Not today, not 5 years ago, not 8 years ago.
WINDOWS ME MAX RAM INSTALL
I can take a fresh install of Windows 98, hang it on the internet, no firewall, no nat, and perform NO UPDATES, and it will not be infected by anything.
WINDOWS ME MAX RAM UPDATE
The joke was that if you took a fresh install of 2K or XP-SP0 and did your first windowsupdate session, your machine would become infected before the update was finished (this was known as "Windows Survival Time", usually around 10 to 20 minutes. Windows 98 was never vulnerable to network worms. It's because of the hundreds of vulnerabilities that XP-SP0/SP1 had that resulted in a planet-wide botnet and spam problem (we have a spam industry that won't die now directly because of XP-SP0 and SP1). It's too bad that it took 4 years before XP was secure enough for general purpose usage to be a credible replacement for windows 98. Windows 9x has many memory problems that are not publicly understood, such as the system resources limitation. I am very knowledgable about these OS - i supported them. I used to work for Microsoft supporting windows 95/98/XP. In Portuguese we have a saying (which Latin rendering is the motto of my profile): "one who doesn't hamper helps more". All this has happened in the last 4-years or so, and your own words make it clear you've not been interested in following them up. The number of users know to run 9x/ME stably with > 1 GiB RAM grows steadly with passing time, even if the total user number dwindles much faster (but those that remain using this OS-family do so because they love it). The RAM limitation and the 48-bit limitations are fully solved and the Resources issue is very much under control, by now. Moreover, people here have, along the years, solved most of the problems of 9x/ME well enough for it to allow a very good level of usability. NT wars, and we're *really* tired of them by now. To come here, not to offer any help, but, instead, just to tell the OP he/she ought to move on to a NT-family OS, with all due respect, is not welcome at all. Gosh, no matter how knowledgeable about 9x/ME you may be, I've never seen you around this forum offering support. After years troubleshooting these OS i would never touch them. 90% of these people could afford a new pc, they were just too cheap. When i worked for M$ i would get calls all the time from people that had a 10 year old computer trying to run the latest OS. To help better answer his/her question, you should read around the 9x forums a bit - Day-to-day running Win 9x/ME with more than 1 GiB RAM. Who's to say what's better for the original poster's circumstances and requirements? mst3kpimp didn't ask about the shortcomings of one OS compared to another. Windows 95 and later have a fatal design flaw with how memory is used that doesnt exist in windows xp or later. There are patches and "workarounds" for this, but youd be better of upgrading to a newer OS that was designed for this. Windows 98 was never tested or designed for more than 512mb of ram. For computers using less than 512MB of RAM, "MaxFileCache" also should be decreased. If "AGP Aperture" is set at maximum or very high in the BIOS settings, "MaxFileCache" should be decreased. If "AGP Aperture" is set at minimum or very low in the BIOS settings (or disabled in Windows), "MaxFileCache" can be increased. Memory that Windows uses for "MaxFileCache" is also used by AGP video (how much depends on the system bios settings of "AGP Aperture"). If the "MaxFileCache" is absent or set too high, Windows may create such a large cache, that memory management problems may start to occur, especially for computers using more than 512MB of RAM. When you open and then close programs on your computer, Windows 98SE will save or cache the closed programs in memory, up to the "MaxFileCache" entry (making reloading faster for these previously closed programs). For example, my 98SE computer is set at "MaxFileCache=457216". "MaxFileCache=393216" is a fairly safe setting for most 98SE computers, but may not be optimum. If so, by installing SP 2.1a, you won't have to modify the "system.ini" file manually. I also recall that SP 2.1a creates or modifies the MaxFileCache entry in the "system.ini" file. So I recommend installation of SP 2.1a first, whether or not you install SP 3(beta 4). The "Unofficial Service Pack 3 (beta 4)" may or may not include the same tweaks.
![windows me max ram windows me max ram](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/00/Windows98.png)
My recollection is that "Windows 98 SE Service Pack 2.1a" includes a number of 98SE tweaks, such as replacing the "defrag.exe" file from Windows 98SE with the updated "defrag.exe" from Windows ME.