Audacity Forum

Have you guys been able to make audacity work with windows 98? It's running pretty slow for me.

What is the real question.
You ask about making it run on 98
Then you say it *is* running on 98.

I use it on win98 just fine.
There is an older version of audacity that was the last one for win98.
Newer ones may or may not work right.
I would have to go look at the win98 pc to see which version.

IMplied question: Win 98 is slow how to speed it up.
my win98 pcs are faster than my xp machines.
why?????????????
how ????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I never connect win98 to the internet.
So I stripped out *ALL* the time wasters.
Ripped out norton and all antivirus etc.

also lots of win options need to be turned off eg autoindexing.
dont run any other programs at the same time.
yada yada
the usual tips that you would do for any pc when recording music.
and win 98 will do just fine

clean up your 98 pc and it will scream while it flies.

grillsman wrote:Have you guys been able to make audacity work with windows 98? It's running pretty slow for me.

Yes I've used Audacity with Win 98, but the last time was about 8 years ago.
As far as I remember it ran OK.
What specification is the computer and why are you using Windows 98?

Windows 98 does not have Norton or anti-virus unless someone has previously installed them, and the file index service was introduced in Windows 2000 and later in Windows XP but was not in Windows 98. However Windows 98 uses FAT32 file system which is very prone to slowing down when the disk becomes fragmented so the Defrag utility should be regularly used to reduce file fragmentation on the hard drive (more information http://support.microsoft.com/kb/186171 )

Audacity 1.2.6 suppports Windows 98, and a Beta version for Windows 98 was re-introduced with 1.3.12:
http://audacityteam.org/download/beta_windows#recdown

1.3.12 works quite well under Win98 SE for me with a 1.6 GHz machine and 512 MB RAM (you can't have more ram than that on Win 98 unless you are prepared to work around a file cache bug).

Boot into Windows 98 and then launch Audacity and don't run any other programs at the same time. Win 98 is terrible at reallocating memory that's no longer used, e.g. if you had a program open or a big file in a program and then close the file or program. Sometimes RAM management tools can help here by forcing RAM to be freed up when it drops below a particular threshold.

Win98 boots in 20 seconds flat for me, if I don't launch any extra programs at start up.



Gale

steve wrote:

grillsman wrote:Have you guys been able to make audacity work with windows 98? It's running pretty slow for me.

...

Windows 98 does not have Norton or anti-virus unless someone has previously installed them, and the file index service was introduced in Windows 2000 and later in Windows XP but was not in Windows 98.)

I had indexing problems (since v3.1) with win deciding to interrupt my work and do its thing while I waited.
Maybe they took it out for a while.
There are always a lot of automatic things going on that you dont need or want for audio.

I used audacity on 98 a few weeks ago.
Runs fine. Just ordinary middle of the road 98 pc.
You may not be able to run the latest versions.

Don't know where it came from but one of my 98 pcs did have norton.
I may have installed it instead of it being part of the crapware.
It was a long time ago. Ripped it out when I decided not to use that one on the internet and dedicate it to applications.

Taht being said, once I killed it on the 98 pc I could run photoshop and other programs faster than on my xp machine that does have all the antivirus firewall yada yada stuff.

Slow is relative. Want faster then buy a used xp pro box (dirt cheap now) and rip out all the crapware and use it only for audio.

Gale Andrews wrote:Audacity 1.2.6 suppports Windows 98, and a Beta version for Windows 98 was re-introduced with 1.3.12:

Generally I recommend using Audacity 1.3.12 because of its additional features and other enhancements, but if you are using an old machine you may find that the old 1.2.6 version runs a bit quicker.
There's no harm in trying both versions (by default they install in different directories) and then use whichever suits you better.

A couple of points to note:
* Audacity 1.2.x cannot open projects that have been saved by Audacity 1.3.x
* You cannot run both versions at the same time.