the xt guy

It's just as possible to use a large hosts file with 2K/XP as it is with 9x/Me, with no slowdown. My 2K box has a hosts file of about 4.5 megs, the identical file on 98 is about 3.7 megs. (Win2K uses 127.0.0.1, and 98 uses 0 or 0.0.0.0) I'm using MDgx 's hosts file merged with an old hosts file I've been using for 10+ years.

I'm glad you brought up the subject of Win 2K with these so-called "advanced format" drives (great comment BTW-I think of them as "so-called" as well). I searched the Internet in vain for a comment or posting concerning Win2K and these drives. Absolutely no mention till your post, even in the 2K forum here. I find it laughable that WD's press releases (Dec. 2009) on these so-called "advanced" drives calls Windows XP a "legacy OS", when it's right now the most popular O/S in the world! (Granted, 7 will take the lead in a few years but for right now, XP is at the top of the heap). Since I am a very intentional 2K/98 user, I too am concerned about this very obvious push towards 7, making everything older than Vista a "legacy O/S".

Whatever you do, don't change the "Remote Procedure Call" (not the same as "Remote Procedure Call Locator"). Leave it on "Automatic". Virtually everything in Windows needs this to run. If you disable it, your computer will (literally) barely start and be crippled to the point of uselessness. You will have to use the Recovery Console to restart the service.

This must be a critical fix for them to release it outside the normal cycle and not wait until patch Tuesday of April 2010.

The last version of 1.6.0x that will install is 1.6.0_7 and there is a little trick you have to follow to install it. You also have to have dotnet 1.1 or newer already installed to install this last version of Java 1.6.0_07. I don't remember the details offhand as I stayed with the last version of the 1.5x series (1.5.0_22) since I figured it was newer, date wise than the 1.6.0_07 version. MDGx has the details over on his website: http://www.mdgx.com/add.htm#JAVA

I dual boot Win 2K and 98 (actually 98SE2ME with 98lite applied). My 2K boot drive is NTFS and 98 doesn't see it at all, no drive letter assigned, nothing. It's as though it isn't even there. My arrrangement is different than yours (6 HD's total installed, 4 of them are on a Promise IDE PCI card. All except the 98 drive are NTFS.) I can use Paragon NTFS Reader under 98, which opens its own window and doesn't assign any drive letters at all to the NTFS drives it sees.

Although I haven't used any Norton AV for nearly 4 years, I have a copy of Norton AV 2006. That version needs a minimum of Win 2K, but it came with a copy of Norton AV 2005 on the same CD for 9x systems. Apparently AV 2005 is the last version to run on 9x.

Jaclaz, the name of the dll you're trying to remember is dnsapi.dll

Jaclaz, what an interesting link, thanks a lot for posting! Of course, it doesn't really tell anything I/We already knew. We know that MS builds a database of all the people who use its services. I've deliberately never had a hotmail/live mail/msn/etc. e-mail account as I know MS states that they 'own' all your e-mails whenever you use any of their e-mail services (no matter what 'cutesy' name they try to give the service). I deliberately did not go with my local DSL, Qwest as the only e-mail they provide is msn. Deal breaker. One's IP address (using M$ lingo) may not be considered 'personally identifiable information' but its close enough when compiled with every other detail they can collect, including what files you download/open with Windows Media Player, how many/what files you've opened with Office 2007 (earlier versions too? maybe, don't know since I never use them). They very reason XP's so-called firewall lets all outgoing traffic through is because they want unimpeded collection of information about your computer. I always find it amusing when someone brings up the fact that XP (and later) are regularly contacting M$. First it's denied, then 'your paranoid' and lastly 'if you don't like it, don't use M$', which of course is admitting that it's entirely true. And yes, it happens whether you use WGA or not.

Yes, XP through 7 phone home and unfortunately Win2K does too, with the latest 'critical updates'! Back in 2008, I downloaded the latest critical updates for 2K and suddenly upon reboot, Win2K wanted to phone home! Turns out one of the MS updates now wanted to contact 'stats.microsoft.com' upon every boot! Never happened before until that update. Fortunately with 2K I was able to block it in my Hosts file. No stats for you, BG! However, with XP SP2 and newer, you cannot block any MS domains using the hosts file.

I'm running a dual boot configuration of Win2K/Win98 (actually 98SE2ME) using Firefox 2.0.0.22pre on both O/S and have experienced no slowdowns of any kind on the board. (My computer has a 3.4 ghz. Pentium Prescott with 1 g. of RAM-admittedly not much in today's world but 2K never uses more than about 1/3 of it and 98 even less). I have IE removed on 98 (via 98lite) and soon on 2K as well. I am using NoScript on Firefox and a hosts file with over 100,000 entries (MDGX's version plus several thousand from another site and my own additions.) Between the two, I rarely see ANY kind of an ad, banner or other unwanted crapola on any site. To the person earlier on this thread who asked about NoScript: If I could only have one add-on for Firefox it would be NoScript. (At one time, Firefox even considered adding it to their browser.) The latest version works great with 98 and FF 2x. I've even made a donation to the developer of NoScript. Get it!

No-o-o-o! Don't say that! Can't do without my daily dose of MSFN forums! This is one of my favorite sites on the web. What to do???

I just want to confirm what 'rloew' and 'schwups' have posted above concerning the Win 98 shutdown problem and different models of Nvidia cards. The shutdown problem exists only with Nvidia cards in the 6XXX series and higher. I have two computers running Win 98; the first one double boots with Win2K and had a EVGA 6200A-LE Nividia card (AGP 8X). Of course 2K shuts down fine, 98 with the MDGX's 82.69 driver had the shutdown problem. 'Restart' worked OK but 'shutdown' hung. Then after I installed Maximus Decim's Cumulative Update (a couple of months ago) the 'restart' option would not work either. I uninstalled MDCU, no help. After reading their comments above (about shutdown not working with the 6XXX and higher series cards) I replaced the 6200A-LE with an EVGA FX5200. Shutdown was still not working (although I did now have a blinking cursor on shutdown as opposed to a totally black screen) until I uninstalled the unofficial 2.0 USB drivers that came with MDCU (I don't have any USB devices that work with 98). Now both shutdown and restart are working with the 82.69 drivers. The second computer is 98 only. It had an old ATI 9200 AGP 8X with only 64 MB of RAM. Of course, it had no shutdown problems with the ATI card. I replaced it with an EVGA FX5200 (128MB) identical to the one above (in both cases I used 'Driver Cleaner Pro' to uninstall the drivers). This computer's shutdown/restart is working fine with MDGX's 82.69 drivers. In both cases I now have the option of using widescreen resolution in the future if I ever need to replace the CRT (19 inch) monitors on both computers, as the ATI card had no widescreen resolutions.

']I definately don't use IE6 as an internet browser anymore, but what else should us Win98 users with IE6 do? As long as IE resides on your system, you are generally vulnerable to all its attack points, even if you never use it to browse. (The same goes for other MS programs that have similar vulnerabilities, such as Outlook Express). If safety is your highest concern, you should remove the app and use a third party product for browsing, mail, etc.

It's interesting that if I apply this AVG 7.5 'update' to my Win2K system, AVG sometimes asks to reboot after applying updates. If I apply the identical downloaded update to Win 98 (same box, I'm dual booting 98/2K) it doesn't ask for a restart to apply the updates.

You can probably expect Gates and/or Ballmer to be knocking on your door anytime, demanding you surrender your Windows 98 CD, COA and product key! (Sorry, couldn't resist the joke!)

No, we're the last three users of AVG 7.5! The AVI files updates work for me as well. It's cool to see the AVG icon in the system tray colorful and not grayed out. Probably AVG thought the nag screen on the last upgrade of 7.5 would force users to uninstall 7.5 and upgrade. Well it sure forced me to uninstall AVG 7.5 and install (for a while at least) Avast 4.8. I did have AVG 8 for a very short time on my Win 2K box. It's slow and bloated but what inspired me to uninstall it was that it had to contact a server in the Netherlands-AVG headquarters apparently-every time I booted up my computer. That's a no-no as far as I'm concerned. The only other AV I know that runs on 98 is Eset's NOD 32 v 2.7. You've got to pay for that one though (although the 30-day trial still updates the virus signatures. But whose going to pay $39 for 1 year of Antivirus?) My version of avgabout.dll is only 7.5.0.24. I couldn't find a later version. BTW, is the last version of AVG 7 free 7.5.524a1289? I can't find a later version of 7.5 free.

avi files need to be converted to DVD compliant mpegs for most authoring software. to work. One of the best places to go for help is the site www.videohelp.com. They have a huge forum with thousands of participants and a tools section where you can access tons of freeware (and software for purchase) for just about any aspect of video/DVD. I'm sure someone there can tell you the fastest, easiest way to get your avi's on to a DVD. (Personally I use paid software: TMPGEnc Express to convert files to DVD compliant mpegs and TmpgDVDAuthor to author the DVD's.. But I'm converting VHS tapes to DVD.)

Here's the link to the thread I posted back in March 2009: http://www.msfn.org/board/anybody-using-fi...98-t131731.html

Firefox 2.0.0.22pre was the last nightly build of FF2. I can't remember the exact details now, but improvements in the Win 98 compatible versions of SeaMonkey or Thunderbird were still being applied to the nightly builds of FF2 even after the release of 2.0.0.20. Firefox is called 'Bon Echo' in its development form but it is still FF, the name is changed to Firefox after it is released. (I changed the useragent string in FF so it reports itself to sites as Firefox 2.0.0.22pre, not Bon Echo). Here is the link to the last nightly build of FF 2.0.0.22pre (it is dated 2009-04-15): http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/fir...-04-mozilla1.8/ I posted a thread about this back in March of 2009, I'll have to go find the link.

I got the following results under 98 (I dual boot W2K and 98SE2ME combined with 98 lite-IE removed!, using Firefox 2.0.0.22pre) Your System's Market Share 0.010% Of web usage occurs on systems very similar to yours. Detailed Analysis: 0.083% use Windows 98 0.012% and use Firefox 2 0.011% and use a similar screen resolution 0.010% and use a broadband connection

version 1.6? Really? The latest version of Sumatra PDF is 1.01. Could I borrow your time machine for a little drive around the space-time continuim? I'll only borrow it for (what seems like) a second. BTW, the last version of Sumatra PDF that works on Windows 98SE (without Kernel EX) is 0.81.

Well, I tried ptedit. Unfortuntaely it did not help. As for the "Restorer 2000 Professional" software, I bought it back in 2005so it is compatible with 2K SP4. I already have run it on several of the drives and have recovered the data. It takes forever to scan (a 500 gb drive takes about 3-1/2 hours and that doesn't include the time to copy the files to another drive) but it does work. What worries me now is what happened to get me into this state. A reinstall of an O/S shouldn't make all the other HD's inaccessible. Like I said, it happened once before but enabling 48 bit LBA was the key. Not this time though. Perhaps I should consider backing everything up to an external USB drive as well as another internal drive.

Pointer, thanks for the reply. Yes it is weird. I have had this kind of a problem once before, but all I did was to enable 48 bit LBA and everything reappeared as if "by magic" . Well, I think for now I will use the disk recovery software I've got, since it can clearly see the data and has always been able to recover everything I needed. I may have to get another HD but then one can never have too much drive space (although I do have one 200gb WD, so I may be able to shift things around and save most of my data.) Once I have the data saved from a drive then I'll see what ptedit does. If I lose my data then, well it won't matter. BTW, I did have some of my data backed up from one HD to another, but I wasn't planning on all 5 HD's to be borked at the same time. OT, but the spare 200gb HD I have is formatted in FAT 32. I will have to reformat it to NTFS, as some of my files are bigger than 4 gb. The interesting thing is that the 200gb FAT 32 reads as 186.3 gb while the 200gb NTFS formatted drives read as 189.9 gb! I guess the FAT32 file system uses up an additional 3.6 gb of room for overhead.

My computer was running a dual boot setup of Win 2k and Xandros. The Win2K setup was about 2 years old and I was having problems with it, so I decided I needed to reinstall 2K. i also wanted to add a third OS (Win 98SE). My boot drive is a 120gb Maxtor IDE hooked to the MB first IDE controller master. It was divided into two equal 60gb portions with 2K and Xandros on each 60 gb. The slave drive on the first IDE controller is a 500gb. IDE Hitachi. The two drives on the second IDE controller on the MB are a DVD-RW drive and a CD-RW. I also have another HD controller card (Promise TX133) in a PCI slot which has 4 hard drives connected to it (all IDE, two 200gb, one 500 gb and a 1Tb SATA with a Rosewill adapter to convert the SATA to IDE interface for the Promise Controller card.) All these drives on the computer are formatted NTFS. Before formatting the 120 gb drive, I disconnected the drives off the Promise controller card. I used gparted to format the 120 gb into primary and extended partitions of 30 gb and 90 gb. (When I install Xandros later, it can shrink down the 90 gb partition to install itself on.) I then installed Win 98SE on to the 30 gb partition, letting Windows format it to FAT 32. I was careful to disconnect the 500 gb drive on the primary slave, so Windows wouldn't try to run chkdsk or something on it and screw it up, since it is NTFS. I then installed 2K on the 90 gb. partition, 2K formatting as NTFS and let Windows make the dual-boot menu for the two OS. My version of Win2K only has service pack SP2. I know that SP2 doesn't have 48 bit LBA support, but it is installed with SP4. I have SP4 on a CD (from MS) so I ran SP4. I do have a patch to enable LBA 48 bit on 2K, it adds the correct line to the registry. I ran that after SP4. Even though I'm running 2K, I cannot access any of the secondary HD's (the primary slave or any of the 4 drives on the promise controller). Win2K shows them all as unformatted. If I run gparted, all the drives I cannot access are not shown as having a file system. All the drives are seen in the BIOS and all the correct size. Remember, I had all this setup running yesterady, so all the hardware works and supports 48 bit LBA. I do have a software program I bought years ago called "Restorer 2000 Professional" which has saved my data more than once. If I install this software, it shows the problem drives as not having a file system. However, if I run a scan on the individual drives (takes hours, extremely slow) it shows NTFS file system and all my files are there, directory structure intact and everything looks exactly as it should be. It can recover the data, but it cannot write it back to the same drive, it needs to be written to another drive. Problem is, all my secondary drives are partially full of data. If I went this route, I would need to buy another huge HD (at least 1 tb) to recover the files to. Is there some flag in the HD first sector that shows the file system on the drive, and it somehow got deleted? What happened?