Anti virus for Windows 98? Really?
Friday, March 30, 2012 at 6:54PM Alan W 
Dell Dimension 4100 - there's life in the old girl yetI’ve still got an old Windows 98SE machine on my network, a faithful old Dell Dimension 4100 933MHz that cost £1,500+ when new. It’s dedicated to running my Quicken 98 accounts package. Why don’t I run it in Windows XP or W7 instead? Because Quicken’s sales invoicing add-on wouldn’t work and I’d lose my customer database if I did. (I tried it!)
Recently I rebuilt the old Dell from scratch before reinstalling Quicken 98, which came complete with its own Year 2000 date rollover bug. Several patches were therefore needed (carefully stored on disks with serial numbers – they’re irreplaceable) to get it running in the 21st century. The PC hums along quietly to itself and reports and invoices are happily printed by a network printer.
Daily backups are taken on a USB Zip drive which runs under W98, and disks are stored in a fireproof box. Mindful of the Iomega Zip “Click of Death” I also back up over the network to a Synology DS211J RAID-type NAS drive. The Dell runs under the FAT file system, and is blind to the needs of NTFS so I used Paragon Software’s free NTFS file system driver for W98 to let it access my Synology NAS drive over the network. The Windows 98 PC sees the NAS drive perfectly.
Paragon Software's free NTFS Driver for Windows 98 lets the Dell access the NAS NTFS-format files over the network without a hitch.
Anti Virus for Windows 98
Another aspect is the thorny problem of running anti-virus software under Windows 98. Not surprisingly, I couldn’t find any anti-virus protection for Windows 98 anywhere… but after some trials and errors I rediscovered an old friend in my backups that seems to make “anti-virus is running” noises in W98: namely Avast.
To install Avast in Windows 98, you have to use Version 4.x (I used 4.7) which you’ll have to hunt around for if you haven’t got a backup copy. It’s not available on CNET nor from Avast any more. I had an archive backup of V4.7 which I installed in W98 pretty much without a hitch. Then it’s necessary to register for a free 12 month serial number, without which the plan falls apart.
Don’t be put off by a bug in the fill-in web form, which complained of ‘missing fields’ even though I’d filled it in properly. I tried different browsers and I gave up bitterly disappointed after half a dozen attempts, only to find the serial number cheerfully emailed to me six times about 10 minutes later! I entered this into Avast 4.7 – success! – and the software then updated itself for the latest database.
^^ Avast 4.7 installed in Windows 98, showing 27th March 2012
^^ Avast proceeded to upgrade itself to V4.8
^^ Avast 4.8 appears to update itself with the latest threats - in theory anyway
^^ The ghastly silver control panel - how to get rid of it? V4.7 shown. The database is dated 27th March [2012]
Several updates later and Avast had upgraded itself to V4.8 (watch for a green popup saying that a new version is available).
Everything looks to be in order but I’ll resist testing Avast in W98 to see if it actually traps a virus! It checks for updates and downloads the latest database every time, accompanied by a voice confirmation that says ‘virus database has been updated’. I’ve no reason to think that it’s not running properly – all the major features seem to be as I’d expect and it seems to make the right kind of noises. Hopefully this’ll continue until Avast changes the way that the registration operates, as a new registration number is needed every year.
I had some Avast skins in my archives: copy the .aswcs file to the Skins directory then double-click, they will then appear in the Skins selection list. You can disable Skins altogether in the Preferences. These all run in Windows 98. I could not find any on the web at all.
;)
Blue Panel ;)
Flat and Simple
;)
Terminal!
;)
A Vista lookalike skin for Avast 4.8, in Windows 98
As long as serial numbers are available annually, then I hope to get a few more years out of the old Windows 98 Dell yet.
(I’ll write separately about using a KVM (keyboard-video-monitor) switch, that allowed me to run this Windows 98 PC in tandem with an XP machine, sharing the same peripherals.)
- If you're lucky you can still download old version 4.* of Avast from Oldapps.com
Alan W
2017 and still working (in theory anyway)
It was time to renew the registration of the free version (4.8) which is still running under Windows 98. The program's built-in link to the Avast online registration form doesn’t work any more, so here’s the link for offline registration instead:
https://www.avast.com/registration-free-antivirus.php
A serial number for a year’s registration will be emailed to you. I fed it into Version 4.8 and (lo and behold) it worked. I could also download a database update:
;)
Registering V4.8 Avast Free Issue from an offline registration number, Windows 98, May 2017 [click to see]
;)
Downloading a 200MB update in W98/ Avast 4.8 / 2017
Just a reminder that this works in theory anyway: the program seems to be running as expected (the icon spins in the system tray), it updates itself and accepts registration updates. No, I have not tried to simulate a virus attack.
Reader Comments (2)
In 2014 I'm still using this venerable old PC to handle Quicken 98 under Windows 98. Avast 4.7 was re-installed pretty much without a hitch. The web browser (IE6) was used to register for another year at Avast.com and sure enough a registration code came through ten minutes later. The program proceeded to update itself and is now running Avast 4.8. It also fetched the latest virus database but this was a lengthy process.
I was surprised that Avast 4.8 did re-install and is clearly showing details of the current (2014) database. A lot of time needs to be granted to allow the PC to update itself, but left to its own devices a while, it did precisely that. Of course, I have no intention of testing it with a viral attack...
I can say that in 2016, it's still going strong and I recently fetched and downloaded the latest (2016) virus refinitions which appeared to go in fine. Of course, I haven't tested them with a live virus...