The History of Windows 98

Echoes of an Explosion

Following the release of Windows 95, Microsoft was in an amazing market position. IBM was quickly declining, and Microsoft had escaped declining with them having abandoned OS/2 in favor of Windows and NT. Windows, an OS that had nearly been killed off more than once, was now the undisputed champion of desktop computing. On Windows, Microsoft Office was competing and winning against all challengers, Internet Explorer was quickly gaining market share against Netscape, and Microsoft’s development tools were clawing back market share from Borland. Windows 95 OSR2 brought IE3 (and later IE4), FAT32, and USB support to the platform, and Microsoft was looking forward to a release that would integrate all of this new technology more cleanly while bringing some other needed improvements. This new version was codenamed Memphis.

Jim Allchin was the senior vice president of US business systems management. In the October 1997 issue of BYTE, he stated being interested in networking, simplifying the Control Panel, and making the system a bit more automated. He was interested more in making quality improvements to the operating system than he was in adding new features.

The lack of significant new user-facing features certainly worked against Memphis in the trade press. As the launch date got closer, John Montgomery wrote in the June 1998 issue of BYTE:

… possibly the biggest drawback, is that there really isn't an absolutely compelling feature that Windows 98 offers. If you didn't find a reason to upgrade from Windows 3.x to Windows 95, Windows 98 isn't going to lure you, either. And if you have a stable Windows 95 system, Windows 98 offers little except support for some new hardware that really isn't making a big impact on corporations yet.

Windows 95’s version number was 4.0, the new system would be 4.10. The first developer release of Memphis was in January of 1997, followed by the first alpha release (build number of 1387) on the 7th of February in 1997. The first build that allowed upgrades from Win3x was 1602 on the 3rd of October in 1997, and that was considered beta 2.1. These were followed by Release Candidate 0 on the 16th of February in 1998, and the final beta on the 9th of May in 1998. These five releases meant that Montgomery wasn’t speaking without knowledge of the system; it having been made available to the tech enthusiasts of the world some time prior with multiple builds. Windows 98 was shaping up to be rather similar to Windows 95, and Microsoft’s versioning of Windows 4.10 certainly makes sense. Yet, Windows 98 wasn’t without important enhancements and changes.

Hinting at the future of the operating system family, Windows 98 shipped with Windows Driver Model compatibility. This was a notable improvement over the VxD driver model that debuted in Microsoft Windows 2.0 for 386. This driver change allowed for the introduction of Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) in Windows 98. If Windows were using VxDs instead of WDM, this would disable things like system hibernation, it would reduce performance of PnP devices, and even affect things like audio sample rates and mixing. While it took time for WDM to become popular with device makers who wanted to maintain compatibility with Win16 and Win95, it did slowly gain support. This kernel change made the later Windows transitions much easier than they’d otherwise have been.

As with nearly all operating system releases, hardware support was expanded. USB support in Windows 98 was much improved. USB hub support, imaging support, and audio support were all introduced or improved. More IDE and SCSI controllers and drives were supported, and AGP support was integrated. DVD, STI, and multimonitor support all debuted in Win98. For gamers, Windows 98 shipped with DirectX 5.2.

Networking was dramatically improved in Windows 98 when compared to 95. I won’t cover every single change, but the most visible changes were in Winsock 2 support, SMB signing support, DHCP performance, NDIS 5.0 (think of things like Ethernet, FDDI, ATM, ISDN), and Internet Connection Sharing.

These driver changes did result in one rather funny incident. Chris Capossela was on stage with BillG unveiling Windows 98 from the Spring COMDEX in Chicago on the 20th of April in 1998. The hope was to demonstrate the expanded Plug and Play support of the OS, and more specifically the dynamic loading of device drivers. Plugging in a scanner, Windows 98 crashed with a BSOD to the apparent amusement of both the presenters and the audience. To the credit of both men, they appeared to handle the extremely public failure with more class than I can imagine for myself.

Windows 98 was released to manufacturing on the 15th of May in 1998 and was generally available on store shelves on the 25th of June in 1998. In the first four days, Windows 98 sold about five hundred thirty thousand copies at retail. This is a notable decline from the staggering success of Windows 95, but 98 didn’t have the same level of promotion, and it wasn’t as massive a change. Yet, this didn’t stop some retailers and some customers from attempting to relive the magic of the Windows 95 launch. There were still lines for midnight releases, and there were still some launch events. The AP Archive has one such event chronicled:

Windows 98 required a minimum of a 486DX2 CPU clocked at 66MHz, 16MB of RAM, at least 500MB of free HDD space, VGA, CDROM or 1.44MB three and half inch floppy disk drive, and a mouse was strongly recommended. Notably, a Pentium with 24MB of RAM was officially recommended and from several University IT departments (via the WayBackMachine), I’ve seen recommended system requirements as a Pentium class CPU with 32MB of RAM. Given the popularity of Windows, it wasn’t long before folks figured out that there was a switch parameter for the installer that would bypass these requirements. Launching SETUP.EXE and appending the /nm flag would bypass the requirement check allowing one to install Windows 98 on an 80386 with as little as 4MB of RAM. If one were to remove any optional components, the total installed size of Win98 would be as small as 120MB. Naturally, this wouldn’t be the best experience, hence the higher recommendations.

Windows 98 was followed by Windows 98 Second Edition which was released on the 5th of May in 1999. While this was largely a bug fix release, it did include several enhancements. IE4 was replaced by IE5, FireWire support was added, SBP-2 support was added (USB mass storage), DirectX 6.1 was added, and WDM support for both audio devices and modems was greatly improved. Windows 98SE also deprecated support for the WinG API in favor of DirectX, and RealPlayer 4 which was included in the original release was replaced by Windows Media Player.

Windows98 boot splash

Windows 98 setup showing the date/time settings

Windows 98 setup in the most time consuming step

Windows 98SE first boot desktop

At this time in Microsoft’s history, the Windows team operated in a way that is familiar to many in the software industry today. One team would focus on the current product while another focused on the next product. So, the team working on shipping Windows 98 was not the same team that was focused on the next Windows release. Developer time wasn’t split, and the future was always in focus. What is fascinating to me given that structure is that each release contained within it extremely important bits laying the foundations of the next iteration while maintaining compatibility with the last. In Windows 98, we see the driver model doing this most explicitly. Older Windows drivers were still usable, but the future driver model was present. This gave hardware manufacturers time to implement the newer driver model in preparation for things to come.

From Getty images, a man in Tokyo looking at a copy of Windows 98

Microsoft had changed Western culture in a profound way with Windows 95, and the market seemed to crave more of that. While the tech press wasn’t as impressed with Windows 98 as they had been with 95, this was still an important release for the industry. Unfortunately, it would seem that few people realized this at the time. Perhaps, that is the lasting legacy of Windows 98. While this release wasn’t revolutionary in any major respect, it prepared the market for things to come.

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On a side note, I now have readers from many of the companies whose history I cover, and many of you were present for time periods I cover. A few of you are mentioned by name in my articles. All corrections to the record are welcome, feel free to leave a comment.