• Re: Win9x/me security vs NT

    From Virus Guy@1:396/4 to All on Sun Sep 16 10:04:33 2018
    From: Virus Guy <Virus@Guy.C0M>

    Shadow wrote:

    Yes, I still primarily use win-98 on two systems, one of which (the one >>I'm posting this from) has 2 gb of ram and several 1TB sata hard drives.


    I seem to remember that win 98 could only address up to 64MB
    of RAM. That was one of the reasons I switched to XP in 2006 or so.

    Windows 98 se, out of the box, can handle 512 mb of ram. In fact, when installing 98se unless you modify some of the installation files the
    system must not have more than 512 mb of ram. Once installed, and some
    vcache settings are changed, the hard upper limit in terms of installed
    ram is something like 1.195 mb of ram (something that can be achieved
    with creative use of a ram drive that consumes some system ram to limit
    what is "visible" to win-98). Most situations involving a Pentium-4
    based motherboard (socket 478 or 775) should have no problems running
    win-98 with 1 gb of installed ram and that is indeed very useful
    compared to the more anemic 64 - 256 mb amounts of ram that most people
    think is suitable for win-98.

    Quite a while ago a trivial hack was discovered to VMM32.VXD and VMM.VXD
    files that allows win-98 to see and use up to at least 3 and maybe all 4
    gb of installed ram. Above 2 gb you might have problems with some motherboards and VGA display ram (something about the amount of ram on
    the video card and/or the bios video apperture size setting).

    It would have been very common back in 2005 - 2007 time-frame to see
    win-98 installed on a (at the time) new or current motherboard with at
    least 512 mb of ram.

    But in terms of internet security and exposing a system to remote
    exploit code, the NT line fell far short of being as invulnerable to
    such exploit paths as 9x/me was, and the Secunia numbers posted above
    are perfect examples of that.


    Nevertheless, I'm still going to use XP. Have not used a
    resident AV for more or less 5 years now.

    And likewise I have not used an AV program on my win-98 systems since
    probably 2008.

    A very large number of softwares no longer work on 98.

    A surprisingly large assortment of older versions of current software
    runs just fine on win-98, aided by a kernel compatibility layer known as "KernelEx" that was developed maybe 10 years ago and contines to be
    enhanced today. And there is a similar project for XP I believe.
    --- NewsGate v1.0 gamma 2
    * Origin: News Gate @ Net396 -Huntsville, AL - USA (1:396/4)
  • From Diesel@1:396/4 to All on Sat Oct 27 04:02:13 2018
    From: Diesel <me@privacy.net>

    Virus Guy <Virus@Guy.C0M> news:pnmqvg$ihd$1@news.mixmin.net Mon, 17
    Sep 2018 00:04:33 GMT in alt.comp.virus, wrote:

    Windows 98 se, out of the box, can handle 512 mb of ram. In fact,
    when installing 98se unless you modify some of the installation
    files the system must not have more than 512 mb of ram. Once
    installed, and some vcache settings are changed, the hard upper
    limit in terms of installed ram is something like 1.195 mb of ram
    (something that can be achieved with creative use of a ram drive
    that consumes some system ram to limit what is "visible" to
    win-98). Most situations involving a Pentium-4 based motherboard
    (socket 478 or 775) should have no problems running win-98 with 1
    gb of installed ram and that is indeed very useful compared to the
    more anemic 64 - 256 mb amounts of ram that most people think is
    suitable for win-98.

    Putting windows 9x on a pentium 4 class (or better) machine is a
    waste of hardware; granted, older hardware, but a waste none the
    less. Windows 9x won't take advantage of it.

    Quite a while ago a trivial hack was discovered to VMM32.VXD and
    VMM.VXD files that allows win-98 to see and use up to at least 3
    and maybe all 4 gb of installed ram. Above 2 gb you might have
    problems with some motherboards and VGA display ram (something
    about the amount of ram on the video card and/or the bios video
    apperture size setting).

    That's an unstable modification, too. You won't use all 4gb of ram on
    windows 9x, hacked vmm or not. 32bit editions of XP won't even use
    all 4gigs.

    It would have been very common back in 2005 - 2007 time-frame to
    see win-98 installed on a (at the time) new or current motherboard
    with at least 512 mb of ram.

    Yep.

    And likewise I have not used an AV program on my win-98 systems
    since probably 2008.

    The best AV is the gray matter between your ears. That being said,
    your windows 9x machine is only a matter of flipping a few things
    around in some source code and recompiling away from being 0wned by a
    virus modern AV shouldn't (but I make no promises, they had problems
    before and I'm not sure they resolved all of them) have a problem
    with removing for you. Unlike simple trojans and other things you
    know as malware, this would be real and thus, not a joke or something
    to play around with.

    I'm certain you don't have the expertise to study a working one
    without getting your system infected in the process.

    A surprisingly large assortment of older versions of current
    software runs just fine on win-98, aided by a kernel compatibility
    layer known as "KernelEx" that was developed maybe 10 years ago
    and contines to be enhanced today. And there is a similar project
    for XP I believe.

    Another series of mods and patches.




    --
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    --- NewsGate v1.0 gamma 2
    * Origin: News Gate @ Net396 -Huntsville, AL - USA (1:396/4)