herbalist

GDIPLUS.DLL goes into the system folder. Have you looked at Audacity? I haven't used it in ages (don't have it installed any more) and am not sure it does what you want, but it does just about anything else you can do with audio. Open Source. Not sure if the present version is 98 compatible. If it's not, I have the older versions that are. edit. Version 1.2.6 is 98 compatible and still available at SourceForge.

Does anyone know of a 98 compatible freeware alternative to Sysinternals TDImon that has filtering ability? Filtering is disabled in the free version

I should have most of the tools listed there or links to them. Which ones do you need?

See this thread for lots of options on registry cleaning, optimizing, backup, etc.

The PWL files would be visible from Windows. I'm not sure that you can successfully delete them from Windows safe mode (might be in use). Windows might automatically recreate it too. Not sure if WinME behaves the same as 98 in regards to this. If you have access to safe mode, you can get the full names of all pwl files while you're there. Unless you have used one of the unofficial patches to enable DOS on WinME, a 98 bootdisk will be needed. They're available from lots of places. The CD command is for changing directories or folders. It doesn't allow you to navigate to another directory when they're on different drives. If you boot from a floppy, the command prompt will probably be on the "A" drive. Change to the drive containing your Windows folder, probably "C". Type: cd C:\windows The prompt will now read C:\windows> Now you have some options. You can back up the .pwl files to another location. The "copy" command does this nicely. To make a copy of it on your desktop (assuming the desktop is C:\windows\desktop) Type: copy username.pwl C:\windows\desktop Replace username in the above with the actual name if known or with "*" (without quotes) if it's not. Original file is backed up. Now you can delete the original. Type: del username.pwl

If all you need is access to the system in "normal mode" and are not concerned about other stored passwords, Boot to Dos, navigate to the Windows folder, then delete or rename all files with the extension ".PWL". There's normally one for each user. Reboot, and you'll be able to log in without a password. Rick

Have begun Tor test number 2, with the following changes. My ISP had given me a slight speed increase (1184/448 up from 864/160) so I re-optimized my TCP stack using DrTCP, based on the tweak tester results at DSL Reports. Raised Rwin to 37752 from 20440, based on calculations from this page. Their tweak tester says this is too high but transfer efficiency stayed at 100% and I did get a slight speed increase with this setting as compared to their recommended setting. I'm getting 82-85% of the rated speed, according to their tests (according to their java speed tests to various servers). It's possible that Smoothwall (installed on a very old PC, P5-133MHZ) might be restricting the speed as well. Checking that will have to wait til I have more time. These settings are unchanged from the Tor first test run. I've included them here as several of them are not the default settings for 98SE. All of these are at: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\MSTCP DefaultTTL 64 MaxConnections 512 TcpTimedWaitDelay 30 While examining the first run logs from Tor, I found several instances where Tor appeared to intermittently lose tract of my internet IP and started using 192.168.xxx.xxx (network card IP) instead. This was causing Tor to internittently lose connection to other relays. From the Tor manual: I added the following to torrc in an attempt to correct this problem: Address (my real IP) KeepalivePeriod 90 It's far too early to tell if these have made any real difference, but so far I haven't seen less than 6 open connections to/from tor and there has been over 20 established connections at times, which is more than I saw during the first test.. One negative finding I neglected to mention during the first test. The Tor network map menus and traffic graph are very unresponsive when the Black Mesa theme is selected in RP9. As much as I like that theme, I've switched back to the classic theme for the remainder of the testing.

In addition to the modem, what hardware are we dealing with here? It's entirely possible that the 28K limit is due to an old rural phone service. There's one around here that's still like that. It's only been in the last couple years that you weren't stuck using a party line. Five miles from town, DSL isn't even available. Regarding an AV with that connection speed, any AV you choose has to be configurable regarding when and how often it updates. If I used an AV with that dialup, I'd insist on one update per day at most, and it would have to be able to do it when I'm asleep. For a 98 unit, there might not be one any more. Not sure how much better the selection is for 2000. It's been a long time since I used an AV or put one on Win 2000. If you have other auto-updating software, it might help to check on when they update and if that can be restricted or scheduled as well.

My 98SE Tor relay locked up on the evening of April 22. Total uptime 19 days 2 hours. No error messages, no warnings, just locked up. It's quite possible that this lockup is my own fault. A time sync program I use wasn't connecting to the time server, so I clicked on "connect" multiple times, not thinking that each click launched a new connection attempt. During the last few days before this crash, my system clock had started losing time, about 2 and a half minutes in 3 days. Not sure why that was happening. This was a bit disappointing but not bad for a first run. When compared to a lot of non-server versions of XP/Vista/Win-7, with uptimes measured in hours instead of days, this is very encouraging. I'm going to make a few changes and run the test again. Rick

With 28K dialup, the web is going to be slow no matter what OS you use. Ubuntu won't make any difference. No matter what OS you use, the contents of a web page are going to come through that line at the same speed. When I had 56K dialup (usually connected between 33K and 45K with a 1 hour time limit) several things helped. Not using Internet Explorer was at the top of that list. A download manager (Star Downloader) that could handle pausing, redials, and reboots was a lifesaver. With dialup, downloading and browsing at the same time was impossible. When I found something I wanted, I'd start the download, pause it almost immediately, then let it complete during the night. It took several nights, but I managed to download an entire Knoppix LiveCD through dialup with 98 and Star Downloader. Strange as it might sound, a software firewall, (Kerio 2.1.5 at the time) can help speed up the web slightly. I set it to block all of the OS components from having internet access, including windows explorer. That kept OS components and services from using the limited bandwidth. Yes, the gain is small, but with dialup, it's noticeable. This is much simpler to do with 98 where windows explorer is the only real bandwidth thief. On 2000, there's internet services that can be shut down or blocked by a firewall. It's doable but a little more involved. DSLreports has a java based tweak tester that will check several IP parameters on your system. After the check, it will suggest setting changes that help match your PC to the connection speed you have so you can get the most efficient use of it. The page after the test has a link to a small utility for this task. There's also links to speed tests there. With dialup, I'd suggest using the java based speed tests before and after you tweak your system. http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks Most of these settings are in the registry. I strongly suggest making a registry backup first or using a utility like TestRun to create a test registry. The original site is long gone but the Wayback Machine has the site, here. If they don't have the file itself, I do. It takes all of the risk out of working with the registry on a 9X system. On windows 2000, ERUNT will do the same job. No matter what OS you use, your biggest internet speed improvement will come from blocking ads and all of the extra garbage that's on web pages these days. Flash content is the biggest culprit by far. I'm pretty sure that the flashblock extension for Firefox is still being actively developed, as is the ad-block extension. If you prefer, a blocking hosts file that includes the common adservers, Google's garbage, etc helps trim down the pages. If you really want to clean out the web pages and are willing to take the time to learn it, Proxomitron is the ultimate web content filter, limited only by your ability to configure it. It's a small "unzip and go" app (the installer versions do the same thing, plus a few shortcuts). The version you'd want is Naoko 4.5, the last one. It works like a local proxy and modifies web pages according to the filters being used. After unzipping or installing it, you change your browsers proxy settings to point to 127.0.0.1, port 8080. That will route the browsers traffic through it. Proxomitron itself is no longer being developed, the author died some time ago. Several individuals still maintain filtersets for it, or you can study the included filters and learn to make your own. The premade filtersets aren't bad and will remove a lot of the junk from web pages. It comes with some fairly good help files, but to really get the most out of it, you'll want to learn to write your own, which will mean learning some HTML and javascript. The better you understand web languages, the more effective it gets, almost without limit. I've used it for years and know how and why it works, but I'm nowhere near mastering its abilities. How far you go with it is completely up to you. The Proxomitron app itself is one of those rare, timeless designs that won't become obsolete as long as someone writes filters for it. It'll be effective until the internet itself changes or operating systems no longer allow you to specify proxy settings. If only more software was designed like that. If you decide to try Proxomitron and want to study more of the filters, I have several of the older sets here. One in particular, JDlist from 2003 has some very good ideas in it. FYI, individual filters from different sets can be combined. BTW, brace yourself the first time you open Proxomitron's interface. The default color scheme will pop your eyes out!

"Will Win2000 pro do everything 98 does ?" That's depends on what "everything" is to you and what you need. There's some very simple things that are easy for 98 but require 3rd party help on 2000, like setting different screen resolutions for different users. You mentioned Firefox compatibility. What else will you be using this unit for? How important is DOS to you? Both are going to have software compatibility problems, just not with the same apps. Both have unofficial upgrades that improve their compatibility, KDW for 2000, KEX for 98. There's no realistic way to compare them short of taking all the apps that you want to use, ones that don't run on an unmodified 98 or 2000 system, and try them on the systems with the upgrades. Chances are that you'll have mixed results. I rarely use 2000 any more so I can't comment on how well KDW works. On my systems, KEX has been absolutely amazing. The only other unofficial upgrade for 2000 I've had any experience with is the unofficial service pack 5, which didn't work for me. On equal 9X compatible hardware, 98 will be faster. Stability is almost totally dependent on your hardware, drivers, and configuration. If we're comparing the systems with "official" upgrades only, 2000 is more stable. When you factor in the unofficial upgrades, it's not as clear which is more capable or stable. KEX and RP9 have turned my 98 unit into one of the most stable and reliable system I've ever used. Not everyone gets that lucky. With drivers for instance, 98 will often do much better when the user doesn't select the last available 98 compatible driver but installs one that's one or two versions older. I've run into this with chipset, internal graphics, and USB drivers for PCI cards. The final 98 compatible versions worked, but the previous versions worked much better. On this PC, this was especially true for the Intel 82845 graphics controller. I suspect that this is deliberate and is part of "planned obsolescence", done to persuade users that "newer is better". Windows 2000 users will probably have to deal with this too. Long term stability for both is almost completely dependent on how you maintain them and the policy you follow when installing or removing new or updated apps. Uninstallers leave files and registry entries behind. 98 does seem more sensitive to that buildup than 2000, but it does affect both. Making system backups before installing new apps and using them instead of the uninstallers solves most of this problem on both systems. A thought out partitioning arrangement that separates the system files from everything else makes a big difference too. This PC for example is dual boot, 98SE and XP-Pro. Each OS is on it's own FAT32 partition. They both share a dedicated swap partition and a separate data partition that contains the users data, the desktops, e-mail folders, etc. Both use a ramdrive for the browser cache. While both systems benefited from this arrangement, the performance increase for 98 was more than noticeable. Realistically, you're choosing between 2 systems that are no longer officially supported. Your reasons for selecting and/or choosing between these 2 does factor in to the decision. Is this choice because of hardware limitations? Are you actually "stuck in 98" or using it by choice? Is it because you prefer the straight-forward simplicity of the older systems? Is it a dislike or distrust of the newer systems? Does replacing perfectly good hardware (and software) just because MS says it's obsolete leave a bad taste in your mouth? Is it all of the above, like it is for me? You're going to have some compatibility problems with both OS choices. Even with the unofficial support, this will gradually get worse with both. On my 98 unit for instance, Seamonkey is my default browser. Without KEX, I'd be limited to 1.X versions. With KEX, the 2.0 versions work, as does the first 2.1 beta version. The next 2 beta versions are not working properly for reasons I have not yet looked into. The first 2.1 beta might be the last version I can use. Time will tell. You have to decide how important using the most current version of an application (Firefox at the moment) is to you, and why it's important. If always using the newest versions of applications is that important to you, you'll eventually have to switch to a newer operating systems. It seems to me that 98 doesn't satisfy your needs and you're not sure if 2000 will. Instead of choosing, why not set up a dual boot and have both? Dual boot has a lot of advantages, including being able to use one system to service the other. Even though I'm very much a 98 user, there are some things I need that 98 can't do, but XP will. This goes both ways. Neither entirely fills my needs, but the 2 together do. Just a thought. Rick

Glad you got it fixed. Problems like that are one reason I started making system backups before installing new apps or making major changes beyond the registry. Fixing a problem like that can easily take longer than making and restoring many backups.

I need to go back through all of my earlier backups. Several of them contain files I downloaded that never made it off of the desktop. I've since moved the desktop to the data partition, which solved that problem but created another, big time clutter! On my PCs, the operating systems are on their own partitions. Data is on separate partitions and/or drives. For most system partitions, I've been using an Acronis Rescue CD, version 8. It's been reliable and reasonably fast. Compression could be better but my system partitions are quite small, averaging around 1GB for the 98 units. For data partition backups, 7zip works just fine for me. It takes a lot longer than Acronis but gives a much better compression level. 7zip has a low priority option for the process, which allows me to back up a partition while working on something else, so the extra time it takes is not an issue. Most of my system backups get stored on a separate partition on an internal drive. A few of the ones I make for specific purposes or after certain upgrades get stored on an external drive or CD. The data partitions that I don't back up often enough get stored on a separate hard drive. A while ago, I experimented with using a command line version of 7zip on a boot CD that has USB, long file name, and DPMI. Most of the time, it worked quite well with a very high compression level, about 50% better than Acronis. I did have problems with some file paths that contained too many characters and with file names or shortcuts that used uncommon characters, like µTorrent. It's main drawback was its speed, very slow. At the time, I was very short on hard drive space. Now that I have bigger hard drives and flash drives available, I no longer use it.

A quick update. The current stable Tor/Vidalia bundle has been running flawlessly as a relay/exit node for the last 2 weeks on 98SE. The WSAENOBUFS 10055 error that affects most non-server versions of Windows from 98 thru Win-7 when running Tor has not materialized. Either I've been very lucky or the KEX and RP9 upgrades have somehow mitigated this bug. Tihiy, Xeno, your work is nothing short of amazing!

How well NUSB works with 1.1 is going to depend on the specific USb device. Some don't work well at 1.1 speeds. The NUSB package installs like any other application. It's not going to show up in the device manager until you plug in a device that needs one of its components. NUSB supplies the drivers but windows doesn't install any until they're needed. If your hardware is limited to USB1.1, a 2.0 PCI card is a good investment. Many USB cards use the Orangeware drivers, which get along quite well with NUSB.

Once I corrected a network error that was causing Tor to lose connectivity, I switched it to relay/exit port mode, where it's been for the last 3 days. Both are stable. Available resources and memory staying constant. Except for Tor complaining that "you are running Windows 98 SE (A); this probably won't work", there have been no other problems. Anyone know if that specific message can be turned off? Regarding KEX database, it might be a good idea to wait until the apps compatibility and stability are verified by several people before adding it to the database. This thread will work for that.

I've always used 98lite during the initial 98 setup. I can't say if the order really makes any difference, save for the possibility of the service pack upgrading components that were removed by 98lite. I would save Revolutions Pack and KernelEX for last.

I've been using 98lite for years, both the free and paid versions. On my PCs, I've always selected the "chubby" install as I don't have a copy of 95. I also prefer being able to single click, and I keep just enough to make this possible. Even with a chubby install, you can remove Internet Explorer. IMO, getting rid of Internet Explorer is the single best thing you can do for 98 from both a stability and security perspective. Removing IE does break some apps that use its components. On the few occasions I've run into this, it's been one or two files the app needs. These can be put into the applications own folder, which solves the problem most of the time. Regarding other upgrades, I've had excellent results with Gape's service pack, both the 2.1 and 3.X beta versions. If you need USB, the NUSB packages are excellent, both the SE and FE versions. It gets along fine with the Orangeware drivers that many USB-PCI cards use. These 2 together gave my old 98FE unit a dependable USB 2.0 capability. On my Pentium 4 Dell, KernelEX works great. On older hardware, there are other limitations that limit application compatibility which KernelEx can't address. Revolutions Pack is a good upgrade for both appearance and improved stability. There's a kernel32.dll fix that allows 98 to handle files up to the maximum size permitted by FAT32 and an update for ESDI_506.PDR that will Enable 48BitLBA on 98, allowing it to work with much larger hard drives. There's an unofficial fix for shell32.dll that fixes many lockups. All of these work as described and together make 98 a better system than it's ever been. There's plenty of others plus a lot of tweaks that help even more. There's no single correct approach for upgrading your 98 system. It really depends on how you want to equip it and whether you like to assemble your own package or prefer a single big upgrade. All of the upgrades listed here and on MDGX are good. Just pick what matches your needs. When you have a fair amount of free time, browse through MDGX. It's a gold mine for 98 users.

Bad choice of words on my part. Since some of these apps work well on one KernelEX equipped system but not on another, it stands to reason that they have other requirements that some systems provide but others don't. I also think that it's a reasonably safe assumption that most of our 98 systems are as upgraded as we can get them, and in spite of the differences in how they're equipped, most of them are quite similar at their core. The biggest differences in our systems is the hardware, primarily the processor type and chipset. I've run into these types of variable results here as well, where an app runs well on a P4-Dell but either doesn't run or requires a different compatibility setting on a P3-Compaq or a P2-HP. Of course, these all have different chipsets as well. I've wanted to investigate this but was down to one working monitor which made it almost impossible. I think it would benefit all of us when we encounter these variable results with an application (such as this one) if we specify the processor and chipset of the PC involved. I also suspect that any KernelEx compatibility database we put together is going to have to take this into account.

The present stable Tor/Vidalia bundle works with KEX as a client. I'm not sure how well it will work long term as a relay or bridge. At the very least, it will require raising the default MaxConnections settings. It is a fairly heavy load on RAM and resources. RP9 recommended. Tor does complain about running on 98. From message log: I'm going to keep Tor (bridge mode) and 98 running until one or the other fails in order to determine if 98 can be an asset to Tor.

I just installed version 2.5.194 of PDFXchange, over the top of my existing version. It installed just fine with KEX set to XP-SP2 compatibility. It wouldn't install on the default setting. I left KEX set to default for the installed executable. I just opened 6 PDFs of various sizes and content, scrolled then and switched back and forth between them with no issues. Can't test printing, never found 98 compatible drivers for it. KernelEX is extremely variable in regards to how well it works on different hardware. On my P4 Dell, it works very well. On my older P3 and P2 PCs, it does not work near as well and has compatibility issues with several apps on these PCs. I'm fairly sure that how well KEX will work depends on the processor type and chipset of the PC. In this thread, if/how well flash player works has been tied to which processor the PC uses. I've run into similar issues with KEX and System Safety Monitor, different results on different hardware. It would seem that this applies to other applications as well. Starting in post 146 of that thread, Jumper made a debugger available that may be useful in determining why PDFXchange works on some systems and not others.

PDFXchange also works well on 98 with KernelEX. For me, it works better than Foxit as it doesn't continually deplete system resources.

I don't believe that there's an equivalent to the 9X members projects section, but specifically for XP at this time, at least not here. Given XPs popularity, it's entirely possible that such projects will appear after support completely ends.

I used SeaMonkey 1.1.18 when I downloaded and installed. Their test pages showed the same results when I used SeaMonkey 2.0.10.

I just went to Adobe and downloaded Shockwave, slim version. Installed it with KEX in default settings. Revisited the link you asked me to check. It reports version 11.5.9r620.