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I find that everytime someone uses the word "death" in this context, the are helping Microsoft do the burying for free. I didn't see a Server 2003 option in the poll, which is another option to make a system with lots of memory. I am going to build a new system like that because this XP system, which will certainly keep running, doesn't quite cut it. The size of any NT6 system is completely ridiculous. That was an excellent article in the Inquirer. I'm pretty sure one can survive without an antivirus and still do banking from an XP system as long as the installed browser version is supported at their bank.

Are there any utilities for reporting GPU capabilities from Windows 98 where these old video adapters are working. What is the compatibility level of Intel HD Graphics with old 3D games? I am quite pleased with how modern "budget" nVidia cards can render Direct3D 8, 9 and OpenGL titles with full antialiasing and fanless, but they won't run any DX6 era titles at all (crashes, picture full of artifacts). I don't own a HD Graphics and would like to know how it compares.

The icons inside the system tray are from AIDA64/Everest, which I launched to demonstrate what happens if any new icon are added there. Next to it is the keyboard layout and language indicator. Indeed, if it is hidden, the taskbar behaves normally: A click on the lowest pixel moves the pointer up by two and whichever button is there is activated.

I have recently switched over to using the Windows language bar from a custom utility to switch keyboard layouts. The utility leaked GDI objects and was often too chatty. The built-in bar replaces it, and also allows to pick from several keyboards for the same language. Turns out windows hardly needs any localization add-ons at all. I recall the old language bar in Windows 98 could only switch languages and it was possible to have only one keyboard per language. But this also made the single icon more compact than the bar is. Whenever I have the language bar showing it increases the height of the taskbar by 2 pixels. This means that if move the mouse pointer to the bottom left corner of the screen, it is no longer over the Start button, and clicking doesn't bring up the Start menu. When a new icon is added to the systray (notification area) the language bar also becomes partially obstructed by the systray, and I must run "adjust the language band position" from its menu to realign it. This occurs in the classic theme on WinXP SP1 and SP3, with the menu font at both standard 8pt as well as 10pt. Is it possible to either stop the Language Bar from resizing the taskbar or as a last resort return to the basic single icon mode from Win98?

I was unable to reproduce the crash on Win2k or XP SP2 or SP3 (all slower and with less memory), where 3.7.4.1 loaded and seemed fully functional. I very mouch doubt that it was a coincidence, because my PC had been up for about 20 days before that and had no issues launching old FZ. Lately, I rarely use the Client at all, and am doing my transfers in Total Commander, which supports FTP implicit SSL as well and, since version 7, is now complete with the latest extensions such as UTF-8 and MLSD directory listing. Total Commander works very well for short sessions, because it doesn't have the ability to resume. It can easily initiate 2 streams by starting another backgroud transfer. Over LAN I can transfer any files using just Total Commander. TC connected to FileZilla Server over SSL and showing configration options I find that FileZilla is the best method to transfer files between different Windows versions, which have problems connecting over SMB, and at higher speed than possible over Neighborhood. Edit: I was confused about the different kinds of Secure file transfer protocols. After research I found that Total Commander supports FTP over SSL internally (used with FileZilla Server and similar), and SFTP (used with Linux boxes) with this plugin. Both protocols need encryption DLLs on the system. They can be shared by several programs. Both protols are well integrated into the file manager, and in case of the SFTP(SSH) plugin, one can even extract compressed files directly onto a remote server. The interface needs some getting used to (sites/servers are configured via TC's "Network Neighborhood" which is a catch all place for foreign file systems). SFTP appears to be faster and more reliable when sending many small files. I was able to initiate a background transfer and keep working in the file manager more fluently than with FTP.

I am afraid that in this case support means more than usual. I just tried the latest FileZilla Client and it caused a BSOD on my XP (SP1) computer! Have they jumped on an XP hater bandwagon!? The only other program that did this was Process Explorer, where it might be justified by the fact that it is a system utility with a driver. But in the FileZilla Client!??? I am quite pissed at this point, because I tried the program on my main computer never expecting this. And have difficulty finding praising remarks about the program, or concentrate on researching the reason of the crash. Well, the FTP protocol is along with the security extensions is quite mature to say the least, FileZilla is feature rich, and has implemented features that make FTP work well on modern connections already (such as large socket buffers). So which ever version is working on your computer (3.0.9.2 on mine), will continue to work well for the foreseeable future. I'm not sure how interesting an FTP server would be to hackers if there were security vulnerabilities. This development is quite puzzling. Server was working on Win98 up until version 0.9.12c from 2005. The changelog claims that Win95 is working. I still have the management UI here which I used to connect to old computers. I've not followed the development of the Client, mainly because even version 2 did everything I needed from it and had no problems. Geez, a blue screen....

Yes, I am aware of the setting. In older OS the default was to reboot, and a warning was shown the first time on-the-fly resolution change was attempted. But this state here is "dynamic"; the setting in display properties isn't being changed, no it is possible to override the choice to reboot. Perhaps this is acceptable, and I'm just too reluctant to reboot.

I reckon this is mostly software or driver problem, and not hardware, because it is cured by a reboot. The issue here is that sometimes I can't change the screen resolution without a reboot. If I reboot I can again change resolutions for a while, until I do "something" with the computer. After that resolution changes are no longer possible. I can't determine what this something is; it might a badly written program that leaves the video driver in an "open" state. If I go to display properties to set the resolution, I'm informed that I need to reboot. If I launch a game, which switches screen mode, the game either crashes (most of them) or it handles the case and switches to a compatibility windowed mode. I'm seeing this under Windows XP with both nVidia and ATI cards. Has anybody encountered this problem?

Could it be related to the audio driver, and only inderectly to the kernel mixer? Have you tried to remove and reinstall the driver? I once had a weird problem where the audio driver crashed due to ATI Tray Tools (which was for video)... Perhaps you recently installed another system driver, such as one coming with a system monitor or something similar?

I would vote for FileZilla too. I use both the Server and the Client. They are stable products that feel native and accessible under Windows. FileZilla has support for both methods of Secure FTP, as well as the SSH protocol, which I haven't used myself though.

All these systems will slow down if you add and remove software to them, which leaves behind registry keys, and causes fragmentation in registry and disk space from the bits thad did get removed. That is easily cured with defragmentation. But best prevented by separating System from Temp files from Swap, Games and other Data files, into disk partititions, so that adding a game doesn't cause much changes to the system. If the system is booted and run with the same set of applications, I don't expect it to slow down much. I'd examine the hard disk with MyDefrag to find bits that can't be defragmented by the usual means (NTFS UsnJrnl file, FAT32 directory entries), and find ways to get rid of them. MyDefrag's own forum is a good resource. Large data files can be defragmented the best if you can temporarily move them to another disk and then back to the now empty original location. My main system has been running for seven years. I didn't know it was this many before I looked. And it's been put through a lot. It does seem to me that it gets slower after a long uptime. This is most noticeable when accessing partitions that are fragmented. Cured by a reboot.

That script read my entire, unique list of installed fonts via the Flash plugin for 21.92 "bits"! Removing Flash prevented that. The next list highest category was set of preferred languages. Having 3 on the list gave the same 21.92 "bit" count for that item. Clearing it out to leave on English, dropped the estimate to 8 "bits".

For nVidia cards, this should be accomplishable in the default Control Panel under Display -> Change Resolution -> Customize -> Enable resolutions not exposed by display (or adding a custom one). One of the few positives of nVidia.

Chances are, it will just work. Or it won't depending on how the Asus app is designed. Your options are kinda limited if the router must send the exact same configuration (subnet) to both the TV and Phone. Except you can choose which network interface to go on the Internet with, by removing the gateway of the other one. There are at least two sets of IPs on each side of the router. You must have a dynamic one on the "WAN" side, but are free to set a static configuration on the "LAN" side for some or all PCs.

Windows updates will be one thing I won't be missing, because they've indeed brought more trouble than they are worth. My main Windows XP SP1 system installed in 2008 is still working well. It was originally installed on an USB drive with some modifications, and then transferred. After I upgraded my processor, I never re-installed, but merely changed the HAL. Updates needlessly interfere with a working system. Occasionally they need research and advanced knowledge (more than I have). Some things that come to mind: tcpip.sys with the imposed half-open limit (before you think P2P, it's enough to transfer "small" files over FTP to set it off), unstable network adapter drivers pulled from Windows Update, installation of unneeded IPv6 which interferes with local DNS resolution, the Event Log filled with messages from HHCTRL every time a CHM file is browsed (by the time I trust a CHM file, I've trusted the exe it came with already). I just faced all these isues when dealing with this SP3 PC here. I'm sometimes in an online chat and the other party is telling me that they'll go for a reboot, because a batch of Windows Updates are demanding so. That's completely unacceptable to have my PC hostage, and rebooting at somebodys else's request. (I think there is probably a choice to postpone it, but even so.) I see these very chatty updates a method to pre-condition users into thinking they can't survive without them. My PC is also behind a router, and has always been. I agree that this is the right setup, and I implement it on all my PC installations. It helps if the OS is reinstalled. But it hardly helps in updating, because every new Windows version is taking up more or much more space. The bigger is better. If the System partition would fit a new OS, the hard drive wasn't used efficiently before. My Win98 partition: 1 GB (Win2k would fit there), WinXP - between 3 GB and 8 GB. No way to put Vista on there. When talking about "upgrading" instead of reinstalling, apparently NT 6.3 upgrade installer doesn't "support" such a customized system at all.

A computer most certainly can work with 2 network adapters. In fact, I am typing from such a computer now, where wireless is going to the internet (not under my control) 192.168.1.27/24 and wired goes to another local PC to transfer files over smb and ftp 192.168.1.18/30 (doesn't have a gateway entered). Normally the subnets should not overlap, but I got it working. Without a gateway on the second adapter, the computer still has only one route to the internet. I think the adapters have to be on different subnets so that you can direct traffic into one or the other. You could control which adapter is prefered to reach the Internet, if both have routes to it, by changing the gateway metric.

I've been extremely impressed by Registry Workshop. It's not a cleaner and fixer, but an editor. You can do anything you wish you could with Regedit, and it manages all that while being small, fast and portable. ($30 shareware) Registry cleaning and defragmenting is useful after a purge of many unneeded applications have been performed, such as if you have received a used computer. I know of no automatic cleaner. I sometimes go through with a registry cleaner, to get its opinion. If I see there Nero, I am reminded that I still have traces of it. Then I clean them out all of it's progids using Regedit (and now Workshop) manually.

I attempted to blindly change the screen resolution via win9x Display Properties once, and once I tried to blindly shut down a hung full screen game from an invisible Task Manager launched via the visible Lock Computer screen. Both were successful. Luckily Alt-F4 still works on Win 2012 (Metro). It also seems intuitive, i.e. closing the parent window of all other windows.

I am glad that the developers chose to present the new packer as a distinct "RAR5" format, and allow for creation of RAR3 archives within the same program. I will replace my installations of version 3 soon. When RAR3 appeared, the upgrade went silently, and I had to keep 2 copies around. The "ZIP" format of today is a version hell. Several different standard compression methods, WavPack for sound, different ways to store Unicode names, different encryption. Whoever is in charge over ZIP seems desperate to cash in on the brand. I am still a user of RAR2, because I like its Self-Extractor. The new self extractors don't run under Win9x, which is important to me, and they include a freaking Internet Explorer control to display the archive comment with formatting. This causes SFX's to open slower than they could, and I am alarmed seeing Internet Explorer anywhere. It's unnecessary for the formatting that an archive comment includes. I wish Rar-Lab remade their SFX with the old GUI. For applications like archiving on DVD or sending files over the Internet, ratio isn't as important as file grouping with any ratio, to overcome seek times and latency. For that application stadard ZIP often works well enough. If I need to archive large number of small files or to store special characters (which should ideally be kept out of filenames), I use 7-Zip, which has quick indexing and Unicode in the Standard. I find the following three changes in WinRAR to be the most important: Incidentally, all of these features are implemented in 7-Zip already. WinRAR, on the other hand, for several years, converted and stored file names and comments in OEM/DOS encoding, which led to it being impossible to reliably use any special punctuation or national symbols at all. It was even worse than working with normal ansi windows-125x encodings. The quick open index block is stored at the end of the archive. By default RAR 5.01 adds the index only for larger files, presumably because small files are easy to seek over anyway. Unlike 7-Zip, the index block isn't compressed, presumably to protect it from damage. Opening RAR2 and RAR3 archives with large number of files used to be terribly slow, which is why I opted to attach a SFX to all of the large ones. The SFX can start immediately and read files as it seeks over them without building a list beforehand. I performed a small Test this weekend. I originally set out to prove the efficiency of multimedia compression, which has been removed. But I failed to do so. The sound and image compression wasn't very efficient to begin with (compared to FLAC and PNG), it hurt solid compression of identical parts of multimedia files, and dictionary based compression in the latest WinRAR has achieved better efficiency if a larger dictionary is used. Multimedia compression did result in shorter compression times on single core (accurate results not recorded), but decompression time increased. I used games which include uncompressed audio and textures. Decompression speed was tested on a relatievely slow "Yonah" single core CPU. Archives were tested in their native application twice, and the shorter time (second) was recorded. Archive Listing was performed through a SMB share over Fast Ethernet. The host computer was rebooted before the test. CD/DVD would be much slower still. PPMD increased both compression and decompression time considerably, and didn't yield an increase in ratio on mixed data. I never use Text Compression. Here I tested it on the 'unreal' sample. Increased compression Dictionary is when a change in ratio is observed, in cases where similar files cannot fit within a smaller Dictionary. This all is new content. I can see an application for RAR5 when compressing Drivers. For example, let's say we have (unpacked) Drivers for different OS versions and CPUs. They have some identical, and some similar files in them. If the similar files fit in the Dictionary, they can be stored for free. I failed to find really large drivers in my collection, because I don't deal with new stuff. But files are getting larger and larger. You can see an improvement in compression of ATI Catalyst. Results as a screenshot PACKER OPTIONS DICT COMPRESSED LENGTHAtheros WLAN Driver 10.0.0.255 / WinXP WinSeven WinEight -- 22,250,273 bytes -- 18 filesatheros lzma max 4mb 4,252,944atheros lzma max ns 4mb 4,590,295atheros lzma max 8mb 4,096,904atheros lzma max 16mb 3,982,217atheros rar3x maxall 4mb 4,740,675atheros rar3x notext 4mb 4,771,745atheros rar3x notext nodelta 4mb 4,816,685atheros rar3x notext noexe 4mb 5,070,474atheros rar4x maxall 4mb 4,752,707atheros rar5x maxall 4mb 4,788,097atheros rar5x maxall 8mb 4,627,789atheros rar5x maxall 16mb 4,526,290ATI Catalyst 9.12 / WinXP WinSeven -- 69,496,709 bytes -- 65 filesaticatalyst912xpseven lzma max 4mb 17,254,712aticatalyst912xpseven lzma max 8mb 15,947,371aticatalyst912xpseven lzma max 16mb 14,032,279aticatalyst912xpseven lzma max 32mb 13,515,576aticatalyst912xpseven lzma max 64mb 13,363,658aticatalyst912xpseven rar3x notext 4mb 19,277,822aticatalyst912xpseven rar5x maxall 4mb 19,041,884aticatalyst912xpseven rar5x maxall 8mb 17,702,180aticatalyst912xpseven rar5x maxall 16mb 15,508,766aticatalyst912xpseven rar5x maxall 32mb 14,934,948aticatalyst912xpseven rar5x maxall 64mb 14,779,674 PACKER OPTIONS DICT DECMPR LISTING COMPRESSED TIME TIME LENGTHHalf-Life 2: Episode One -- 3,896,993,070 bytes -- 37,908 fileshl2ep1 lzma2 max 32mb 236s 1s 1,684,890,163hl2ep1 lzma max 4mb 245s 1s 1,723,419,343hl2ep1 lzma max 32mb 240s 1s 1,685,022,015hl2ep1 lzma max 64mb 240s 1s 1,681,614,846hl2ep1 rar2x ss 1mb 88s 51s 2,011,542,075hl2ep1 rar2x ss mm 1mb 149s 56s 1,769,765,498hl2ep1 rar3x maxall notext 4mb 96s 52s 1,716,586,386hl2ep1 rar5x maxall 4mb 92s 11s 1,749,727,822hl2ep1 rar5x maxall qopen 32mb 96s 1s 1,725,203,855hl2ep1 rar5x maxall qopen 64mb 98s 1s 1,718,582,822Settlers 5: Heritage of Kings w/ Expansion Disks -- 2,005,230,335 bytes -- 135 filessiedler5 lzma2 max 32mb 156s 1,209,635,997siedler5 lzma max 32mb 162s 1,209,902,318siedler5 rar3x notext 4mb 50s 1,317,324,564siedler5 rar5x maxall 4mb 51s 1,312,645,150siedler5 rar5x maxall 32mb 48s 1,246,831,706siedler5 rar5x maxall 64mb 47s 1,206,098,638 PACKER OPTIONS DICT DECMPR LISTING COMPRESSED TIME TIME LENGTHSingles: Triple Trouble -- 801,187,235 bytes -- 8681 filessingles2 lzma2 max 64mb 41s 1s 328,751,417singles2 lzma max 4mb 46s 1s 340,098,439singles2 lzma max 16mb 45s 1s 334,293,232singles2 lzma max 32mb 45s 1s 333,224,408singles2 lzma max 64mb 45s 1s 328,785,576singles2 rar2x best 1mb 15s 8s 391,705,776singles2 rar2x best mm 1mb 17s 8s 403,288,187singles2 rar3x best notext 4mb 15s 374,386,225singles2 rar3x best notext-nomm 4mb 14s 374,341,529singles2 rar3x best notext-nomm-nodelta 4mb 14s 7s 369,773,626singles2 rar5x maxall 4mb 15s 3s 373,120,045singles2 rar5x maxall 16mb 15s 3s 366,637,675singles2 rar5x maxall 32mb 16s 3s 365,459,931singles2 rar5x maxall qopen 32mb 16s 1s 365,752,288singles2 rar5x maxall qopen 64mb 20s 1s 361,411,799singles2 rar5x maxall qopen 128mb 20s 1s 351,586,561Unreal, Unreal: Return to Na Pali (Gold) -- 571,297,683 bytes -- 314 filesunreal lzma max 16mb 31s 205,169,987unreal lzma max 32mb 30s 203,490,639unreal rar2x best ss 1mb 9s 243,741,148unreal rar2x best ss-mm 1mb 16s 231,704,104unreal rar3x maxall 4mb 30s 227,054,915unreal rar3x notext-nodelta 4mb 11s 227,252,921unreal rar3x notext-noexe 4mb 11s 226,806,347unreal rar5x maxall 4mb 10s 226,072,070unreal rar5x maxall 32mb 10s 219,120,062 Those people who hate the GUI must be why Microsoft is trying so hard to make functions difficult to find in every major version. I switched to WinRAR from WinZip v7, and found it better organized. Perhaps I would like to see an optional Tree-View showing only the inside of the archive (not aiming to become a file manager). In general the only changes to the GUI that are needed are filling gaps and reorganizing the layout in case of obsolete and removed functionality.No Ribbons, please! Overall, I am pleaed with the great job on the current Version 5!!

Not all of the video card's memory is addressable by the CPU. I have a 1 GB nVidia Fermi video card, and 3.47 GB of RAM is still available to the OS. Even if this memory could be "recovered" for the OS, it would once again be spent on larger 64-bit code and the graphical and other bloat of NT 6. XP SP1 is such a great system. I am using it but never tried on a system with that much memory; because old software which SP1 is for for me, doesn't need it. There is still Windows Server 2003, without a memory limit even updated to the last SP. Buying it is probably next to impossible though. I didn't consider 512 MB of "lost" memory reason enough to try and install it. People say it's working well. I would go with Seven out of all NT6 variants due to its popularity. Chances are Vista won't support an application or have a driver in the future. Same reasons why I can't use XP SP1. Just installing the nVidia driver proved to be an excersise on it.

Microsoft is having a really hard time making XP go away. I see they attack it from all fronts, publishing advertisements about its end of life. My Windows Update has always been off, so I missed this one. Sadly, it seems to be working, because random people, who have no associations with MS, respond to me telling that the source of this or that problem I describe is the outdated OS.

I have not yet seen anybody complain about this, apart from me. But that is true. The Settings 'page' also covers the entire screen, and doesn't allow me to review the issue on the tab underneath it, as a compact dialog 'window' would. But there is a deeper reason to the white space: The guys on the photo are jumping off a cliff, and need to feel light and unconstrained. A few people on the now defunct Opera forums felt licensed to proclaim that this new UI is "life" that everyone has to "deal with", and the new wasteful Metro/Web UI is replacing windows just because. My favorite WebKit browser still is the new Opium, because it's portable unlike Chrome, and there isn't an alternative that felt native on Windows, using dialogs instead of slow (or extremely) web pages for everything. Such as the Sleipnir Browser, which dialogs and menus opened so slowly on single core, that I forgot the command that I was looking for, being accustomed to browse through all the dialogs quickly. No alternative.. yet. For those who haven't heard, Otter Browser, a WebKit based product aiming to implement most functionality found in Opera, is in development. It's not usable yet.

I am using Firefox 27 now on my computer with 890 MB of RAM, when for whatever reason I cannot use Opera. I haven't noticed that it would be slower. Web sites themselves, on the other hand, are [much] more bloated, and consuming memory. Look at this one, since the upgrade of the forum engine, and compare it to say Hydrogen Audio. Those sites also "need" the latest browser for basic things like text input to work, whether we like it or not. I've disabled a few things in my Firefox, such as 'safebrowsing' and the autoupdater (for negligible impact), and moved the cache.disk.parent_directory to a temporary partition to decrease the effect of fragmentation. I'm also using an older version of the Flash plugin, put into the program directory (again, no autoupdater for the Flash). If you can accept that some sites will be disabled, try running the browser without Flash at all. Look into an advertisement blocking solution that is not built in to Firefox (using memory and CPU for JavaScript) – but instead a redirecting hosts file, DNS or a small proxy server, and keep the blacklists for advertising, and script-heavy sites up to date. This last thing will reduce the resource usage of the browser the most, assuming we cannot turn back time and return to classic, efficient websites.

When I enter full screen mode in Adobe Flash player, both the played video and the GUI become low resolution. This occurs on the old laptop I recently obtained, with different versions of the Flash Player plugin and different browsers, if Hardware Acceleration in Flash is activated. Video playback in media players works fine. This looks like a limitation of the graphics hardware or drivers. I would like to be able to use what limited acceleration there is. It doesn't do much on this computer or with the slow Flash in general, but shaves about 15% off the CPU usage (on this particular old computer). The computer is barely able to play back 720p with h/w acc. I located this thread, but no explanation was provided there. The problem is not specific to YouTube and occurs with Daily Motion too. I've never seen this problem before, and was able to use the Flash plugin on Intel 965G graphics and Celeron 420, which are weaker. CPU: Intel Celeron M440 "Yonah" at 1800 MHz Video: ATI RS600M at 1280*800 px. ATI Catalyst v7.10 8.423-071011a-054910C-Samsung This is the latest Catalyst that is compatible with older OpenGL games. I tried a few driver versions to find a stable one, but didn't check Flash Player.

I don't want to find keyboards with Sleep/Power, I wish to avoid them! Now, if those special, rarely used functions could be activated when the Fn is held down, that would make sense. And the Fn shouldn't get in the way. The placement of Fn in this TurboTrak is fine. But the Sleep/Power keys make PgUp/PgDown Home/End (which I do use frequently) belong to a column of three keys, which aren't as easy to find by touch then. I chose to put backslash there, because I'm used to the layout pictured here. The pipe/backslash key is above Ctrl, next to the arrow keys.