Windows 98 build 1400

Windows 98 build 1400 is a Beta 1 build of Windows 98.

Windows Setup
Setup's sidebar color is now a darker shade of gray than the previous build. Sidebar now also shows several explanations of the setup stage the user's in (those explanations were under construction at the time this build was compiled, so there is still placeholder content like "EULA", "Confirm dir", "Dir init", "Wiz finish", "ebd", "File copy", "Option yes no" or "done"). There's also an "Enable Sound" option at the bottom of the sidebar, but it is only usable when setup is started on an existing Windows installation with a proper sound card installed (such as the Sound Blaster 16).

Setup now uses audio files, labeled as  (played at launch; this is the startup sound of Windows NT 4.0),   and   (both played when turning pages).

The second stage of the setup now uses the same layout used in the first stage as well, however with different setup wallpaper and font for the "Memphis Setup" text (clean install only). Also, the final setup configuration window was shifted from the top left to the right.

This is the earliest leaked build that uses the LZX compression algorithm instead of MSZip in the Microsoft Cabinet (CAB) archives on the installation disc.

Show Desktop
This build has a Show Desktop button at the end of the taskbar. This feature was removed by build 1423. This feature remained absent for eleven years, until Windows 7 build 6568 reintroduced it, with the same functions as this build's button along with a new feature called Aero Peek. The Windows 7 incarnation is still present today (although Aero Peek is disabled by default).

Other changes

 * The boot screen label was changed from Developer's Release to Beta 1 and the background color was changed from white to black.
 * Internet Explorer 4.0 build 0517.5 is now included, with shell integration components added (being absent from prior builds).
 * The Start menu banner text has been replaced, now reading "IE4 Preview Release". This has been replaced in the next builds with either "Memphis" or "Memphis Beta 1", but has been readded in build 1532.
 * Paint is now capable of utilizing three colors at once when holding the Ctrl key.
 * There is now a native button to choose a second color for title bar gradients in Display Properties. Much like build 1387, the button is only displayed if one of the title bar attributes is selected.
 * The Start menu has a new "Favorites" option, which is due to Windows Desktop Update.
 * The FAT32 Converter is now listed in the Start menu.
 * This build also includes a shortcut for Internet System Update, later renamed to Windows Update Manager from Internet Update Manager on later builds and by Beta 2, the Windows Update shortcut is moved from the desktop to the Start Menu which has been retained to the final version of Windows 98 until Windows XP.
 * DirectX 5.0 is now included again, after being absent from builds 1353 and 1387.
 * ActiveMovie is now included, as well as a very early version of HTML Help.
 * When copying multiple files, the File Copy dialog now shows a progress for the overall action instead of a progress for every file.
 * The "Power" Control Panel applet has been renamed to "Power - APM" and the "Scanners and Cameras" one has been introduced under the name "Still Image".

ACPI
ACPI support is in very early development and crashes easily. Turn off ACPI or setup can crash during hardware setup with a red screen of death (used in early builds for ACPI errors).

Curiously, said red screen errors still have blue heading text. This occurs because the red color for ACPI errors overrides the  setting in , but that does not apply to the header text.

Explorer

 * On some configurations, the build fails to enter the desktop, causing an explorer.exe error.
 * The preview pane does not show the used disk space of a drive and the graphic used to display disk space is just a placeholder.

Shutdown
If you installed this build with power management either being ACPI or APM and you try to shutdown or restart the machine, you will be met in most cases with a blue screen and you will need to hard reset the machine. If you didn't enable any kind of power management, it will shutdown normally and display the "Safe to shutdown screen".

Winver
is labeled as "About Internet Explorer", rather than "About Windows".