chromatic47

I had a similar problem once with a much older card. I fixed it by removing all traces of the old ATI driver before installing the new one. I can't guarantee this will work in your case -- or even if it is safe to do -- but here's what I did: Boot to safe mode and uninstall the ATI driver. Once normally back in Windows in glorious VGA, hit F3 to bring up file search, and search C: drive using filename [ati*.*] without the brackets. If anything comes up, right click on each to check its properties and make sure it's an ATI file. If it is, delete it. If an .inf file shows up, run notepad and open up the .inf. If it is an ATI .inf, delete it also. So now any ATI dregs are gone from the hard drive. Next, backup the registry. Then run Regedit and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE and delete any ATI software key. On mine it was "ATI Technologies". Do the same in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE. Then go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display and examine the subkey(s). If there is more than one they will be numbered from 0000, 0001 etc. If any of these mention ATI, delete the entire subkey (e.g., if 0000 is for ATI, delete 0000.) Finally go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum\PCI and go through the keys. If any mention the ATI card, delete the key. All done. Reboot, and when Windows detects the ATI card, don't let it search for a driver -- hit the browse button and point it to the driver INF you want to install. Or, if the driver is in an installation exe, just cancel the new hardware wizard and run the exe instead. Once the ATI driver has been installed, hopefully it's cheers all around. But if the problem persists you'll at least know that it's not due to corrupted ATI files, version mismatches or inherited ATI registry settings. EDIT: Forgot to include this: in Regedit go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion and check the Run keys (Run, RunOnce, RunServices, etc) for any ATI entries and delete them.

Now that the 82.69 driver is installed, and working fine on DVI widescreen (FX 5200 card), the inability to restart Windows from DOS bugs me. I can live with it for the widescreen capability, but I hate to see Windows 98 disabled even a little. Has anybody using the 81.+ drivers found a fix or patch for this yet, other than the command.com shortcut workaround?

That does seem to be how it always works. Thanks!

Given the maximum res of this LCD of 1680x1050, at 1:1 scaling the native DOS res of 720x400 would be a little less than half of screen width and height, and surrounded by black. Not super tiny, but any text would be pretty small. However if the TSR mentioned above were used to set a VESA mode of say, 1280x1024 it would fill a good chunk of the screen. But with the NEC 20WMGX2 it can't happen anyway because the hardware scaling implementation is not available for DVI-D or analog, only for HD and video inputs as you said. Seems a bit arbitrary. I just got DVI set up on the Windows 98 machine, and DOS screens are automatically displayed at 1680x1050. I can now get scaling through the nvidia control panel, so I'm going to experiment with the TSR and see if it works under DVI with driver scaling.

nm

Correct, and some LCDs are better at this than others. Right now I am using 1024x768 to browse with, and while it is stretched to the 1680x1050 screen, it remains very clear and sharp. A 720x400 DOS screen is stretched as well, and quite readable, but the out of range notifier comes up because the monitor doesn't have a built-in scaling algorithm for that res. 720x400 is 80x25 textmode with the standard VGA 9x16 font. Probably NEC dispensed with this mode because the monitor was pointed to the gaming market. I bought it for the S-IPS panel, which has very good viewing angles and true 8-bit color for photo editing. At any rate, I found a neat little TSR which provides complete control over either a windowed or full-screen DOS box or session. Among other things it can set the number of columns, number of lines, and fg/bg colors. Most importantly for me it can set the VESA mode, so I can get up to 1600x1200 32-bit color in a full-screen DOS session. I set it to 800x600, which keeps the out of range notifier happy. There are two variants, one for windowed boxes (~8k) and one for full-screen sessions (~21k). If anyone wants to customize their DOS sessions, this utility is pretty cool. http://www.geocities.com/jadoxa/tm/index.html And a list of the VESA codes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions

It was new for me, though. First time I ever examined my OS motives. But I promise never to speak of it again. On this forum.

Ah ha! Thank you for that info. It gives a starting point to fix this. Yes the manual gives a short-list of recommended resolutions, but the monitor will nevertheless display at other res's — it just complains about it. (Not sure what the point of that is. I'll definitely look into that. Thanks for your help.

This is really an interesting thread, educational too. I seriously asks meself, how come I have little interest in XP, and zero interest in Vista. Why do I use Win98, the answer is primarily what CharlotteTheHarlot said: best tool for the job. Everything I need to do, from recording audio and composing music, to surfing internet, to web design, writing, precise photo editing ... it gets done really fast. Instant click-and-go gratification. Unimpeded efficient process toward satisfactory results, what more do I need? Bottom line, why would I spend money or time on "upgrades" unless I actually need them to get the job done more efficiently. If I start to be limited by the OS I will expand, but not likely into microsoft-world further than XP. They are getting too nosey and a little pushy about taking over my computer. "Mister Computer Sir -- what do you mean, you are going to do such-and-such without asking me first?" It's too bad really, if it weren't for their business model, MS could have us driving lean modular rocket ships on the newest processors, instead it's like maybe giganto space freighters with super magnum engines going .. just fast enough .. I guess. B)

I just switched from a CRT monitor to LCD, and one of the more irritating differences in useage is that an out of range notifier pops up on the screen during BIOS post and stays there until arriving at the Windows desktop, after which the notifier disappears and monitor is happy. (This is with analog D-SUB not DVI connection.) Then once in Windows, if a DOS box is opened up in windowed mode, the monitor has no problem with that, but the instant I switch to full-screen mode within the DOS box, up comes the out of range notifier again. Something drastic appears to be happening to either the refresh rate and/or the screen resolution when DOS or a DOS program is shown full-screen as opposed to windowed. Can somebody explain why this is, and how to correct it if possible? System: Win98se, nVidia FX 5200 video card, NEC 20WMGX2 monitor -- but same thing happens also on the Win95 machine with ATI Rage Pro 128 card. Any help to solve this mystery much appreciated.

Thanks Drugwash and dlsayremn, I should have mentioned that I have researched at speedguide.net and also have TCP Optimizer, so MTU, RWIN etc is set up okay at least to their wisdom. I was wondering more about Windows internals, if there are maybe any IRQ or I/O or system.ini optimizations, etc, that I don't know about.

Indeed I do not have any reason to use XP, and won't unless I absolutely have to B) but wanted to be sure of how to do it just in case. Since my Windows 98 clone will reside on my second HD, which has first partition of driveletter H, I assume that H: can be substituted for D: in all of your instructions, and all will be well. Thanks again Cannie, hopefully I can provide some good advice in return sometime!

Thank you for the additional information. I have bookmarked this thread for reference and really it should have a topic of its own so that others can see it easily. I am putting the clone on an available second hard drive rather than a partition on the first HD, in case also of mechanical failure. If I could ask for elaboration on this part: If I have it clear, the steps are, 1) copy the system files that reference D:\Windows from the floppy to C: 2) boot normally, and the copied system files on C: will point the boot into D:\Windows 3) From D:\Windows Win98, delete C:\Windows and install XP there instead And my question, what is the double boot file and how is it used? And it is created automatically during the XP installation?

Any tips for getting the fastest DSL throughput on Win95 and/or Win98se ? I have the Winsock 2 and DUN 1.4 updates installed on the Win95 machine, and NETBIOS is disabled (but not sure if those are even relevant to DSL).

Cannie, thanks for the well detailed reply. Before following your advice I plugged the LG monitor and software into an XP machine and it turns out that Forte Manager is useless for serious calibration. Subsequently I obtained several gamma and color reference images from http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ and calibrated using those and the nVidia driver controls. Worked fine, and with no additional IE dependent crap on my machine. Also, thank you for the cloning description, I've never done that, never even thought of it, and it's prime good info.

Thanks BenoitRen, I did try it, unfortunately to no effect. It is a great add-on though, so I'm keeping it. I just can't discover what this setup app is looking for. I tried tracing the process with FileMon and RegMon both, no clues there. As far as I know I have all the library files for IE6 but I might be overlooking something. It might not be worth the trouble; this install is for a control panel that came with my new LCD monitor, useful mainly for color calibration, and if I can find alternative software for the same purpose it won't matter.

LG's Forte Manager won't install unless it finds IE 6.0 or higher. I don't have any version of IE installed, nor do I want it. I recall seeing a registry hack somewhere that is supposed to spoof a version look-up — it involved adding the proper reg keys/data necessary to deceive the installer into believing that IE6 resides on a machine. Can someone point me to that, or describe the method (if it is indeed possible)?

Actually all of my programs run just fine under the Micro shell. The menu problem turned out to be a minor inconvenience, and easily avoided, compared to the slower performance of the normal 98 shell on my P4 machine. I've tried all the shell variations, and there's no doubt, the win95 shells are simply faster.

If anyone using 98lite with the Sleek or Micro shell can help me with this, it's drivin me nuts. The problem is that certain apps are "stealing" file menu functions from certain other apps. As an example, I run Photoshop 5. The file menu works fine; clicking File > Open produces the file open dialog box. But, if I then run another app, say Photofiltre or Cacheman, suddenly the file open/save commands in Photoshop cease to function. I can click the menu items but no dialog box appears. This happens in reverse also. If Photofiltre is opened first, and then Photoshop, Photoshop will steal the file menu functions from Photofiltre. This only happens with certain apps. Photoshop gets along just fine with, for example, Paint Shop Pro or Metapad. But if all 3 of these are open, and I run Cacheman, presto -- none of them have access to file commands anymore, except Cacheman. Well hopefully this description makes sense. My workaround so far has been to put the Win98 comdlg32.dll and shell32.dll in Photofiltre's folder, but I don't want to do that for every app that causes the problem, if I can avoid it. Any help much appreciated Thanks Leo

Thank you maniac, I suspected as much. Well, I can live with the limits for now. But now I am interested in experimenting with another explorer.

I recently installed Win98se with 98lite and I have been playing with the Chubby, Sleek and Micro shells. I've just about decided to stay with Sleekv2 but there is one thing I do miss from the Chubby shell: clicking a restored app's taskbar button does not minimize the app under Sleek or Micro as it does under Chubby. (Restoring a minimized app works fine.) Is there any tweak or hack that will give me the two-way taskbar button function (both restore *and* minimize) under Sleek or Micro? thanks -- Steve