Hi there everyone! I'll try to be as brief as possible...

A friend of mine is trying valiantly to help an elderly lady we both know get a new printer since her old one has died. She had a dinosaur printer, of course, and was still running windows 98 (actually, she was using 95, but my friend gave her his old 98 disk he no longer uses).

Unfortunately, he said, any new printer he could get her will not work with her 98 (I have no info on that statement, as I cut my teeth mostly on XP myself), so he wants to upgrade her OS to Windows 98 SE. He told me that this is possible due to a free download from microsoft.com (which I most seriously doubt, since Microsoft has not in the past seemed the type of company to give OS's away), which he was wondering if I could find and download since I have high-speed internet.

We are all concerned with going about all this legally- no fishy downloading attempts here. As I said before, I think he was misinformed, but I did search through Microsoft pages and google, and finally decided to ask the fine folks here.

Any info is greatly appreciated, as I would like to get an answer to him soon as possible. Thank you!

-Heather

Never say the words "free" and "Microsoft" in the same sentence. That is an inherent contradiction!
Microsoft has never and will never make any OS available for download. We all know Bill better than that!
If you could find a copy for download it would be bootleg, possibly crippled somehow or virus laden.

You are right about printers though. 98SE is the minimum supported, if that.
Microsoft did release a 98SE updates cd at some time. I know this for a fact because I have it.
You might check EBay for that. I bet you can pick it up pretty cheap.

I have heard that you can install 98SE on top of 98 and it works.
Never tried it though

Actually, Microsoft supplies a lot of free stuff.

So, I'd say - "Never say "never", I know I never will."

You have to get a 98SE Upgrade disk to install on top of 98. I don't believe you are able to install the regular 98SE on top of 98. I have all the disks that Microsoft released for 98 and only used the upgraded disk for the regular 98.

There are 98SE and 98SE upgrade disks out there, E-Bay does have them.

You are not going to get anything from M$, windows 98 and ME have not been supported since July of last year.

Apparently, it's not my problem anymore. He "got someone to get it", so I wash my hands of it. Seeing as how this is all going down from one elderly person to another, I doubt he senses bootlegged-ness, but I'm not going to try to convince him, I guess.

Thanks, guys!