Warning: Found a bug in Windows 98 that freezes the whole system if you open 3 video players at once

I was messing with my old Compaq Presario from 1999 and tried to run QuickTime, RealPlayer, and Windows Media Player at the same time. The screen went black and I had to hold the power button to shut it down. Has anyone else hit this limit or found a workaround without upgrading?

3 comments

3 Comments

shah.shane25d ago

Oh man, is that the exact same hardware I had? My old Compaq Armada laptop with Windows 98 would lock up if I even tried to run two video players side by side. I remember once I had QuickTime playing a trailer and then opened up RealPlayer for a music video and the whole thing froze solid. Had to do the same power button hold down trick. I think the old graphics drivers just couldn't handle the memory load from multiple video decoders fighting for resources back then. Maybe try closing everything else first, like all the background tray icons, before you fire up the third player. Also turning off hardware acceleration in each player helped me a little but it still wasn't perfect.

troy_gibson4325d ago

Geez, are we really acting like a couple video players crashing Windows 98 is some kind of trauma? It's just old hardware being old hardware. I think people romanticize these little computer hiccups way too much.

ray64825d ago

Why would you want to fix it? That freeze is a feature not a bug. You're pushing a 20 year old computer way past what it was ever meant to do. Embrace the crash, it's part of the experience.