athenian200

I'll bet that would have been easier, but I did something else: I remembered the 2 year old laptop in my closet had XP, and installed my copy of Office 2003 on it. Somehow, it activated, even though I had already installed it on another computer (Maybe Microsoft sensed that I no longer had Office on the first computer?). I then copied the PST's to the laptop, imported the PST's into that copy of Outlook, installed Thunderbird on that computer, imported the Outlook settings, and copied them back to my other computer. My Ethernet cables got a real workout from that.

Windows 98 is installed. OpenOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird all work quite well. I really only purchased Office and XP because the man at Fry's convinced me that they were better. All I need to do now is to find a way to convert my old PST files into a format readable by Thunderbird. Unfortunately, the most common one, Outport, expects Outlook to be installed.

I recently had to reinstall Windows due to a Hard Drive problem, and I found that I had lost my key for Office 2003. Now I had backed up my Outlook PST files, but programs such as Outport seem to require Outlook to be installed in order to convert from that format. Are there any programs that can read or convert PST files without having Outlook installed? The program I am using for e-mail now is Thunderbird, if this helps.

I did call Microsoft support, and they did try to help me, and they were apologetic, but said that if I didn't have the key, I had no proof of ownership. They did suggest that I upgrade to Vista rather than buy a new copy of XP, however. I've decided to go back to Windows 98. I tried Thunderbird on my old computer, and it already does on my old computer what Outlook was doing on my new one. Also, the only programs I have that don't run on Windows 98 are Office 2003, and Norton Antivirus 2006. If I downgrade back to 2005, and buy a new license, that should work. Reading my Word files shouldn't be too hard, because I already tried accessing them with Wordpad on my old computer, and all the formatting was still there. My biggest concern, though, is getting a decent spell check application. The one in Word was the best one I had ever used, and AbiWord didn't even recognize the word "aesthetic". I don't think OpenOffice supports Windows 98 anymore, unfortunately. I'm never going to buy anything that requires me to keep up with a product key again. I wasted $600. I guess they've decided that if you can't be responsible to keep up with your keys, you deserve to pay double.

(Note that this topic is doesn't belong in the XP forum, because my computer can no longer run XP) Well, after running Windows XP flawlessly for about 4 years, my main computer lost power in the middle of a virus scan. Somehow, my partition table was corrupted, and no amount of trickery in FDISK would fix it. Since I had backed up all my personal documents already, I decided to reinstall. But I found that I couldn't, because apparently after I had Fry's build my system, they never gave me the Certificate of Authenticity. So I can't reinstall XP unless I purchase another copy. This essentially leaves me with 2 options (Unless I buy another copy of XP): 1. Install Windows 98SE Pros: Most things will work as before, and I can install it for free. Cons: Cannot run Office 2003 or other newer applications, possibly even Firefox soon. 2. Install Linux Pros: Free, and may be able to open Office 2003 files with OpenOffice. Cons: Difficult to maintain, may be incompatible with most hardware, and cannot actually run Office 2003. My main concern is being able to read my Word, Excel, and Outlook 2003 files with as little loss of formatting as possible. Which of these would be the best option?

No ideas? Perhaps this question was too difficult... I'm considering purchasing a separate MIDI card, because I listen to a lot of music in that format. My old computer can play them, so perhaps I'll just have to live with that for a while.

I have heard lots of rumors about DRM in Vista. This is a concern for me for a couple of reasons. Would this affect my computer's ability to play WMA files that I've ripped from my CDs, or its ability to play MP3 files I downloaded back before the DMCA was passed, but never deleted? Would Windows try to find out if those files were supposed to protected or not, and block my access to them? Also, would Vista refuse to use unencrypted video/audio outputs at all times, or just when protected content is playing? I have no plans to play DVD or other movies on such a system, but do plan to use a DVD-Reader to install computer software. How much should I be concerned?

I think you must be very confused. I think you are referring to IA-64, and confusing it with a browser. I believe that if you purchase the OEM version of Vista, you can only choose the 32-bit or 64-bit version once, and then cannot change. If you install the full version, you can switch versions if you reinstall. If you meant you wished to install a 64-bit version of Internet Explorer, then you must have a 64-bit version of Vista installed first. I think that if you had a 64-bit version of Vista installed, you would already have a 64-bit version of Internet Explorer. In any case, check the following: Do you have a 64-bit processor? Is your installed version of Vista the 64-bit version? If the answer to both of those questions is yes, then you should be able to install a 64-bit version of IE, and I cannot understand your problen. If the answer to either of those questions is no, then you will not be able to use the 64-bit version of Internet Explorer, or any other application.

I do not have any sort of MPU-401-compatible device attached. When I try to play a MIDI file in Windows Media Player, it behaves as though it is playing, but I cannot hear it. The volume in Media Player, the MIDI and Master Volume sections of Volume Control, and on my Speakers is turned up to the maximum (I have ensured that nothing is muted). MP3, WMA, and WAV files all play normally. Note that in Apple Quicktime, the files play, but are converted to MOV format, and are of poor quality. My system is the following: Microsoft Windows XP, SP2 (Version 5.1.2600) Shuttle AN35(N) Ultra 400 (with nForce2 chipset) Athlon XP 3200+ @ 2200MHz Corsair 512MB PC3200 RAM (DDR400) AGP 8X GeForce 6600GT with 128MB GDDR3 RAM (PNY VERTO) NVidia Nforce2 drivers, version 5.10 Windows Media Player 10 is installed The following information may or may not be significant: Internet Explorer 7 is installed Logitech MX3200 Wireless Keyboard and Mouse USB Printer HP Deskjet 3320 LPT Printer Epson ActionPrinter 5000 USB Device Emprex CD-RW Generic Floppy Drive is attached to Standard Floppy Connector on Motherboard Norton Antivirus 2006 is installed Compaq Data Fax Modem (56K Rockwell HCF) [stopped using when I upgraded to DSL, but still in computer] Airlink 10/100 Ethernet Card (has Realtek RTL8139C chipset, listed in Device Manager as TE100 PCBUSR 32-bit Cardbus PC Card) Samsung SyncMaster 730B (Connected on DVI port) Labtec LCS-800 Computer Speaker System EPO ATAPI 58X MAX on Secondary ATA Channel Western Digital 120GB Hard Drive (WD1200JB-00HUA0) on Primary ATA Channel 450W Power Supply (A1 Power, ATX12V v2.0, Switching Power Supply, Dual Fan, Nickel Coating) Microsoft .NET Framework versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 are installed. Current Resolution is 1280x1024. Current Color Depth is 32-bit. The following hardware was attached to my computer at one point, but not anymore: LPT Printer APOLLO P2250 (HP) Standard PCI ATI Radeon 9200SE with 128MB DDR2 RAM (Diamond Stealth S80) Lite-On 24X ATAPI CD-ROM Drive on Secondary ATA Channel Sound Blaster 16PCI (ES1371 or ES1373 chipset, not sure) PS/2 Logitech Access Keyboard PS/2 Compaq 2-button mouse (Came with Presario 5204,Spares P/N 337416-001, C/T:F19530P5BH40AY6, FCC ID: DZL211029, [2 KANJI characters] 4862A011) PS/2 Unicomp Customizer 101 White (42H1292U, Model M) PS/2 Logitech Optical Mouse (White, P/N 831073-2000) PS/2 IBM 2-Button Mouse (Model 96F9275) 17" Proview Technologies CRT Monitor, Model 768 (Connected to DVI port via DVI to VGA adapter on 6600GT, Connected to VGA port on 9200SE) Unbranded 300W Power Supply, Model LPJ2 (Came with Linkworld case)

When I first installed IE7, I panicked a little when I saw there were no menus. I wasn't sure how I was going to access some features. It was fine for a while, but then I wanted to open my favorites list, and I couldn't find it. While part of my brain was still thinking about it, my hands instinctively pressed "CTRL-I". Later, when I wanted to refresh a page, I pressed F5, and when I wanted save the current page, CTRL-S. The lack of a menu made part of my brain think I was in a DOS application, and I started using keyboard shortcuts. Isn't it ironic that originally, computer applications were used without menus, then they were introduced, and then gotten rid of, yet keyboard shortcuts remained the whole time? I feel kind of old, since I actually remember the last time they made applications without menus. I guess computer interfaces are like fashion: if you wait long enough, an old style becomes popular again. I just hope they keep them, because I have them all memorized for most Microsoft applications, as I have for over a decade now.

As far as I can tell, GeForce 6800 Ultra (AGP 8X) would work with Windows 98SE quite well. To be honest, though, I'm still using a 6600GT in WinXP. I have heard of problems with Windows 98SE and RAM sizes larger than 512MB, so I would limit myself to that. My recommendations are the following: Athlon XP 3200+ NForce2 Motherboard GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB of PC3200 RAM 120GB IDE Hard Disk Ironically, this is similar to the machine I currently use for XP. I apparently chose components that weren't outside 98Se's range, without realizing it.

That page hasn't been updated in several years. I don't know why it was left up. More recent versions of Arachne are here: http://www.cisnet.com/glennmcc/arachne/

Well, my processor was only 33MHz, and I had only 8MB of memory. I doubt it would have worked. Frankly, I'm surprised it worked as well as it did, considering it was assembled in 1993, and I had stopped using it in 1998, when I got my newer computer. To upgrade my computer. You see, in 2005, I was still using my AMD K6-2 at 350MHz, and 192MB of RAM (it originally had 64MB, but I upgraded it). This was the computer I had upgraded to in 1998 from my 486 mentioned above (but I had upgraded the RAM from the original 64MB). So I decided it was time to get an upgrade, because a new program I wanted to run was working rather slowly. So I purchased a Shuttle AN400N Ultra with Nforce2, an Athlon XP 3200+, 512MB of PC3200 RAM, and Windows XP, and tried to install it in my machine. The reason I have a 500MHz Intel Pentium III with 128MB upstairs is because a friend was planning to throw it away when they upgraded, and I wanted to have a backup computer in case I ever had trouble with upgrading again. I don't upgrade often, though. Here's my pattern of upgrading: 33MHz 486DX with 8MB memory: 1993-1998 350MHz AMD K6-2 with 64MB memory: 1998-2005 2200MHz AMD Athlon XP 3200+ with 512MB memory: 2005- Also, you might have noticed a little pattern in how I purchase machines with regards to memory: 8x8=64 64x8=512 512x8=4096 This represents the original memory of every computer I have purchased. This also means that my next computer (which I'll probably purchase in 2010 or 2012) will have 4GB of memory. The one after that, in 2018, 32GB.

About a year ago, I tried to replace the motherboard in my computer, because I wanted to install a Socket A processor. I followed some instructions that I had printed out from the Internet, and proceeded to activate it. But, nothing happened, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I was going to go back online, but I realized that I no longer had access to the internet, because my computer didn't work. Then I remembered that I had an old 486 in my closet, that I hadn't used since 1997. But I didn't have the Internet back then, and I didn't think it would work. Nonetheless, I pulled it out, hooked it up, and looked at what I had. Apparently, it had an old 3Com Ethernet card, and I found some floppy disks for Internet Explorer 3.0. I installed it, and at first I couldn't access the web. Luckily, my router uses DHCP, and while looking through the networking options in Control Panel, I found DHCP support. I also still had my Windows 95 installation disks. After feeding it a couple of drivers from the Windows disks, and rebooting, I tried to access the web again. Google.com worked well, and most other sites only displayed text and hyper-links. It was a lot like using Lynx, but with limited graphics support. I was able to access more information, but I needed more specific help. Unfortunately, my browser could not understand most websites well enough to post on message board forums. So I tried to search for another browser. Mozilla required at least Windows 98, and so did most others. But after several Google searches, and having to restart IE a few times, I found something called K-Meleon, that claimed to work with my hardware. I downloaded it, and it did indeed work, but it took seven minutes to render a web page. So I alternated between IE 3.0 for looking up information, and K-Meleon for posting on Message boards. In the meantime, I played a few games of Solitaire, and tried to look up things on Internet, which was still viewable, even if it barely worked. I also managed to find an old version of Office for $5.00 at the Half-Price bookstore. I was surprised at how many features I used in Office 2000 were available in this older version. I was able to create documents easily, which I found extremely helpful for organizing data and such. Eventually, I got a reply, and I was told that I had probably attached the power supply wires incorrectly. I was given a link to a schematic for my motherboard, but it was in PDF format. I downloaded the file, and started searching for a PDF reader. I tried an old version of Reader that still worked on Windows 95, but the memory requirements were too high (I only had 8MB). So I found a DOS program that converted PDF to Postscript (this took about two hours), which I couldn't view either. But eventually I stumbled across something in an old DOS book that helped me. I was told that Postscript files could be printed out on a Postscript printer using the COPY command. I happened to know where an LPT-based Postscript printer was, and I hooked it up, and printed out the file. It hadn't converted very well, but the text and graphics were still readable, even if they weren't in the right order. I found I had simply attached the Power On wire to the wrong pins on the motherboard, because they were color-coded incorrectly. So I fixed the problem, and the new computer worked. Does this illustrate a good reason for keeping things at least marginally compatible with older machines?

Well, I guess you are smarter than me, then. I just thought since you said you were going to pick up a book that you hadn't programmed before. So, right now I'm using a nightly build of Firefox 3.0a2 on Windows XP (which I'm running on my primary machine, with a 2200MHz processor), but it doesn't seem that different, except that it has implemented support for a couple of rarely used web standards it didn't support before. The implementation seems pretty good, though. I have never actually programmed anything, but if the thing that will make Firefox incompatible is the Cairo graphics library, and more use of Unicode, wouldn't simply porting that library, and changing the source code to use the Unicode libraries available for Windows 98 solve all the problems?

That's not going to work out... I tried to do that a few years ago. I thought it wouldn't be so difficult, so I went out and tried to learn C with a book. I figured I would start with a simple command line program that outputted a string of text. That was the first example in the book. I understood it, and compiled it. Then it told me about declaring variables, and about how to take input from the keyboard. So I created four programs, each of which took two numbers as input, and either added them, subtracted them, multiplied them, or divided them, and displayed the output. I tried to go further, into making the program branch, to make one program that allowed you choose from a menu whether you wanted to add, multiply, subtract, or divide, but it got too complicated at that point. My ultimate goal was to create a simple text editor that opened whatever ASCII file you specified after its name, allowed you to edit it, saved if you pressed Ctrl-S, exited if you pressed Ctrl-X. I never got past the four calculators. Note that I can create menus that allow selections to be made in MS-DOS Batch files, but I just couldn't do that in C. I've looked through C source code before, and its a nightmare of workarounds, defined functions, endless libraries, and dependencies. I once edited a libc5 Tetris program designed for Linux to work on a more current one, however. All I did was view the compiler output, see what functions were undefined, and searched for them on the internet. In one case, a function had been renamed, so I just took VIM, and had it replace all instances of the old name for it with the new one. In another case, the path to the library had changed. I edited the path in the include headers of the source files. GCC compiled it, and it ran. I was lucky it didn't involve any actual programming. I've been using computers since 1994, and I know how to create batch files, edit my autoexec.bat and config.sys, compile programs on Linux using standardized commands, and edit the registry. I also picked up on Latin rather quickly. Trust me when I say that the people who program in C are vastly more intelligent than I could ever hope to be, and I'm not sure you're smarter than me. Since I can do everything but program, I imagine their IQ would be about 30 points higher than mine.

I wonder how difficult it would be to make Firefox 3/Cairo work on Windows 98? I mean, computers only do things in so many ways. They probably had to use Windows 98 to develop Windows 2000 or Windows XP in the first place, and they all their new code was probably created from some sort of standard programming functionality. So I would think it would at least be possible to make it work, even if it was difficult, right? Especially if the computer in question technically meets Windows XP system requirements, but would run it very slowly? Or is there some reason why it can't work, something underlying and immutable that I can't comprehend? It's just that I have a 500MHz Intel Pentium III with 128MB of RAM running Windows 98SE, and I don't see why I should suddenly need a 1GHz processor just as a backup computer to surf the Internet reasonably. To me, it seems like the Internet doesn't do anything it didn't do 7 years ago in terms of the data presented, they've just changed the standards to accommodate streaming media, complex style sheets, and more graphics, and somehow made them incompatible in the process of updating them. Maybe the changes don't mean much to me, because I'm not a very visual person.