h_nu said:
I use Kerio 2.1.5 on Win98 SE. Not only does it work but it's light on memory/CPU usage so if you have an older machine it won't slow you down too much.
Excellent point because any machine running 9x probably doesn't have enough memory to comfortably run XP (XP runs fine on machines as slow as 400MHz but needs
at least 256MB of memory; 512 is better).
I'd suggest the much faster/lighter Win95 shell in 98 or ME (same thing 98Lite does, only you can easily switch back and forth between shells as you please-now that disk space is so cheap). You only need a boot floppy to replace these files with their 95 equivalents:
Explorer.exe (Windows directory)
ComDlg32.dll (WindowsSystem directory)
Shell32.dll (WindowsSystem directory)
Notepad.exe (Windows directory)
Wordpad.exe (Windows directory)
Works perfectly in 98, but in ME minor things like the help system and WindowsUpdate do not work when using the 95 shell. Since there will no longer be any new updates, just update it then switch to the 95 shell
ME with the 95 shell is fantastically stable and uses the more modern WDM driver base with improved support for USB, FAT32 and easier networking including ICS.
As mentioned, NAT is great by itself, and SPI is a fine addition if you take the time to setup rules. But unlike a hardware firewall, a good software one will prevent outbound traffic too. I used Zonealarm 2.6.88 and then Kerio 2.15 on all my 9x machines and liked them both.