Where can I get Windows 98 or above

[mycatis]

preferably free or very cheap? My son just got a computer for free from my sister (no internet allowed of course lol) and it has windows 95 on it. I cant put my windows xp on it cause it wont jump that far (if you know what I mean) But it can upgrade from 98 to xp apparantly. Thanks

[Mobius1]

Well, legally speaking, you can't put your WindowsXP on it anyway. If you've got XP, then you have a license to run it on one machine, so if you then install it and run it on another concurrently, you're breaking the license agreement and thus, the law.

Besides which, you could just buy WindowsXP full version and install it onto the machine, cutting out the need to install 98 on it first. This might sound expensive, but it's less than you might think. For instance, I bought a brand new, official OEM copy of WindowsXP Home Edition for just over �50 including delivery, instead of the �90+ it costs for the retail version. Look online for OEM deals and you'll get it cheap (though it won't come in a box).

Having said that though - a PC running Windows 95 might not even be up to the task of running XP. If you want to run XP well, even just for basic things, you'll want at least a 700Mhz CPU and 256MB of RAM. It'll work if you meet the requirements, but how well it'll work is another story entirely.

[mycatis]

Cheers. Well if it won't work properly with xp (cause it's a pretty old computer) then I will just put 98 on it. He needs 98 for his games

[fo3nix]

see if you can get hold of a copy (legally I mean) of windows 2000. will work with the games for 98, and can usually be seen to run more smoothly than 98 (on the same hardware).

[tomd]

I'd agree with fox - if the computer is too old for XP, Windows 2000 is usually the best bet. It has alot of the new features of XP (auto install of USB devices, etc) but is much more stable than Windows 95/98, and much lighter on the hardware than XP.