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Does DOS work in your configuration with more than ~800 MB of RAM? Although on my machine Win98SE booted successfully with 0x40000, DOS box could not be started.

Thank you. I installed "Hide OE" and it seems to do the job.

I believe there is no difference between this subforum and its parent. Both forums should be merged.

i915P appears to support Win98SE too. (i915G might work w/o the crap graphics controller.) I have good experience with ATI X300/X550 on PCI-E bus. Others listed on Catalyst's release notes page might work.

My colleague is using Outlook Express that comes with MSIE 6. She asked me if it is possible to enable a tray icon that changes as new messages arrive in inbox. She claims that in the old configuration before reinstall there was this functionality. I couldn't figure out if you can do that in Outlook Express, because I am not using it myself due to security reasons (nLite'd out for good). Is it possible?

I meant files at least 20 MB of length, for example music files in lossless format. Files bigger than 4 GB may be stored split into several parts (like it is on Video DVD). I was trying to point out that not everyone needs small clusters.

Microsoft wants you to believe that NTFS is the only reasonable choice. XP's performance with FAT32 should not be taken as indication of the quality of FAT32. 1. Which filesystem to choose for a disk depends on how you'll gonna be using that disk. Small cluster size, for example, would only slow down operations with the disk and provide no benefit, if you only store large multimedia files. 2. There is also no place for Unicode characters in filenames. You cannot possibly expect for every networking protocol or removable disk filesystem you're gonna be using (or software that operates with these disks) to support Unicode. Having special characters in filenames will probably render them inaccessible in future. 3. You might not need security permissions at all.

I agree. My record is 4 viruses. And that's without any special security software and numerous visits to warez websites. I've read reports that antivirus would terminate long batch jobs (video encoding), and disallow installation of tools that optimize the operating system.

I believe XP should have come with Win98 as the secondary startup option by default. Maybe they were afraid about "political" consequences of another "DOS-based" system, even if it would only load DOS when required. I have setup my machine this way and now I have zero incompatible software, and if my WinXP wouldn't boot for some reason, I start up Win98 and fix the problem. I can also backup each operating system from the other one (boot disks require drivers). I've Googled up an article a while ago. It claimed that WinVista will refuse to install on a FAT32 partition, but would boot if copied to one manually. The article said you need MacOS and an USB harddisk, but basically you only needed another OS (such as WinXP) and be able to write the boot area. I haven't tested that myself due to lack of and need for a copy of Vista.

The only password I have is BIOS password. I've setup it for the only reason so that the computer wouldn't boot to Windows automatically, and I could turn it off calmly or enter BIOS setup. My personal FTP server has a password, so that I'm the only one on the Internet who can use it. No one is allowed to touch my computer physically without my permission.

I totally agree with you about FAT32. 4 GB is indeed a very pressing limitation. There is a standard that extends FAT32 by allowing a few more bits for file size. It's called FAT32+. But I have not heard of any practical implementations. For now I could suggest that you create an NTFS partition for the large files you will be working with. This is what I have done: 3 HDDs, one of them in NTFS.

I'm not so sure about this. I experienced data corruption when writing to a drive connected via a RAID controller in dos mode.

Try the Native USB mass storage drivers: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=43605

Input the new network configuration, press No when asked to reboot. Go to Control Panel and disable your network adapter. Enable it back.

You can use PDDLGHLP.EXE, a part of PowerDesk Utilities 3. Install it by putting a shortcut into your startup group. The settings of Open and Save As dialogs will be preserved. Send me a note if you would like to download this program.

When unpacking the Monkey's Audio v4.00 beta 2 (CRC32: FC29F36A) Universal Extractor v1.5 displays a message box titled "Test" with one choice "OK". The file gets unpacked after I press ok. What's the meaning of this msg box?

I highly doubt that esdi_506.pdr has anything to do with USB storage. I am currently using a 320 GB (decimal gigabytes) harddisk in a USB enclosure w/o problems. My local harddisks also aren't being accessed via esdi_506.

Some apps don't really require XP, just their installers do. Some apps don't even really require installation. But as awergh said, it depends on the software product.

NUSB v3 should give you USB 2.0 speed (actual ~20 MB/s) and support for more storage devices. I have successfully installed NUSB v3.0 over v2.3 on my i915P+ICH6 motherboard.

There is at least one virus that disables all possible actions on a PC, such as accessing Regedit. If you can't access Regedit anymore, you could use "ITweakU" to reset the restriction and then remove other Policies in the registry editor.

The (default) value in HKCR\.extension points to another key, where you can specify the shell icon and one or more commands, that appear when you right-click on somename.extension The basic options you can set in Registry are: HKCR\.avi\(default)="Application.Identifier" HKCR\Application.Identifier\DefaultIcon\(default)="d:\apps\mymovieplayer.exe,2" // third icon in this executable file HKCR\Application.Identifier\Shell\(default)="command_name" // the default command to be run when you double click HKCR\Application.Identifier\Shell\command_name\(default)="Play in My Movie Player" HKCR\Application.Identifier\Shell\command_name\command\(default)="d:\apps\mymovieplayer.exe "%L"" // Long File Name HKCR\Application.Identifier\Shell\command_name_2\(default)="Play in Audio Player" HKCR\Application.Identifier\Shell\command_name_2\command\(default)="d:\apps\audioplayer.exe "%1"" // File Name I, for example, have systematically called my custom associations Application.Identifier as "ZZ_extension", so that all of them can be easily extracted from the backup of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT (HKCR) key. This way all asociations appear at the bottom, and all extensions at the top of the exported .REG file. Windows ME and XP (and maybe 2000 too) have another way to customize associations – the Open With dialog. If the user chooses something there, this setting cannot be overridden by editing HKCR\Application.Identifier\Shell\(default). I do not know where those preferences are stored

IMHO, the small 16x16 icon should be left in Win98 style. That applies to all XP icons.

Is it safe to attempt to install the new 3.0 (supposed to give Hi-Speed) over previous v2.3 or v2.4?

All this trouble because of forum rules and the copyright law? You ain't serious.

Thank you, Eidenk. It looks like a good free alternative to WinHex.