Windows 98 Resources

This isn’t comprehensive per se, but it should suit most people’s tastes.

This page is a continual work-in-progress!
Last updated 20 January 2023, 20:10 EST

Software & drivers

Selected period-accurate (i.e. ≈2002) programs and the like for Windows 98. Some larger pieces of software (namely office suites) are contained on somewhat large ISO files and necessitate something like Daemon Tools to be mounted/read.

Compatibility & bugfixes

File	Description	Download
Microsoft Layer for Unicode	Adds Unicode support to a lot of stuff.	[1] [2] {3}
2007 Daylight Savings Update	Updates Daylight Savings time zone information so that clocks change at the right time, assuming DST rules for your place of residence haven’t changed since 2007.	[1] {2}
KernelEx 4.5.2	Compatibility layer for Windows 2000/XP programs.	[1] {2}
Windows Installer	Enable execution of Windows Installer (MSI) files.	[1] {2}
EZ-Drive 8.01W	Enable Logical Block Addressing, i.e. allow accessing disk drives over 503 MiB on BIOSes without direct support for said drives.	[1] {2}

Drivers

Following are some rather generic drivers applicable to a wide range of and/or particularly common hardware. Keeping a respectable nonexhaustive list of Win98-era/-compatible drivers would fill up my server, though I do have some rather specific drivers over on my Compaq Presario 4112 page that might apply to you.

File	Description	Download
Maximus Decim v3.60	Unofficial native USB 1.0 drivers, namely for mass file storage.	{1} {2}
USB20DRV	Unofficial USB 2.0 drivers. Requires the above NUSB.	[1] {2}
Sound Blaster Live! Driver Pack	Drivers for the titular sound card.	[1] {2}

Internet access

File	Description	Download
Internet Explorer 6 SP1	The last version of IE to run on Win98. Still horribly outdated, but required for some newer software and for the unofficial SP3.	[1] {2}
Netscape Navigator 4.80	Final Communicator-based release of the once-titan web browser.	{1}
America Online 7.0	Shockingly still signs on via TCP/IP if you have an AOL account (I’ve kept mine for fifteen years and counting).	{1}
RetroZilla 2.2	Modern Gecko 1.8.1 fork with TLS 1.2 support, enabling connection to modern HTTPS sites. Still has the rendering capability of Firefox 3, however.	[1] {2}
MSN Messenger 5.0 (Escargot)	Patched version designed to operate with Escargot.chat, a contemporary implementation of MSNP services.	[1]

Document readers, word processors & office suites

File	Description	Download
Microsoft Office XP	Latest version of Microsoft Office suite to work on Win98. Still period-accurate, however (2001).	[1] {2}
Corel WordPerfect Suite 8	Selected version of Corel WordPerfect that I grew up using, though v9 works as well.	[1] [2] {3}
Microsoft Works 7.0	2002 edition of Microsoft Works, a scaled-down office suite offered as a cheaper alternative to Office.	[1] {2}
Acrobat Reader 5.0.5	Period-accurate version of Adobe Acrobat for reading PDF files.	{1}

Utilities

File	Description	Download
Daemon Tools	Enable mounting of ISO images.	[1] {2}
TCP Optimizer	Period-accurate program for bringing download speeds into the twenty-first century.	[1] {2}
TweakUI	Fine-tune a bunch of little things about the Windows UI.	[1] {2}
NetTime 3.14	Keep your computer synchronised with an Internet time server.	[1] {2}

Multimedia

File	Description	Download
RealPlayer 6	Plays Real Media files and streams Internet radio (if that’s even a thing any more).	{1}
QuickTime Player 5.05	Plays QuickTime files and is seemingly necessary for every non-Flash Y2K-era online game.	{1}
Macromedia Flash 5.5	Good ol’ Flash Player.	{1}

Screen savers & other novelties

File	Description	Download
After Dark 4.0 Deluxe	A rather popular screen saver compilation by Berkley.	[1] [2] {3}
Microsoft Plus! 98	A bunch of multimedia themes, power toys and other goodies straight from Microsoft.	[1] {2}

Stuff for my own nostalgic purposes

File	Description	Download
Post-it Software Notes (Lite)	I had a floppy of this once upon a time, but it seems to have been entirely lost. But yeah, it’s just proto-Sticky Notes.	[1] {2}
Rand McNally Route Planner 1.1	Pretty decent atlas of the United States. I loved playing around on this as a kid, for some reason.	[1] {2}