Windows 98 - Upgradeability

Upgradeability

Several components of the Windows 98 original release and Windows 98 Second Edition, can be updated to newer versions. They include:

  • Internet Explorer 6 SP1 and Outlook Express 6 SP1
  • Windows Media Format Runtime and Windows Media Player 9 Series on Windows 98 SE and Windows Media Player 7.1 on Windows 98.
  • Windows Media Encoder 7.1 and Windows Media 8 Encoding Utility
  • DirectX 9.0c
  • MSN Messenger 7.0
  • Significant features from newer Microsoft operating systems can be installed on Windows 98. Chief among them are NET Framework versions 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0, Visual C++ 2005 runtime, Windows Installer 2.0, GDI+ redistributable library, Remote Desktop Connection client 5.1 and the Text Services Framework.
  • Several other components such as MSXML 3.0 SP7, Microsoft Agent 2.0, NetMeeting 3.01, MSAA 2.0, ActiveSync 3.8, WSH 5.6, Microsoft Data Access Components 2.81 SP1, WMI 1.5 and Speech API 4.0.
  • Office XP is the last version of Microsoft Office to be compatible with Windows 98.
  • Although Windows 98 does not fully support Unicode, certain Unicode applications can run by installing the Microsoft Layer for Unicode.
  • KernelEx (independent from Microsoft) allows several newer applications like Firefox 8.0 to run

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