MB to properly work.
By comparison, Windows NT 3.5 was much more optimized and ran "ok" at merely 8 MB.

Windows NT 4 had moved GDI into kernal space, which improved GUI performance a lot. At cost of stability.
That's why servers ran with the default VGA driver all the time. It was stress-tested.
Windows NT 3.51 with NewShell update remained an alternative with users that focused on maxium stability.

Edit: Windows 98SE has a vastly improved memory-managment.
It can run alligned executables directly from VCACHE.
There's an utility for it: WinAlign

Windows 95 RTM was small and quick, but only when running small Windows 3.x era applications.
It started to swap to disk really badly, once a big application was loaded.
32 MB of RAM was a turning point, I think. That's when swapping declined.

I remember this, because my dad had Windows 95 RTM on a 386DX-40 with 16 MB of RAM in 1995/1996.
Someone should have thought that 16 MB were "huge" of the time and that it was more than enough for Windows 95.

But that wasn't the case, sadly. I do remember vividly how the poor 150 and 250 MB IDE hard disks had made crying noises due to swapping.
Especially when running something sophisticated such as Netscape Navigator.

Meanwhile, Windows 98SE on my Pentium 75 with 24MB RAM took long for booting, but applications didn't try to kill the HDD through swapping to disk.
Probably because of direct execution from VCACHE.

Edited.

I'm running it on RyZen, it scratches pretty well there 😀

In most cases less is more.
The less you install the more speed you get.

Typically for a gaming PC Microsoft patches will be
USB patch (if you need it)
Windows Installer 2.0 (if software requires it)
IE (some software requires an updated version)
Network shutdown Patch (only apply if having the issue)
Direct X

Just about everything else is pointless on a gaming PC
Applying security patches is like locking the front door but leaving the window wide open.
Even fully patched, Win9x has many many well documented security vulnerabilities.

Personally I find my computer stopped shutting down when I applied the shutdown patch.
I also dislike USB on Win9x, much better to copy over the network.

Some games also install additional software or fill the registry with useless crap (like long dead online clients, eg Westwood chat)
Alot of windows games you can just run the exe from a previous install and it'll work just fine and keep your registry clean.

Biggest difference I find depending is chipset drivers which then allows you to enable DMA disk, etc.

Hi, I would make an exception for KernelEx and gdiplus.dll and unicows.dll, though.
KernelEx is one of the reasons I do still use Windows 98SE, at all.
It lifts Windows 9x up to the level of XP or Vista in terms of application compatibility, roughly.
Without it, most slightly more modern utilities wouldn't work anymore.
Things like PDF readers, picture viewers, ZIP programs and so on.
Since Win32/x86 exe development ended with Windows 10, anyway, there's nolonger a moving target for KernelEx, also.
And since recent versions do patch Windows in memory, KernelEx doesn't do harm to system files. It can also be disabled, if needed.