Expert: Karl Zick - 6/17/2009

Question
I recently bought a older P3 computer. The person who sold
it to me put on an unauthorized version of XP, so when I ran
it I would get a notice that in so many days it had to be
registered. The person didn’t have the numbers to do it so I
installed a copy of Win.98 which copied over XP. Now I have
some questions. The modem in it worked when I had XP but
after installing Win98 it either couldn’t find it or it
wasn’t working for who knows why. If I bought an upgrade to
Vista, would that help me get online by making my modem work
again? I was told that Win98 won’t even get online anymore,
is that true? Plus, my color dropped down to 16 colors and
offers no other setting to improve it. Is that just because
it’s Win98? Can you help me out?
Thanks
Rob


Answer
Hi Rob,

All you need are Win 98 `drivers' for your modem and video card (and sound card if it quit working also).  A driver is just a little operating system utility program that interfaces the `device' with your system.

If you know the brand and model of your devices, you can usually find a driver on the manufacturers web site.  If you do not, you may have to replace them with a device that has a Win 98 driver with it.