herbalist

I ran the winsock fix on VPC. It deletes DUN and the Winsock keys, reboots, reinstalls both from the Windows CD, then reboots again. It seems to be a valid repair utility that automates the process. There's still a few versions of Winsockfix available. Most are from several years ago when certain types of malware replaced the winsock files with their own. If the malware was removed by something like SpyBot or AAW, the replaced winsock files were also removed, breaking the PCs ability to access the web. The version of Winsockfix I still have was by Option^Explicit Software Solutions and contained the winsock files, eliminating the need for the CD. It got a lot of use at spyware removal forums when this type of malware was common.

Don't Fear the Reaper was by Blue Oyster Cult. The album was Agents of Fortune. I'm not familiar with the video but that might help you track it down.

For me, it was just the opposite. The first PC I really started to work with and learn the nuts and bolt of was an old HP with 98FE, given to me by a friend who bought a new WinME unit. It was a low power adware infested unit, 64MB RAM and a 366MHZ Celeron. With Norton Internet Security installed, it took over 3 minutes to boot up. Two hours online would exhaust its resources. If I didn't reboot at the first sign of problems, it would crash very shortly afterwards. Fortunately she had the HP recovery disks it came with. After getting rid of Norton and switching to Mozilla, it became a much more usable system. Even with 64MB RAM, it could browse all day. Later on, I obtained a real 98FE CD and learned about 98lite and IEradicator. The more Microsoft software I removed from it, the better system it became. I'm still using this PC, although it's gone thru a lot of changes since then. It's now a multiboot setup with a 5 year old install of 98FE still the default OS. It's worn out 2 floppy drives and 2 CD drives. The CDRW it has now is close to worn out. Still using the original motherboard and 5.1GB hard drive, even though it ran 24/7 for several years. It's proven to be the most durable and reliable system I've had. The WinME unit my friend replaced it with died years ago. 98FE got a bad rap thanks in large part to the underpowered hardware it was usually installed on. FE might run on 64MB of RAM but it does so much better when it has 128MB or more. It's other big problem was Internet Explorer. It doesn't seem to matter which version it is, IE drains 98FE worse than any other software I've used. It's also been 98s biggest vulnerability. Once I IEradicated it, it felt like a completely different PC, much faster and more responsive, almost like I'd upgraded the hardware. IMO, the best way to make 98FE into a fast, stable system is to get rid of as much MS software as possible and replace it with Open Source and quality freeware apps.

Assuming properly working systems, as up to date as possible without using unofficial upgrades, in what other areas is WinME superior to 98SE? Besides the RAM limit, are there any other advantages to WinME that can't be incorporated or transplanted into 98SE with the unofficial upgrades?

Just to clarify, are you referring to 98FE (gold) or 98SE?

I haven't owned a WinME system so I can't give you a side by side comparison. That said, I've serviced a lot of both 98SE and ME units. Based on what I've seen servicing the 2, WinME is a more temperamental OS. When it's working right, it's a good system, but the strangest things can set off all kinds of issues that I've never seen on 98. When both 98 and ME were supported, I was cleaning out malware and installing basic security packages on a lot of them, usually an AV, a simple firewall, and a anti-spyware program. On more than one WinME unit, the firewall would fail to work when the AV updated. No such issue on the 98 boxes. On others, external devices would stop working. The drivers were either corrupted or disappeared entirely for no apparent reason. On another, the keyboard would work intermittently in normal mode but just fine in safe mode while the mouse did just the opposite! An instant message program that worked fine on 98 would trigger a BSOD on the WinME unit whenever the user tried to send audio messages. There are other instances like these that I can't recall at the moment where the software or device worked fine on 98 but had all kinds of problems on WinME. IMO, WinME behaves like a beta system that wasn't ready for release. That's just about right. On units that worked properly, most of the 98 units I've worked with were just as fast as the ME units, but were achieving that performance on weaker hardware. Given a choice between the 2, if only "official" updates are being used, I'd pick 98 (FE or SE) over WinME every time. That said, some of the components in WinME are better than their 98 counterparts. A lot of the unofficial updates for 98 that are available here use these and components from NT systems. IMO, a 98FE/SE unit with these unofficial updates is superior to all of the official 9X systems in every way that matters. I have both 98 FE and SE systems. Both are equipped with the unofficial upgrades. Both are rock stable and perform better than the hardware specs would lead you to expect.

A while ago, I picked up a refurbished Dell with a P4-2.4GHZ and 1GB RAM. I repartitioned it, converted the XP partition to FAT 32, and installed a stripped down lite 98SE on a new primary partition. During the initial setup, I had to remove one of the two RAM sticks. After installing the drivers and the Unofficial 98SE Service Pack 2.1, I reinstalled the 2nd stick. This gave me a very stable starting point which has been further enhanced by several of the other unofficial improvements available on this site, Kernel EX, RP-9, NUSB, along with patches to fix the 137GB hard drive limitation and the copy >2GB file limitation. It's proven to be one of the most stable and reliable systems I've used, not to mention one of the fastest. It outperforms the XP system on the same hardware at most everything that matters, bootup and shutdown speed, application launch speed, file moving and copying speeds, etc. If it wasn't for one online game that has graphics problems on 98, I would have got rid of XP completely. I can't say for certain that the unofficial service pack itself solved the RAM problem, but it was definitely part of the solution that worked for me. Every PC is different and everyone's results will be different. Pick up a good backup/restore system before you try too many "unofficial" updates, preferably one that doesn't need to be installed on an existing OS. I use an Acronis Rescue CD. I've also used a DOS bootdisk with long file name support and a command line version of 7zip. As long as you have a way to get back to where you started from, there's no risk with unofficial updates. BTW, if you don't actually need all the RAM you have and are just trying to make 98 work with it, consider adding a RAMdrive to use up the extra. You can move your browser cache, temp folders and temporary internet files to it. They'll be automatically deleted when you reboot. This stops most of the junk buildup on your hard drive and reduces the need for defragmenting.

If it ain't broke, you haven't tweaked it enough. or New discoveries are being made every day. I can't determine what's wrong with it until I consult other specialists.

Xeno The direct link is the same file. If I disable KernelEX, I get the message about expecting a newer version of Windows. With the settings on the compatibility tab set to anything other than disabling KernelEX, nothing happens when I try to launch the installer, save a momentary cursor change to the hourglass. No error messages, no changes to anything. It's not System Safety Monitor blocking the process. This system has been stripped down, both with 98lite and by manually removing other files. I've probably removed something that it needs.

So far, no problems with the latest version of KEX. Can't get Flash player plugin 10.1.53.64 to install. The installer doesn't seem to do anything at all. Tried uninstalling the old version, no change. Does the latest flash plugin work with the 1X versions of SeaMonkey?

Thank you very much! I'm glad you know how to read those things. To me, that looks like a foreign language. SSM was not the problem. The VPC file is the culprit. It's part of VPC additions that give more integration, more screen resolution options, etc. After uninstalling VPC additions in safe mode, both UR1 and unofficial service pack 5 installed fine. VPC additions are an "all or nothing" arrangement, all contained in an ISO that's captured as a CD. I might be able to extract the ISO and use some or most of the features it adds. I'm using VPC 5.1. Upgrading is not really an option as the host PC is 98SE. I don't know if a newer version of VPC would work with KernelEX or not. I wholly expect that any possible 9X compatibility was eliminated as soon as MS got it. Except for the rare VNETBIOS errors I get from VPC, this is the first issue I've had with this version. I haven't decided if I going to install Virtual software on the XP system of this PC. If I do, it'll probably be Virtualbox. If I've heard correctly VPC doesn't work well with non-MS guest systems. Thanks again.

I do have a paging file on the root drive that I had reset to the size listed in the above mentioned memory dump post, but the change didn't stick. It was still 384MB. On Win 2K, the memory dump options are a small memory dump (64k), a complete memory dump, and a kernel memory dump. I have a 255MB complete dump, not sure where to upload this. Too big for MediaFire. The 64K minidumps apparently aren't useful. I can also make a kernel memory dump. Which would you like? If you want the complete dump, any ideas where I can go with this? Can I compress it with 7zip without corrupting it?

After trying to attach the file again directly thru VPC, I uploaded the minidump to mediafire. http://www.mediafire.com/?ed2i9725f2n249n If this doesn't work or you need the full dump, let me know.

When I attach the file as is, I get: Do I need to use an upload site and link to it or is something else wrong that I'm missing?

I've installed the debugger and generated the memory dump. It's 255MB. I also have a couple of 64K minidumps, which 2K apparently generated when VPC crashed. Win2K generated this BSOD during the reboot after installing UR1. Is this minidump sufficient to analyze this or do I need to upload the full dump somewhere? Changed file extension of minidump to allow upload.

The F-Prot for DOS download still works. It appears to have been last updated in 2006, but if you stopped using that PC in 2002, it should cover any thing that might be on it. If I remember right, you'll need 3 floppies for F-Prot.

I have a Dell Optiplex GX260 with XP pro and 98SE installed. The built in sound output is too weak to drive speakers. I had a sound blaster PCI-128 with a 5507 chipset that I'd taken out of another PC. XP had no problem installing drivers for the card. Getting it working on 98 was much harder. 98 didn't recognize it. Creative support had no drivers that worked with it. I found some at driverguide that work well. The sound card now works well on both operating systems except for one problem. When XP shuts down, it makes a very loud pop in the speakers. It's much louder than any sound or music that was being played. When the volume is turned up, it's loud enough that I'm concerned for the speakers. When 98 shuts down, the "pop" is much quieter, barely noticeable no matter how loud I have the volume set. I occasionally feed the line output of the PC into my stereo to get the better sound and higher volumes. If I forget to switch off the line input to the stereo before shutting down XP, the speaker pop is so loud that you can feel it across the room. How do I eliminate or tone down this shutdown pop on XP?

I'd be hard pressed to figure out just how many forums I've been a member of over the years. I'm guessing between 50 and 75. Some I was active in for years, mainly malware removal and security forums. I'll generally join a forum when the material is of interest to be, for instance I joined MSFN for the 98 forums. Most of the time, I use the same name. I'm semi-active in a couple of forums, not nearly as much as I used to be. Just not enough time in a day.

I did that. On my second attempt, I let Windows Update try to install over 90 updates. I let it try to install all of them. The install seemed to work until I rebooted. Then the same reboot loops started. I then started installing updates one at a time via Windows Update, starting with the oldest. When an update installed correctly and the system rebooted normally, I saved the changes. It was when I installed the update rollup that the reboot loop started again. I tried installing both thru Windows Update and with an offline installer. Also tried safe mode. When I have a bit more time, I'll install the debugger and get a memory dump. I was hoping that there was something simple I was overlooking. No such luck it would seem.

I get a BSOD on my 98SE system as well, a Dell with a Pentium-4, 2.4GHZ.

I knew I was missing something, that 2K doesn't show error messages unless auto-reboot is disabled. It is a stop error. Restoring scsiport.sys didn't help. I installed the hotfix in safe mode. The error message is the same except that only the top "***address...ntoskrnl.exe" is present.

I can boot into safe mode but have not seen that error message. There have been no error messages at all. The safe mode boot does take an extremely long time to complete compared to a normal boot before the update is installed. In http://support.microsoft.com/kb/891861/ it says This is the one I used. I did try restoring scsiport.sys to see if it would help. No change. I can add this 2K virtual drive as a slave drive to my virtual 98 testbox if that would help with accessing logs, file versions, etc. It is FAT32 formatted. If I can resolve this issue on the virtual system, I will try to get the unofficial service pack installed on the real one again. It appears to be the same problem.

A while back, I tried to install the unofficial service pack 5 on my 2K unit. When the PC restarted, it went into a reboot loop. I restored back to SP4 and left it at that. Lately I've been building a virtual 2K unit for testing purposes. This one was going to be an up to date starting point for testing other ideas and apps. Again, I tried to install the unofficial service pack and ran into the reboot loop problem again. I reverted back to SP4 and took it to Windows Update, which said I needed 95 updates. The first try was installing them all, same reboot loop problem. I restored back again and started installing the updates one at a time. It turns out that Update Rollup 1 (Windows2000-KB891861-v2-x86-ENU.EXE) is the source of the problem. The PC boots past both of the progress bars. It gets to the "Windows is starting..." dialog box. Then the screen goes black and it starts over again. I've tried both offline installing and thru Windows update. Also tried reinstalling in safe mode. I made sure that all of the updates prior to UR1 were installed. I've tried on both NTFS and FAT32 systems. When it occurred on my physical PC, I assumed it was an incompatibility stemming from the old hardware, originally a 98FE unit. Now that the problem is repeating in a virtual unit, it makes me think I've missed installing something that it needs. Might be using the wrong search terms, but I can't seem to find anything specific on reboot loops for this update. Any ideas?

The flickering seems to be gone here as well. I normally have 5 icons in the tray, one of which is animated. Had 8 during the last round of testing, one of which was disappearing at times with 9.6.4. The tray appearance is very stable now. It's rare for any developer to respond that fast with fixes and/or new versions, whether it's a company or individual. The only other one I've seen respond like this was the developer of SSM. It's very enjoyable to test for such responsive people.

The issue appears to be fixed. The browser on the host system worked fine while a virtual 2K system was updating in the background. TCPView working well. None of the old issues have reappeared. Everything I've checked is up to speed and working properly. This time, I'm backing up the RP installers on a different partition. Not going to lose or misplace them again.