Software Update: Microsoft Windows 98SE SP 1.5

Several updates are available for Windows 98SE through the Windows Update service, but Microsoft has never baked a proper Service Pack for it. Alper Coskun from Turkey jumped into this hole and created an unofficial service pack. Sitting in this next to a mountain hotfixes also some nice extras and various tweaks, such as the possibility to use more than 512MB memory and a 256 color tray. With the update you also get defrag and scandisk from Windows Me, which are significantly better and faster than the Windows 98 variant.

The new 1.5 update is only available in the English† Czech and Chinese available, and contains only system updates. Important updates such as DirectX, Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer still have to be pulled through Microsoft. This download is free, but if you’re so happy with it, you might be able to get something from Amazon wish list give a present. The changelog looks like this:

What’s New in 1.5?

• 4 new hot fixes.
• Adaptec ASPI 4.60 drivers.
• General USB Mass Storage Device support.
• Supports 98lite 4.7 Chubby and Overweight.
• Visual Basic 6.0 SP6 runtime library.
• Visual C++ 6.0 SP6 runtime libraries.
• Updates JET 3.5 files to JET 3.5 SP3.
• Supports custom “Program Files” directory.
• Some additional tweaks.
• Some major bugs are fixed. [break]Finally, we can inform you that Alper Coskun is also working on an unofficial Service Pack for Windows Mebut this is a work-in-progress for now.