Back on topic:

Why Windows 9X series discontinued?

Because it didn't have SuperTools

The End

What is SuperTools?

But then the HP laptop with melty GPUs came along thanks to 9x, meaning the all new SuperTools SuperBlower 9001 was required to prevent melty GPUs and jammed solder!
In all seriousness, I think this question has been answered.

just for fun:try HX 2.17
Someone started to recreate the Win32 API in assembler on top of a self written DOS extender.
Its open source, not actively developed or complete.
Complete enough to run SDL games and command line development tools.

Because the Windows NT Kernel is superior in every way

In regards to the file system, it's crazy to install an OS on a file system without permissions, even UFS (Unix File System) had support for them for an extremely long time. I haven't tested Windows 9X for a while but I'm pretty sure there was no user separation so anyone could modify the system files, you could argue that it could be implemented in the kernel to prevent folders such as Program Files and Windows from being edited but then you add in extra complexity and the ability to customise the permissions would be difficult for example being able to share a folder with users A and C but not B. With a file system like NTFS or ext this is a breeze but I imagine it would be extremely difficult to implement anything like this securely without file system support.

If you look closer at Chicago, you realize that it moved more code to VXDs, but the improved UI and underlying DLLs are mostly 16 bit.
More a superset of Win32s, NOT a 32bit operating system as advertised the 9x system code and programming model contains much of the inherited mess even Microsoft realized that it was not really good to maintain and wasnt able to include all of the NT APIs.
They developed Chicago to get newbies to work easier with documents and programs, to couple their DOS into Windows and let OS/2 2.0 and Mac OS look outdated.

Mac OS Classic was discontinued for being similar unstable and difficult to program.

That actually was outdated, because version 4.0 (Warp) was closing development at about the same time as 95...

One should note that DOS and Windows were co-mingled with the expiring of the IBM agreement, and remained so until something could be built to challange OS/2.

MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 as often as not come with a single manual, which is essentially two manuals bound as one. These were commingled into a single release with MS-DOS 7.00 + Windows 4.00. Subsequent mingles give 7.10 + 4.10 (three releases), and MS-DOS 8.00 + Windows 4.90 (one release).

We now note that 'dosver' can not handle versions of dos > 10.0, even though you can set the version of dos higher than 10 (eg 20.xx in OS/2 and 30.xx in NT). However, we see that DOS 8.00 gives no advantage over 7.10, and could have been called 7.20 or something.

The real reason is that by 1999, things like USB, large hard drives and large memories made the switch to 32-bit operating systems more advantage. Also, Windows 2000 was showing that Microsoft was getting something ready for prime time. However, even then, memory was still a bug-bear, so it was still useful to beta test some new ideas on WinME (multi-errors, for those in the know), and wrangle the whistler beta a little longer.

Of course, Win9x was pretty well good enough to stave off OS/2 on the desktop, although OS/2 was robust enough to linger on as appliances and servers for decades yet. OS/2 is _still_ more robust than windows.

Window NT has the serious problem that what you boot from the floppies (a common way of fixing dead machines in the 90's), isn't Windows NT. A minimal NT boot takes something like 150 MB of space. You can get a minimal OS/2 boot in 4 MB to a command line, and to 9 MB to boot a gui. You have then IT people praising the joys of NT, and they're wandering around with MS-DOS 6.22 diskettes, even though A, 6.22 is obsolete even by then, and B, 6.22 does not know about 120 GB drives.

A boot disk was made with XP sp1, but this was made to big OEMs only. It wasn't until BartPE, and that BartPE was whooping WinPE in the market for support and price, that you start seeing some changes in licencing of PE. I mean, OS/2 had a gui install booted from the cdrom from eComStation v 1.0. Windows would have to wait another 5 years to catch up. They still haven't: OS/2's desktop has setup as a default option, which can simply be dismissed to the recovery desktop. Windows is pretty awful here: no gui, you get a command line (whoo-hoo).

You name it, the VXD driver model is a big problem and the DOS devs were sent in the 9x team.
As I said 9x code under user32 and GDI32 is still 16 bit thats why Notepad cant open big files in its edit wndclass from USER.EXE.

That MS wanted to destroy OS/2 desktop use with Chicago is written in comes vs MS
internal MS plans.

MS wanted a small NT system for their unreleased Apple Newton smashing "Pulsar" PDA project but it wasnt possible to do an object oriented system was created that was rewritten into something using a cut down Win32 API called CE 1.0 and looking like Chicago.
When NT 1.0(!) was a small command line OS
MS made their own version of OS/2 2.0 codenames "Cruiser"(yay, lets smash SUN!) and sent out a SDK and a single beta CD before but other people have searched before and found nothing.

OS/2 was still ten or so years ahead of its time. It still is, but it's not microsoft.

Windows NT was not ready for prime time in 1996, (even NT 4 was a bit awkid - no pnp, no usb). On the other hand, to continuing making Windows 3.x on top of dos would not stave off IBM's DOS, which had become a big competitor after DR-DOS.

Comingling code had begun with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1, but got a bit more agressive with Windows 3,11 (offering networking in Windows to kill off commercial competition), Windows 95 (scattering DOS in Windows), 98 (co-mingling code from IE into Windows). Still, Windows 9x runs quite well on period machines, while Windows NT doesn't. NT would have to wait for the hardware to catch up.

By the time hardware caught up (2002), a fairly successful gamma of windows nt with IE co-mingled, usb and pno support had got out, (win2k), and windows nt was ready for prime time.

It's clear that we're looking at 64 bit stuff now, but are people ready for 64-bit desktops?

64-bit machines can still run the old 32-bit x86 programs as long as they themselves are x86 (x64, or x86 64-bit) systems, and not other types of 64-bit systems. However, 64-bit versions of Windows cannot run 16-bit applications due to WoW (Windows on Windows) not supporting the older 16-bit applications in those versions.

However, even though 16-bit applications are not quite as commonplace as they used to be, they are still used, at least in some circles (I even heard somewhere that Canada's government systems still use DOS, and remember that Canada is also a developed nation).

The reason for some small market sectors still using 9X/DOS is becasue their primary source of income requires applications that weren't updated for the newer versions of Windows (XP, etc.) = abandonware. Upgrading would break compatibility and thus effect their financial status.

One should note that the 'dusty deck' is going to be around for a long while yet.

One recalls hunting through personal files that had outputs from no fewer than five obsolete payroll systems, dating back to the 1970s or earlier.

What most software companies just don't get is that people wrangle data over decades. One of the documents i currently maintain as a web page, started life as a Multimate 4 document in the days of DOS 3.3. Well, multimate 4 is not even CUA complient.

Of course, if you have a business that has thousands of pounds worth of business tied up in data, you are not just going to replace tried and true programs with the latest update. This is why, for example, companies only update on every second release, well past sp 1 of that release. You just can't put £200,000 worth of data up against bugs etc.

Things like the internet work over such a long time because the data format is open. For much the same reason, i use things like REXX for programming, because this runs under DOS, OS/2, Windows, Linux, etc. It started life in an entirely different mainframe system.

People will continue to use antique programs, because the data , though in antique forms, still work.

The biggest reason I can think of is that there was no NTFS file system support. Windows 9x editions were still using FAT.

Unreliable - When a program crashes, sometimes it can lock the whole system up or BSOD.

Obsolete - Windows 9x runs under DOS, which has been around since 1981.

Not true 32-bit - Windows 9x is a 16/32-bit hybrid OS, because it runs under DOS, which is 16-bit.

Software, even DOS, can be made reliable if it is left alone. There are still Windows 3.1 machines chugging away alone in the dark, running water systems etc.

One should note that 'oblolete' is a manufacturer's prospective, not a user's one. The adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is something that more reflect the further costs of the upgrade (eg data, drivers etc). Much of the modern world runs on 'dusty decks', often in emulation.

Not true 32-bit? This has little to do with it. You can boot a 32-bit OS (like netware) from a 16-bit DOS. Also, one should note that even Windows 3.1 is a 32-bit OS, although there is precious little of it. One runs a mix of 16 and 32 bit stuff because it saves limited resources, because 32-bit code is considerably bulkier than 16-bit stuff.

One should note that all x86 machines boot in 16-bit mode, and something has to put it into 32-bit later on. Windows (any version), runs on something else (either a hacked clone of VMS or DOS). You can't run Windows NT from floppies in the way that OS/2 and DOS can run.

Obsolescence isn't really a matter of time.
Well, maybe just not a matter of time.
First, as os2fan2 correctly points out, it is in some way limited by the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" law...
And, IMHO even more important, a system should be considered obsolete only if it's actually superseded by another (better) system.
I think this is the case for DOS, but just because of Windows NT, doesn't matter if it came out in 1980.

Exactly. And in fact, about eleven months ago (close to a year, actually, it was in around late May), while I was on my way to some relatives of ours, when we stopped at a store, there was a system, dedicated as a cash register, with OS/2 (at least 4.0, if not even one of the eComStation releases) running on it (I could recognize it by the window metrics, unless it was a special theme, which I highly doubt).

Similarly, up until about seven years ago when we would have still been shopping at a certain grocery store chain, although it wasn't nearly as old then (but still about ten or more years old), I would always see their systems, dedicated as cash registers, with Acer monitors, running OS/2, from what I see, at least OS/2 2.0, and at most, OS/2 3.0. I'm not sure if they still use those older OS/2 versions though.

For the longest time, at Burger King, I've been seening some beige CRT monitors displaying a program of theirs in text mode, but I'm not sure if it's actually a DOS program, a text mode Win32 program, or something else.

I notice that alot too.

It could have been CICS. This is used when there is a lot of low long distance traffic, such as live enquiries or things like a bridal registry shared over many different sites.

Still, the character mode interface has a lot going for it. On the other hand, if one has a touch screen, like a super market register, then a gui in the line of what an ipad might do is the usual form. One recalls 'gorilla arm' in such cases though.

Touch screens are not new ,they first found use in CAD.
Later MS sensed an income source and made a 3.1 version for touch screens.
CE was touchcreen friendly but not finger friendly.After the successors for CE(Cardhu) and WM(Photon) got cancelled they integrated step-wise a finger friendly UI in WM 6.5.x.

Apple threw out very very much money for development of their many Newton OS and hardware.
No code made it into iOS which branched from a beta build of Leopard according to strings.

Because it is slow, old, NT is good than 9x, and Because of Me, Whistler

For years I was a VERY firm advocate of Win9x, but after being forced to use Windows XP daily for a couple of months, I finally realized the foolishness of my ways and turned to NT-based OSs permanently. So, my answer to the question at hand is simply, that NT it is more efficient and coded much more tightly than Windows 9x.

1. Unreliable
2. Stupid
3. Lame
4. Slow like at 0.9 speed
5. Dumb
6. It has windows me!