[andrewas]

Two choices. win98 dual booting with 2K, or win98 dual booting iwth XP pro.

ME is a disaster. A total failure. That said, it is better than win98 if you are lucky enough to get hardware it likes.

The core difference between 2K and XP isnt worth mentioning, the interface on XP is more user-friendly, but with a little work you can turn all that junk off. AFAIK there is little to choose between the two for gaming.

Both share the same problem - to gain their stability, they have to prevent programs accessing hardware at low level, enforce memory protection and several other things, all of which prevents old games running. Hence the win98 dual-boot. The win98 partition dosent have to be more than a couple of gig - most games run under XP, and those that dont tend to be smaller.