Web integration and shell enhancements The first release of Windows 98 included Internet Explorer 4.01 SP1. This was updated to 5.0 in the Second Edition. Besides Internet Explorer, many other Internet companion applications are included such as
Outlook Express,
Windows Address Book,
FrontPage Express,
Microsoft Chat,
Personal Web Server and a Web Publishing Wizard, and
NetShow.
NetMeeting allows multiple users to hold conference calls and work with each other on a document. The Windows 98
shell is web-integrated; it contains deskbands,
Active Desktop,
Channels, ability to minimize foreground windows by clicking their button on the taskbar, single-click launching, Back and Forward navigation buttons, folder infotips and Web view in folders, and folder customization through
HTML-based templates. The taskbar supports customizable toolbars designed to speed up access to the Web or the user's desktop; these toolbars include an Address Bar and
Quick Launch. With the Address Bar, the user accesses the Web by typing in a URL, and Quick Launch contains shortcuts or buttons that perform system functions such as switching between windows and the desktop with the Show Desktop button. Another feature of this new shell is that
dialog boxes show up in the Alt-Tab sequence. Windows 98 also integrates shell enhancements such as
LiteStep, themes and other features from
Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 such as
DriveSpace 3, Compression Agent, Dial-Up Networking Server, Dial-Up Scripting Tool and
Task Scheduler. Windows 98 had its own separately purchasable Plus! pack, called
Plus! 98. Title bars of windows and dialog boxes support two-color gradients, a feature ported from and refined from
Microsoft Office 95. Windows menus and tooltips support slide animation. Windows Explorer in Windows 98, as in Windows 95, converts all-uppercase filenames to
sentence case for readability purposes; however, it also provides an option
Allow all uppercase names to display them in their original case. Windows Explorer includes support for compressed
CAB files. The
Quick Res and
Telephony Location Manager Windows 95 PowerToys are integrated into the core operating system.
Improvements to hardware support Windows Driver Model -specific kernel support functions. Support for WDM audio enables digital mixing, routing and processing of simultaneous audio streams, and
kernel streaming with high-quality
sample rate conversion on Windows 98. WDM Audio allows for software emulation of legacy hardware to support MS-DOS games,
DirectSound support, and
MIDI wavetable synthesis. The Windows 95 11-device limitation for MIDI devices is eliminated. A Microsoft
GS Wavetable Synthesizer licensed from
Roland shipped with Windows 98 for WDM audio drivers. Windows 98 supports digital playback of
audio CDs, and the Second Edition improves WDM audio support by adding DirectSound
hardware mixing and DirectSound 3D hardware abstraction,
DirectMusic kernel support,
KMixer sample-rate conversion for capture streams, and multichannel audio support. All audio is sampled by the Kernel Mixer to a fixed sampling rate, which may result in some audio getting upsampled or downsampled and having a high latency, except when using Kernel Streaming or third-party audio paths like
ASIO which allow unmixed audio streams and lower latency. Windows 98 also includes a WDM streaming
class driver (
Stream.sys) to address real time multimedia data stream processing requirements and a WDM kernel-mode video transport for enhanced video playback and capture. Windows Driver Model also includes
Broadcast Driver Architecture, the backbone for TV technologies support in Windows.
WebTV for Windows utilized BDA to allow viewing television on the computer if a compatible
TV tuner card is installed. TV listings could be updated from the Internet and WaveTop Data Broadcasting allowed extra data about broadcasts to be received via regular television signals using an antenna or cable, by embedding data streams into the
vertical blanking interval portion of existing broadcast television signals.
Other device support improvements Windows 98 had more robust USB support than Windows 95, which only had support in OEM versions OSR2.1 and later. Windows 98 supports
USB hubs, USB scanners and imaging class devices. Windows 98 also introduced built-in support for some
USB Human Interface Device class (USB HID) and PID class devices such as USB mice, keyboards, force feedback joysticks etc. including additional keyboard functions through a certain number of Consumer Page HID controls. Windows 98 also supports
3DNow!,
SSE, and
Extended CPUID (ECPUID with
ACPI). Windows 98 introduced
ACPI 1.0 support which enabled
Standby and
Hibernate states. However, hibernation support was extremely limited and vendor-specific. Hibernation was only available if compatible (PnP) hardware and
BIOS are present, and the hardware manufacturer or OEM supplied ACPI-compatible drivers. However, there are hibernation issues with the
FAT32 file system, There is integrated
Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) support (although the USB Supplement to Windows 95 OSR2 and later releases of Windows 95 did have AGP support). Windows 98 has built-in DVD support and
UDF 1.02 read support. Windows 98 also integrated the
UDMA support. The Still imaging architecture (STI) with
TWAIN support was introduced for scanners and cameras and Image Color Management 2.0 for devices to perform
color space transformations. Multiple monitor support allows using up to nine multiple monitors on a single PC, with the feature requiring one
PCI graphics adapter per monitor. Windows 98 shipped with
DirectX 5.2, which notably included
DirectShow. Windows 98 Second Edition would later ship with DirectX 6.1.
Networking enhancements Windows 98 networking enhancements to
TCP/IP include built-in support for
Winsock 2,
SMB signing, a new IP Helper API,
Automatic Private IP Addressing (also known as link-local addressing),
IP multicasting, and performance enhancements for high-speed high bandwidth networks.
Multihoming support with TCP/IP is improved and includes
RIP listener support. The
DHCP client has been enhanced to include address assignment conflict detection and longer timeout intervals.
NetBT configuration in the
WINS client has been improved to continue persistently querying multiple WINS servers if it failed to establish the initial session until all of the WINS servers specified have been queried or a connection is established.
Network Driver Interface Specification 4 support means Windows 98 can support a wide range of network media, including
Ethernet,
Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI),
Token Ring,
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM),
ISDN,
wide area networks,
X.25, and
Frame Relay. Additional features include NDIS power management, support for
quality of service,
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and support for a single
INF file format across all Windows versions. Windows 98 Dial-Up Networking supports
PPTP tunneling, support for ISDN adapters, multilink support, and connection-time scripting to automate non-standard login connections. Multilink channel aggregation enables users to combine all available dial-up lines to achieve higher transfer speeds.
PPP connection logs can show actual packets being passed and Windows 98 allows PPP logging per connection. The Dial-Up Networking improvements are also available in Windows 95 OSR2 and are downloadable for earlier Windows 95 releases. For networked computers that have user profiles enabled, Windows 98 introduces Microsoft Family Logon which lists all users that have been configured for that computer, enabling users to simply select their names from a list rather than having to type them in. Windows 98 supports
IrDA 3.0 which specifies both Serial Infrared Devices and Fast Infrared devices, which are capable of sending and receiving data at 4 Mbit/s. Infrared Recipient, a new application for transferring files through an infrared connection is included. The IrDA stack in Windows 98 supports networking profiles over the IrCOMM kernel-mode driver. Windows 98 also has built-in support for browsing
Distributed File System trees on
Server Message Block shares such as Windows NT servers. UPnP and NAT traversal APIs can be installed on Windows 98 by installing the
Windows XP Network Setup Wizard. An
L2TP/IPsec VPN client can also be downloaded. By installing Active Directory Client Extensions, Windows 98 can take advantage of several Windows 2000
Active Directory features.
Improvements to the system and built-in utilities Performance improvements Windows 95 introduced the 32-bit, protected-mode cache driver VCACHE (replacing SMARTDrv) to cache the most recently accessed information from the hard drive in memory, divided into chunks. However, the cache parameters needed manual tuning as it degraded performance by consuming too much memory and not releasing it quickly enough, forcing paging to occur far too early. The Windows 98 VCACHE cache size management for disk and network access, CD-ROM access and paging is more dynamic compared to Windows 95, resulting in no tuning being required for cache parameters. On the FAT32 file system, Windows 98 has a performance feature called MapCache that can run applications from the disk cache itself if the code pages of executable files are aligned/mapped on 4K boundaries, instead of copying them to virtual memory. This results in more memory being available to run applications, and lesser usage of the swap file. Windows 98 registry handling is more robust than Windows 95 to avoid corruption and there are several enhancements to eliminate limitations and improve registry performance. The Windows 95 registry key size limitation of 64 KB is gone. The registry uses less memory and has better caching.
Disk Defragmenter has been improved to rearrange program files that are frequently used to a hard disk region optimized for program start. Despite this, the quirk of the hard drive being rescanned if the contents of the hard drive had changed (denoted by the message "Drive contents changed....restarting.") is still present in this version, and remains identical to that of Windows 95. If it gets stuck on the same area too many times, the program would then ask the user to either continue scanning or give up. This quirk was removed with Windows Me's version of Disk Defragmenter, which can also work on Windows 98 or Windows 95 if it is simply copied over. Windows 98 also supports a
Fast Shutdown feature that initiates shutdown without uninitializing
device drivers. However, this can cause Windows 98 to hang instead of shutting down the computer if a buggy driver is active, so Microsoft supplied instructions for disabling the feature. Windows 98 supports write-behind caching for removable disk drives. A utility for converting
FAT16 partitions to FAT32 without formatting the partition is also included, however it is not compatible with
DriveSpace.
Other system tools A number of improvements are made to various other system tools and accessories in Windows 98. Microsoft Backup supports differential backup and
SCSI tape devices in Windows 98. Disk Cleanup, a new tool, enables users to clear their disks of unnecessary files. Cleanup locations are extensible through Disk Cleanup handlers. Disk Cleanup can be automated for regular silent cleanups. Scanreg (DOS) and ScanRegW are Registry Checker tools used to back up, restore or optimize the
Windows registry. ScanRegW tests the registry's integrity and saves a backup copy each time Windows successfully boots. The maximum number of copies could be customized by the user through "scanreg.ini" file. The restoration of a registry that causes Windows to fail to boot can only be done from DOS mode using ScanReg.
System Configuration Utility is a new system utility used to disable programs and services that are not required to run the computer. A Maintenance Wizard is included that schedules and automates
ScanDisk, Disk Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup.
Windows Script Host, with
VBScript and
JScript engines is built-in and upgradeable to version 5.6.
System File Checker checks installed versions of system files to ensure they were the same version as the one installed with Windows 98 or newer. Corrupt or older versions are replaced by the correct versions. This tool was introduced to resolve the
DLL hell issue and was replaced in Windows Me by
System File Protection. Windows 98 Setup simplifies installation, reducing the bulk of user input required. The Windows 98 Startup Disk contains generic, real-mode
ATAPI and
SCSI CD-ROM drivers that can be used instead in the event that the specific driver for a CD-ROM is unavailable. The system could be updated using Windows Update. Windows 98 includes an improved version of the
Dr. Watson utility that collects and lists comprehensive information such as running tasks, startup programs with their command line switches, system patches, kernel driver, user drivers, DOS drivers and 16-bit modules. With Dr. Watson loaded in the system tray, whenever a software fault occurs (general protection fault, hang, etc.), Dr. Watson will intercept it and indicate what software crashed and its cause. Accessibility Wizard and
Microsoft Active Accessibility 1.1 API (upgradeable to MSAA 2.0.) A new
HTML Help system with 15 Troubleshooting Wizards was introduced to replace
WinHelp. Users can configure the font in
Notepad.
Microsoft Paint supports GIF transparency.
HyperTerminal supports a TCP/IP connection method, which allows it to be used as a Telnet client.
Imaging for Windows is updated.
System Monitor—used to track the performance of hardware and software—supports output to a log file.
Miscellaneous improvements •
Telephony API (TAPI) 2.1 •
DCOM version 1.2 • Ability to list fonts by similarity determined using
PANOSE information. • Tools to automate setup, such as Batch 98 and INFInst.exe, support error-checking, gathering information automatically to create an
INF file directly from a machine's registry, customizing IE4, shell and desktop settings and adding custom drivers. • Several other
Resource Kit tools are included on the Windows 98 CD. • Windows 98 has new system event sounds for
Low Battery Alarm and
Critical Battery Alarm. • Windows 98 also introduced new and updated system sounds. The new startup sound for Windows 98 was composed by Microsoft sound engineer Ken Kato, who considered it to be a "tough act to follow", while the new shutdown sound was composed by
Stan LePard. The newly updated system sounds were created by another Microsoft sound engineer, Bill Wolford. • Windows 98 shipped with
Flash Player and
Shockwave Player preinstalled. ==Windows 98 Second Edition ==