BenoitRen

This sounds like a good solution, except that I don't have a second hard drive. Would a second partition do? I was going to install Windows 95 again one of these days anyway, as some drivers got screwed up. One set because of the uninstall of MS Sidewinder drivers, the other set because of a Creative Sound Blaster drivers update (which works fine in Windows, but in pure DOS and for some DOS games doesn't).

If I'm in the wrong place to ask this, I apologise. I've been wanting to put Linux as a secondary operating system on this computer. However, I'm very sensitive to change. What would be ideal would be the following: Windows 95 always boots as normal, no slowdown. If I want to boot Linux, I press a key before Windows 95 loads, and confirm. I've read that something like that could be possible with a light boot loader that would change the MBR. Another thing that complicates matters is that my PC can't boot from a CD-ROM. Thoughts?

Why a help file? The use of the program is straight-forward, and most users don't read help files anyway. Death to the CHM format! It's quite lame to have a help format that relies on IE, which in most cases has nothing to do with the application. Restoration is better because it works on any Windows. Nah.

I still use WinZip 8, one of the last versions to not have too much eye candy. WinZip might be obsolete, but I like the streamlined interface, and I only need to handle ZIP files, which it does pretty well. But I agree WinRAR is better.

Just because it uses DOS for bootstrapping doesn't mean it isn't 32-bit. It uses its own (32-bit) routines for just about everything.

Nobody needs dual-core processors. Get a good single-core processor from AMD. Much cheaper than Intel, about the same quality. If possible, get an Athlon XP one. No one needs 64-bit if one isn't processing huge databases.

Supporting Win9x isn't rocket science. You actually have to go out of your way to stop support for it or be stupid.

Disk versions of Windows 95 didn't come with IE. The CD-ROM version of Windows 95 had IE version 1. Windows 95 OSR2 (Win95 B) came with IE3. These instances did not integrate with Windows, though, and while there was no uninstall option, you could get rid of it by other means. Windows 95 OSR 2.5 (Win95 C) installed IE3, and if you let the CD-ROM in the drive after installation (which I only did once, forgot to remove it), it installs IE4 with all the integration. You could install IE5 on Windows 95, but because of complaints about IE4's integration, this version didn't do any integration at all.

I don't agree. Windows 95 controls you less than Windows 98. There's also less clutter. When you are done installing Windows 95, it's usable. You don't have to change anything. With Windows 98, you have IE4 breathing down your neck, warnings when you try to open C:\Windows or C:\Program Files, annoying tooltips, and other clutter. Cosmetic is only part of the story. The newer OS also requires more processing power to do the same things. Newer Windows versions exist to rake in more cash and continue the perpetual upgrade cycle. Most users don't realise this, and when you point it out to them, they tell that it's because the OS is better. I really don't understand that logic. A better OS wouldn't suddenly jack up system requirements for doing the same things. Case in point: you can't run WinXP on older computers because it wants to use more resources, and then people tell you that it's because WinXP is better and 'more advanced'. Yeah, right.

These days, "Win9x" seems to refer more to Windows 98, Windows 98 SE and WinME, not including Windows 95. I run Windows 95. But I'm willing to help anyway. My new PC is going to have Windows 98 SE, even. I want to help on the website coding, so that it's standards-compliant both in structure and spirit. I'm not that good at creating a design, though.

And how do you think the Windows 95 users feel? "OMG, you're running an 11 year old operating system!"

But Windows 95 doesn't support WDM.

But, doesn't explorer.exe usually get restarted instantly if you terminate it? It does on mine, unless the crash was really serious.

Nathan Lineback was so kind to let me know that he had modified his existing drivers so that it should work with most, if not any, USB Flash Drives. He was thinking people on this forum might like it, so here they are: http://toastytech.com/files/cruzerwin95.html All the information you need is provided on that page. Enjoy your Flash Drives!

Trojan horses, viruses, other malware. They just need a good exploit and they're in. IE4 is not safe, even when you visit trusted sites. For example, one year ago, Mega Man Network, a site I would trust, suddenly started spreading trojan horses and other malware. IE users would get infected or warned through their anti-virus products, users of Gecko-based browsers would wonder what the fuss was all about, as they didn't see a thing. It turned out that the website's host got hijacked somehow, which affected all sites hosted by it. They couldn't do anything about it. Second, IE doesn't do IRC. ...What? SeaMonkey, Camino, K-Meleon, Epiphany, etc. also use the Gecko engine.And no, Gecko is not the only other rendering engine aside from IE. Konqueror and Safari both use KHTML, Opera used Presto up to version 8, and now uses Merlin. Viruses already existed on the Internet in the days of 56 kbps, and yes, they did spread. They aren't big at all. That's because it doesn't have anything to do with computer security. It's theft."Oh no, my TV is not secure because someone can break in and walk off with it!" You're confusing security with privacy.

I wouldn't be complaining that it didn't work if I didn't have them set-up already. Internet Connection Sharing has nothing to do with sharing printers.

One bad word makes me impolite? One that was right, even? Please. Wrong. They both use Gecko, and have roughly the same number of exploits (I say roughly because there's the rare case that it's the Firefox interface at fault). K-Meleon is also Gecko-based, and it flies just as fast, if not faster, than IE. Since when was the presence of certain data a factor? Your PC is not suddenly secure when you don't have personal data on it. Please. There doesn't even have to be anything. Your PC can silently get taken over and added to a botnet that sends SPAM to everyone. Taking those precautions is mostly for the paranoid.

What's the point of patching up the piece of crap that is IE? It's inherently secure, and the shell working around exploits does NOT patch them in the rendering engine. The zone model is inherently flawed. And even if these shells are more secure than stock IE, its web standards support remains severely lacking, which is an insult to the web.

I DID IT! I read Nathan Lineback's couple of lines about this again, and saw that I needed URL.DLL. Then I learned through this page that URL.DLL is what should be listed in ShellExecuteHooks, and has to be registered as well: http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/pub/gnu/windows...todo/browse-url The problem then was finding out how to create a CLSID for URL.DLL, and any other values needed. But I didn't find information anywhere. I only found a reference to the fact that Netscape installs the ShellExecuteHooks value in the wrong places, that was already mentioned on the page I linked. So, I installed Netscape 3, copied the ShellExecuteHooks reference to the proper one under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, and then it worked! Now to clean all the mess Netscape 3 left in the registry after uninstallation...

I found the required structure in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. Somehow SeaMonkey added the values there under strings that had the name of what the path should have been. So, the ddeexec stuff is covered. AIM is still looking for ShellExecuteHooks, though. I found out that usually shell32.dll is listed there along with a CLSID, but I need to have specific info. Output is now: 2.60768318 Aim:FFF34515 OpenKey HKCR\http SUCCESS hKey: 0xC11D8240 2.60773754 Aim:FFF34515 QueryValueEx HKCR\http\URL Protocol SUCCESS "" 2.60780811 Aim:FFF34515 OpenKey HKCR\http\shell\open\ddeexec\Application SUCCESS hKey: 0xC11EE194 2.60785437 Aim:FFF34515 EnumValue HKCR\http\shell\open\ddeexec\Application SUCCESS : "SeaMonkey" 2.60791612 Aim:FFF34515 OpenKey HKCR\http\shell\open\command SUCCESS hKey: 0xC11EE53C 2.60794878 Aim:FFF34515 EnumValue HKCR\http\shell\open\command MOREDATA 2.60897517 Aim:FFF34515 CloseKey HKCR\http SUCCESS 2.60900474 Aim:FFF34515 CloseKey HKCR\http\shell\open\command SUCCESS 2.60903358 Aim:FFF34515 CloseKey HKCR\http\shell\open\ddeexec\Application SUCCESS 2.60921764 Aim:FFF34515 OpenKey HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellExecuteHooks SUCCESS hKey: 0xC11EE194 2.60925293 Aim:FFF34515 EnumValue HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellExecuteHooks NOMORE 2.60928488 Aim:FFF34515 CloseKey HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellExecuteHooks SUCCESS 2.61210728 Aim:FFF34515 OpenKey HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion SUCCESS hKey: 0xC11EE194 2.61215854 Aim:FFF34515 QueryValueEx HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SubVersionNumber SUCCESS 20 43 0 2.61218882 Aim:FFF34515 CloseKey HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion SUCCESS

Good suggestion! Okay, did that, and it looks like it didn't find a string called "URL Protocol" under the http key in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, and then closed it. I added that key, and then it presents me with this: 2.45521045 Aim:FFF34515 OpenKey HKCR\http SUCCESS hKey: 0xC1191630 2.45526409 Aim:FFF34515 QueryValueEx HKCR\http\URL Protocol SUCCESS "" 2.45530319 Aim:FFF34515 OpenKey HKCR\http\shell\open\ddeexec\Application NOTFOUND 2.45541286 Aim:FFF34515 OpenKey HKCR\http\shell\open\command SUCCESS hKey: 0xC11CF16C 2.45546484 Aim:FFF34515 EnumValue HKCR\http\shell\open\command SUCCESS : "C:\PROGRA~1\MOZILLA\SEAMON~1.EXE -url "%1"" 2.45667362 Aim:FFF34515 CloseKey HKCR\http SUCCESS 2.45670724 Aim:FFF34515 CloseKey HKCR\http\shell\open\command SUCCESS 2.45685291 Aim:FFF34515 OpenKey HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellExecuteHooks NOTFOUND 2.45953274 Aim:FFF34515 OpenKey HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion SUCCESS hKey: 0xC11CF16C 2.45958400 Aim:FFF34515 QueryValueEx HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SubVersionNumber SUCCESS 20 43 0 2.45961452 Aim:FFF34515 CloseKey HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion SUCCESS I tried to fill in the ddeexec keys it asked for, but with no success. I searched the Internet for documentation on it, without much luck. I found one file from the browser wars that presented a registry registration file to make IE the default browser, but in the end it didn't help. Does anyone know the required structure? What I find the most interesting is this ShellExecuteHooks thing, I'll be looking for info on that. It might be the key.

There's one side-effect to having an IE-free installation: programs don't open your default browser anymore. At least, not all of them. To open desktop shortcuts, SHLWAPI.DLL is needed. I copied that from a cabinet file. The default web browser is specified in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, under the HTTP entry. SeaMonkey has set it correctly. I've done some research, and I find references to the ShellExecute API, which looks at the HTTP entry for web addresses. It's in shell32.dll. Okay. The two programs that won't open my default web browser are AIM 4.8 and aMSN. When clicking a link in AIM, it says that it can't find the application for tthe "http" protocol. I've run Dependancy Walker on it. It also uses an IE file called mswebapi.dll. I copied that over, but I still have the same issue. Of course, you can specify the application in that dialog box. But that doesn't help at all. Clicking a link doesn't do anything after I do that. aMSN plain doesn't do anything, and its configuration options for applications are weird. It works with a variable that holds the URL, placed after an application name. That didn't work. I placed the full path before the application. That didn't work either. Does anyone have a clue as to what might be wrong, or what strange methods some programs use to open a link in your default web browser?

I'm not afraid of DOS. What's this special trick and care you're talking about?

I did some searching, but I can't make out what would be best to use. I'm looking for a free disk image utility that will allow me to create an image of my primary hard drive partition that I can restore whenever some s***ty software infects my Windows 95 with IE components, or things start getting cluttered.

WTF? I use SeaMonkey, and it had been set to ask for each cookie at the time, with no websites blocked. Thanks, seems neat! Unfortunately, I ran into the exact same problem. So it must have something to do with my ActivePerl installation. Then, s*** happened. I wanted to install ActivePerl the normal way, which is to use an MSI package. So I had to install MSI first. Then, I tried to launch the MSI package. Crap, it wants Windows Scripting Host! No way am I going to install that. MSI then being of no use to me, I wanted to uninstall it. There's no uninstall option! Thanks, M$! So I manually removed the files. But then I discovered it had done more than copy files and associated a couple extensions! IT HAS INSTALLED PART OF IE ON MY MACHINE! This was evident by the Favorites folder now being considered as a system folder. At first I had noticed how my Windows folder had become 1.5 times its normal size. f***. Now I'm going to have to reinstall Windows.