For me, could never get Windows 95 to work, one crash after another, 98SE finally got it right, but this was four years after 98 was introduced. 2000, Mellium, and Vista were bad jokes. Took them about four years to get XP working with service pack 3, AutoCad 2000 ran well and still had a parallel port for my plotter with the correct drivers.
But sure a down turn with 98SE, could run both my DOS and Windows programs on it, but completely worthless on the internet today. Windows 7, is kind of okay, runs most of my old software with Microsoft compatibility. Manage to run AutoCad 2000 on it, by installing it directly off my old hard drive, but have to hit of all things, acl1st15.dll to open it. Copied the Autodesk Shared directory to the Program x86 Common directory, leaving off other details, did not take notes, not even sure how I got here.
Windows 7 is bearable on the internet, Windows 8, another bad joke, do have 10 on my laptop, but with all this new protection stuff, quicker to send smoke signals.
Just went back to my old 98SE box, and deleted all the browsers and anti virus from it, don't even plug it in, works great with my plotter. If I have to email a *.dwg it still has a floppy, do have an IBM floppy that works just fine with a USB plug on it. One other change, works perfectly fine with a hundred buck LED monitor. Still have my 21 inch Viewsonic, but getting old, almost breaks my back when I try to lift it.
Don't blame Autodesk, blame Microsoft, often made the comment, if Microsoft paid me 25 bucks an hour for all the problems I had with them, I would be the billionaire, not them.
Ha, the real solution to using a 17 year old program is to use a 17 year old computer.
That 7,500 buck HP 7575A plotter still works fine, but don't try to plug this thing into a USB port. With inflation, would cost about $15,000.00 today.