WIN98 and Virus and Trojans
Guest
Thread Starter
Join Date: May 2008
Location: Somewhere between E17487 and F75775
Age: 80
Posts: 725
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
WIN98 and Virus and Trojans
Having some work which requires the use of two computers at once, I have fired up my ancient laptop (built like a battleship and weighs as much) which has a huge disk of 10Gb (remember those days when that was considered a lot) and connected it via a plugin wifi to my system.
Works quite well for Cloud access, text only.
Problem is the anti-virius expired when I last used it seriously in 2003 and of course is no longer available for WIN98.
Anyone know of a teeny little antivirus which will run on such a small drive AND on WIN98. On the other hand, are there still things drifting about looking for a WIN98 host to nest in ?
Works quite well for Cloud access, text only.
Problem is the anti-virius expired when I last used it seriously in 2003 and of course is no longer available for WIN98.
Anyone know of a teeny little antivirus which will run on such a small drive AND on WIN98. On the other hand, are there still things drifting about looking for a WIN98 host to nest in ?
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: U.K.
Posts: 805
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Personally, I think it unlikely that there are many freshly written viruses around which will attack Win 98 as the rewards will be very few and far between. Indeed the attempts at attacking XP are probably getting less now as the virus writers are concentrating on Vista or Win 7.
I heard of an acquaintance who had a machine he dedicated to internet use only - it ran Win 95 and never had an attack at all! In those days I never needed active virus protection - I just ran housecall every few weeks: it found little and deleted what it found.
P.P.
I heard of an acquaintance who had a machine he dedicated to internet use only - it ran Win 95 and never had an attack at all! In those days I never needed active virus protection - I just ran housecall every few weeks: it found little and deleted what it found.
P.P.
Spoon PPRuNerist & Mad Inistrator
Antivirus Software for Windows XP, 98, 98se, 95, ME, NT, 2000, Vista, Windows 7 - still supports Win98. Not free, but not hugely expensive.
If you have a hardware firewall to shelter behind, you could consider going commando - but do consider Ghost (or similar) and very regular backups of any data. If you get hit, just re-ghost. An anti-malware of some kind is essential, as there is no way to avoid total admin rights for any and all users.
What is the spec. of the PC, and what is it you require it to do? I've run Win2K happily on a 1998 vintage Toshiba laptop (233MHz P2, 256MB RAM 4 GB disk) - still occasionally use it as a packet sniffer.
A small Linux distro might be a candidate - experiment with a CD-based "live" version without commitment.
SD
If you have a hardware firewall to shelter behind, you could consider going commando - but do consider Ghost (or similar) and very regular backups of any data. If you get hit, just re-ghost. An anti-malware of some kind is essential, as there is no way to avoid total admin rights for any and all users.
What is the spec. of the PC, and what is it you require it to do? I've run Win2K happily on a 1998 vintage Toshiba laptop (233MHz P2, 256MB RAM 4 GB disk) - still occasionally use it as a packet sniffer.
A small Linux distro might be a candidate - experiment with a CD-based "live" version without commitment.
SD
Guest
Thread Starter
Join Date: May 2008
Location: Somewhere between E17487 and F75775
Age: 80
Posts: 725
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Good advice, Saab. Yes I have a hardware firewall on the WiMax/WiFi system.
All my re-awoken middle-ages laptop is required to do is display documents used as sources for my website, sent to a dedicated e-mail address.
I know Linux well since my netbook uses it. I plan to build a PC next year and it will probably be the first PC in my HO not to use WIN.
All my re-awoken middle-ages laptop is required to do is display documents used as sources for my website, sent to a dedicated e-mail address.
I know Linux well since my netbook uses it. I plan to build a PC next year and it will probably be the first PC in my HO not to use WIN.
Written before seeing advice from SD posted above.
No, you won't find any current AV products for 9x. I still have AVG 7.5.557 running (537 days out of date) and it has detected Word macro viruses (confirmed by Kaspersky) in documents sent from China but I am not sure that it is worth the candle. PC Tools dropped 9x support for Spyware Doctor a few months ago.
The machine I am typing this on:
Windows 98 SE 4.10.2222 A
Space used by 98SE on drive C = 2.7GB (a fully loaded install which has been running for over 6 years ... which seems to confirm P. Pilcher's experiences with Windows 95 and supports his comments re current 9x threat levels).
Internet Explorer 6 SP1 6.0.2800.1106IS
IE6 security roll-up: Q916281
Firefox 2.0.0.20 (last available release for 9x)
Opera 10.62 (I have not tried the latest versions but would expect them to work OK)
Java jre-1_5_0_14-windows-i586-p-s.exe
Adobe Reader 6.0.5
Adobe Flash: 9.0.246.0 (Adobe KB406791), digital signatures 19th July 2009
ZoneAlarm (free firewall only) 6.1.744.001, 16th March 2006, set to the maximum levels available in the free edition.
I had to export some security certificates (VeriSign Class3) from Firefox 3 and import into Firefox 2 to resolve an error, the nature of which I have now helpfully forgotten.
ZoneAlarm stopped working at one point (an expired certificate problem???) and it was necessary to reinstall it but there was a catch ... the uninstaller wouldn't work either. The solution was to move the system clock back a few months in the BIOS, then uninstall ZA (the uninstaller now worked ... ZA clean uninstall instructions are available elsewhere on this forum), reboot and reset the clock and then finally reinstall ZoneAlarm again. I only saw this problem on some machines and think it was linked to the level of IE6 security updates.
Last recommended NVIDIA driver = 77.72 (later versions had a broken uninstaller); my version is modded (a couple of entries in the Nvagp.inf file) to support 6200A-LE.
My Acronis True Image backup files (on this particular machine) at default compression:
Windows 98SE: 1.6GB
Windows XPSP3: 4.5GB
Mandriva Powerpack 2008: 1.4GB
Mandrake 9: 0.5GB
My 98SE home theatre machines use less than 500MB of space on drive C
Money spent buying Windows 98SE: 50 GBP
Money spent buying Windows XP (various flavours): 1000 GBP
Two words send my quackometer off the scale: *proven* and *pro[fessional]*.
E&OE
IRN
No, you won't find any current AV products for 9x. I still have AVG 7.5.557 running (537 days out of date) and it has detected Word macro viruses (confirmed by Kaspersky) in documents sent from China but I am not sure that it is worth the candle. PC Tools dropped 9x support for Spyware Doctor a few months ago.
The machine I am typing this on:
Windows 98 SE 4.10.2222 A
Space used by 98SE on drive C = 2.7GB (a fully loaded install which has been running for over 6 years ... which seems to confirm P. Pilcher's experiences with Windows 95 and supports his comments re current 9x threat levels).
Internet Explorer 6 SP1 6.0.2800.1106IS
IE6 security roll-up: Q916281
Firefox 2.0.0.20 (last available release for 9x)
Opera 10.62 (I have not tried the latest versions but would expect them to work OK)
Java jre-1_5_0_14-windows-i586-p-s.exe
Adobe Reader 6.0.5
Adobe Flash: 9.0.246.0 (Adobe KB406791), digital signatures 19th July 2009
ZoneAlarm (free firewall only) 6.1.744.001, 16th March 2006, set to the maximum levels available in the free edition.
I had to export some security certificates (VeriSign Class3) from Firefox 3 and import into Firefox 2 to resolve an error, the nature of which I have now helpfully forgotten.
ZoneAlarm stopped working at one point (an expired certificate problem???) and it was necessary to reinstall it but there was a catch ... the uninstaller wouldn't work either. The solution was to move the system clock back a few months in the BIOS, then uninstall ZA (the uninstaller now worked ... ZA clean uninstall instructions are available elsewhere on this forum), reboot and reset the clock and then finally reinstall ZoneAlarm again. I only saw this problem on some machines and think it was linked to the level of IE6 security updates.
Last recommended NVIDIA driver = 77.72 (later versions had a broken uninstaller); my version is modded (a couple of entries in the Nvagp.inf file) to support 6200A-LE.
My Acronis True Image backup files (on this particular machine) at default compression:
Windows 98SE: 1.6GB
Windows XPSP3: 4.5GB
Mandriva Powerpack 2008: 1.4GB
Mandrake 9: 0.5GB
My 98SE home theatre machines use less than 500MB of space on drive C
Money spent buying Windows 98SE: 50 GBP
Money spent buying Windows XP (various flavours): 1000 GBP
Two words send my quackometer off the scale: *proven* and *pro[fessional]*.
E&OE
IRN
Last edited by In rerum natura; 19th Oct 2010 at 22:32.
