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Agreed! Operating Systems should not have "features" - NONE. If I want a "snipping tool", I'll add it myself from available third-party apps. If I want a "firewall", I'll add it myself from available third-party apps. If I want an antivirus "defender", I'll add it myself from available third-party apps. If I want a "candy crush" kiddy game, I'll add it myself from available third-party apps. If I want "3D" paint or printer apps, I'll add it myself from available third-party apps. If I want "people" contacts right on the taskbar, I'll add it myself from available third-party apps. If I want to "share" files, I'll add it myself from available third-party apps. If I want an all-in-one sytem-level "Cortana" tracking, I'll add it myself from available third-party apps. If I want to "sync" files, I'll add it myself from available third-party apps. If I want my Start Menu to feed me advertisements, I'll add it myself from available third-party apps. The Operating System should just "operate", bloatfree. Something like that...

Off-topic and argumentative posts removed. Back on-topic now please. This thread is for discussing Antivirus issues on Windows XP SP3 only.

I was able to resolve this issue just as I was about to turn to this community for help, so I've decided to create this topic still, just to share my experience (as I've received good assistance from people here in the past) and hopefully help someone having similar woes, as I haven't been able to google a solution for this one. System: Celeron 331 (Prescott 2.66Ghz, 256kb L2 cache, LGA775) MSI PM8PM-V (2.0 PCB revision) (VIA P4M800-Pro), 3.3 BIOS 512Mb DDR2 533Mhz Radeon 9600 Pro 128Mb SBLive! SB0100 PATA CD-ROM SATA 80Gb Seagate HDD (runs in bios "RAID" mode, as the "IDE" seems to install Windows 98, but hangs on boot on attemting to load msmouse.vxd driver, another bizarre bug. Could be of help to someone, as the msmouse.vxd Windows 98 startup freeze topics seemed pretty common and hard to diagnose in the past) Floppy controller - disabled in the bios Original OEM bootable Windows 98 CD, reliable, used many times before. Issue: First of all, just to get this out of the way. I know for a fact that this board makes for a stable and usable Windows 98 system, as I've successfully used it as such for months in the past and have also assembled one exactly like this (except for a Geforce FX5200 for the video) for another person about half a year ago. Events as they developed: I successfully installed Windows 98 using all of the hardware and the CD mentioned above, VIA 5.24 mobo driver, Catalyst 5.2, SBLive drivers and so on. Ran some benchmarks, played some games, everything working. I also installed the unofficial NUSB3.64 usb driver, a bit later, somewhat foolishly, while checking device manager for any yellow devices, I've noticed that the VIA PCI USB something device had no driver and so I haplessly selected something something with "VIA USB" in it from the presented driver list, silly mistake (NUSB is the only driver required AFAIK), the computer restarted but would not boot with a black screen instead of the Windows 98 bootup animation. The next day I decided to reinstall the whole thing anew, so I boot into DOS, fdisk, delete primary dos partition (no partitions present when selecting to view partition info after), let Windows 98 slow format the drive and just before the "enumerating devices" step begins I am presented with a message against a black screen "please remove any floppy disks from your system" and "press any button to restart", which I do, but the cycle repeats itself. I then tried removing the HDD from the system and deleting all partitions using the DiskGenius software with the HDD in a USB 3.0 caddy on a Windows 7 computer. With the HDD back in the target machine, the issue repeats itself after another round of Windows 98 FAT32 formatting. Removed the eeprom battery, let the computer sit for ~15 minutes, reconfigured the BIOS again, FDD still disabled, issue persists. What resolved it was using the "clean" from diskpart in Windows 7 with the target HDD in the usb caddy, after which the install process ran as expected. Never had this happen before, very strange bug, seems like something was left over on the HDD even after deleting all the partitions (using at least 2 different tools) and causing this situation.

Thank you for mentioning this fantastic program! I've tinkered with it over the years and have always been impressed with it...and of course, the developers deserve major applause for continuing to support Windows 9x. (It's very nice of them to keep the last Windows 3.x version available for download too!) To this day it remains the gold standard for file managers...

@Cixert With this statement, I meant especially the offline installer of AVG Antivirus Free 18.8.4084.0.

Did you try the online installers I linked for you? And you are right. The offline installer for the version 18.8.4084.0 does not exist anymore as I already mentioned. It used to exist, but it has been completely removed.

I got a new laptop and want to move my StartIsBack license to it. I will no longer be using StartIsBack on that machine. What do I need to do to move the license?

@Dietmar Thanks for info, i will check how it is stable

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images jaclaz

AVG Antivirus Free 18 is a cheap imitation of avast! Free Antivirus 2018. As I have reported several times, I had various problems with avast! But AVG takes the cake. With AVG Antivirus Free 18.8.4084.0, I had only problems and even crashes on my computer (real Windows XP). That's why I provided the download link to AVG Clear 18.8.4084.0 that you quoted, to get rid of this version completely. The choice between AVG 18 and avast! 2018 is like between plague and cholera , but I would always choose avast!. You can already see how "good" AVG is from your posted links. They removed all original links to the version 18.8.4084.0 of AVG Antivirus Free and offer a previous version. Maybe, because the version 18.8.4084.0 or its installer is crappy indeed? Anyway! If you really want to install AVG Antivirus Free 18, then I have this link for you: Download of the online installer for AVG Antivirus Free 18.8.4084.0: http://web.archive.org/web/20181227134304if_/https://install.avcdn.net/avg/iavs9x/avg_antivirus_free_setup.exe This installer is language-neutral, but I'm definitely not going to try it, not to mention the fact that I hate online installers anyway. And the most recent, official online installer is supposed to recognise the operating system automatically and install the correct version. Here is the download page: https://www.avg.com/en-us/windows-xp-antivirus#pc All at your own risk! I already warned you. The offline installer of AVG Internet Security 18.8.4084.0 should work, too. Maybe, there is an option to install the free version instead of the trial when starting its setup, or after the trial period ended, it should revert back to the free version as usual. BTW, I know Avast bought AVG some times ago. I think they want people to use their own, original products, and that is one more reason to remove such AVG installers. Doing so they have less rival products. Cheers, AstroSkipper

Sorry, fixed it 😎

You have not lowered it. Just locked it to 5.1. Vista is 6.0..

The world is crazy... 1990 Symantec buys Norton. 2016 Avast buys AVG 2017 Norton buys LifeLock. 2019 Broadcom purchases Symantec security division and name but renamed NortonLifeLock. 2019 Accenture buys NortonLifeLock. 2020 NortonLifeLock purchases Avira through Investcorp. 2021 NortonLifeLock buys Avast creating Gen Digital as a merger. https://www.itpro.com/security/cyber-security/360540/nortonlifelock-and-avast-to-merge-in-8-billion-deal

Update notification! The Root Certificates have been updated and are now from 25-04-2023. Here is a screenshot: Therefore, my self-created, offline Root Certificate Updaters in the section 11.2.4. Downloads related to Root Certificate Updates (in the first post of this thread) will also be updated as soon as possible. Cheers, AstroSkipper

It worked for me just putting msvcrt.dll 6.0 next to adwcleaner.exe, I didn't have to install anything. Much to my regret I have decided to install AVG 18.8 to analyze a 1 TiB disk with new content, I prefer not to try Avast 18 since I have happily installed Avast 6.0 with definitions of the year 2020. After reviewing the AVG options I don't see a default actions option. After 67% I stop the scan and see that AVG has quarantined 70 files, it has extracted small files from large zip archives (100-1500 GiB) and quarantined them. Most classify them as Malware-gen, Evo Gen, or PUP. It has also qualified as key-generator virus some open source Linux files. AVG takes the law into its own hands and decides to quarantine any key-generators, even if these are not it. I want these files, so I look for the "restore" option, but since these are files belonging to ZIP archives, it is not able to restore them. I have had to restore these to an alternate path, unzip each zip and re-include the files. OK, I hate AVG and any new program that annoys and wastes the user's time. This has qualified files as viruses that no other antivirus detects in virustotal.com, it has even detected that Thorium Browser 109 SSE2_x86, the alternative Chromium version for Windows 7 supported by Google, is a virus. Even so, I have continued investigating AVG and I see that within the folder analysis there is an option called "Actions" to establish that "no action is carried out" after the analysis. I do a test with a couple of files with suspected viruses and it works. So I decide to scan the entire USB hard drive (1 TiB). After 10 hours the analysis ends and "unpleasant surprise" I see that in 122 files with supposed viruses it has decided to send 31 to quarantine, because it feels like it, I don't see any other explanation, these don't seem like dangerous viruses. So I have to restore these back inside the zip file that extracted them. I don't remember if older versions of AVG behave this way. Do you know if Avast 18 also behaves in this way? Long live Avast 6. https://msfn.org/board/topic/182157-end-of-avast-5-6-and-7-virus-definition-updates/

It's relevant here at the moment IMO, as long as we don't have a long discussion about browser cache location options developing!

yeah and they added few new dlls from win8 but this could be simply workarounded(checked in dependency walker) The issue is i don't know how can I remove system check from exe or somehow cheat to app detect win7 as 8.1.... edit: with appverifier on works fine https://imgur.com/a/lnvK2Ng

You mentioned the wrong person.

Google 'details pane reshack'

I found the problem comes from win32k.sys 5.0.2195.7603, 5.0.2195.7624, 5.0.2195.7636, 5.0.2195.7640 has same problem X3 Externded kernel v5.0.2195.7641 is based on 7640 https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5174319/font-problems-in-vista-after-windows-update-kb3013455

WinNTSetup 5.3.1 - updated wimlib to version 1.14.1 (faster wim capture) - fixed GUI capture may ignores WimScript.ini - fixed wimlib LZMS capture did not used solid compression - fixed auto format option should disable free space warning - fixed wincopy/wimcapture could not be canceled during VSS creation - fixed Win7-11-Select.xml required all fields to be set - added some support for MinWin with ARM64 sources - added commandline switch: -NoTweaks - much faster wincopy (wimlib mode) - changed wimboot/compact mode don't use exclusion for GPT formated disk

I was searching this thread and I noticed that one of the most important programs for Windows has never been mentioned here, even though I use it most often day by day. It is Total Commander, probably the best known and in my opinion the most powerful file manager for Windows ever. Total Commander (TC) is a two-column file manager for Windows modelled on the legendary Norton Commander from the days of DOS. There are also free variants for the smartphone and tablet operating systems Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile. Total Commander allows convenient file management, offers an integrated ZIP utility, an FTP client, a multi-rename tool, a very good search function with filters, and so on. Its functionality can be extended easily by addons. Here is a picture of TC's main window: Homepage: https://www.ghisler.com Download page: https://www.ghisler.com/download.htm Addons page: https://www.ghisler.com/addons.htm And here are all 12 screenshots from TC's homepage to demonstrate different features: https://www.ghisler.com/screenshots/en/01.html Many features of Total Commander are described here: https://www.ghisler.com/featurel.htm The latest version is 10.52 from 26-10-2022 and still XP-compatible. Although it is shareware, it is fully functional. There is only a small nag screen when the program is started. Total Commander is offered in form of different installers. A 32-bit version only, a 64-bit version only and a 64-bit+32-bit combined. The 32-bit version is compatible with Windows 95 up to Windows 11, the 64-bit version with Windows XP up to Windows 11 and the 64-bit+32-bit combined with Windows 95 up to Windows 11. There are installers for USB sticks and even a 16 bit version for Windows 3.1. Total Commander has a multiple language and Unicode support. Total Commander is my favourite and most used program, even under Android. I use Total Commander (formerly Windows Commander) since 1995 and can recommend it without any reservations due to 28 years only positive experiences. Greetings, AstroSkipper

Why I switched from Avast! to WiseVector StopX There is a very specific reason why I have recently started recommending WiseVector StopX. Until now, I have always used products from Avast! and was also satisfied. On my old computer, which is low on resources and performance, I actually had Avast! Premier installed on my Windows XP partition and had been using it for many years. This year, unfortunately, I had several negative experiences. More and more often, the GUI shut down completely and showed only an empty, white window. Only a repair installation could revive it. In addition, programmes that were reported as false positives were not ignored as offered and excluded from further monitoring. Instead, their access was completely blocked and no longer released. Furthermore, again and again, almost periodically, the Avast! service caused a very high and prolonged CPU load. All these problems prompted me to uninstall the entire Avast program package. And then came the next set of difficulties. The uninstall routine is an imposition. An uninstallation had not really taken place. Whoever programmed this routine should be fired! All files and program folders were not deleted. Thus, completely useless! Even the special Avast uninstaller "Avast! Clear" could not remove everything. So I had to do it manually. The main program folder could not be deleted. Not even with administrator rights. Same with a booted Linux and Mini Windows XP from outside. Both could not delete anything from the locked files and folders. So I was thinking about a proper solution how to delete the locked folders and files. By the way, I am writing this to spare others similar problems. Anyway, the solution is either one tries to delete it under the user account System, whose rights can be obtained with suitable tools (for example RunAsSystem), or one falls back on good old DOS. And this is how I did it. I booted my computer into a real DOS mode and used Volkov Commander to delete all the locked files and folders. DOS doesn't give a damn about accounts and permissions. What needs to be deleted, gets deleted. DOS was my first OS on an IBM compatible PC, and it is an endless love. In any case, this approach was the right way to get rid of all remnants of Avast! Premier. BTW, before uninstalling, I measured the amount of disk space which was consumed by Avast!. And I was stunned. It was about 1.5 GB in many different folders. Unbelievable! After that torture, I installed WiseVector StopX at last. I configured it as well as possible and tested it deeply. WiseVector StopX is very light-weight and consumes approximately 100 MB of disk space in only one program folder. It has less RAM usage, very low CPU load and is easy to handle via its tray icon. On my old computer, it's simply perfect. The performance of my system has been increased, all actions are much faster than before. In short, I am impressed and very happy with my switch to this antivirus program. Cheers, AstroSkipper