nathanson1947

Thanks for the help. The yellow shield kept staying there, but I finally figured out how hide the miscreant update KB3013455, and the shield went away..

Thanks for the info about the POS Ready registry hack. I tried it on XP Professional SP3, and suddenly Microsoft Update had a dozen more updates available. Registry hack enables Windows XP security updates until 2019 - Software - News - HEXUS.net.pdf

I remember that, back in 2006, when Microsoft discontinued support for Windows 98SE, there was an Autopatcher program created to deal with problems in Windows 98SE. It was a really elegant program that even created extra features for the OS never dreamed of by Microsoft. I was wondering if anyone was planning to do the same thing for XP?

I purchased a computer tower last summer for $100.00. With a 2.66 Celeron processor, 512 MB RAM, and a 40 GB hard drive, it seemed like a good deal. While I have no trouble seeing anything printed in English or Hebrew, Chinese characters usually come out as gibberish. . When I tried to use the regional language settings in the control panel, I kept getting prompted for a Windows XP Home Edition CD, which I of course don't have, since XP was already installed in the computer when I purchased it. I can't seem to find a place on Microsoft to download the needed files, and Microsoft now charges $49.00 for a technical support question. Does anyone here have any solutions??? Jack

I converted my background image from a JPEG to a 32-bit bitmap. I then disabled Active Desktop. Except for the "1-Click Maintenance" icon, everything looks a lot better. Thank you.

I just installed Windows 200 Revolutions Pack. This is what part of my desktop looks like: Perhaps the paragraph below gives a solution to this, but I can't understand it. Is there a solution to my problem posted anywhere that I may actually be able to understand?

Open Firefox. On the Menubar at the top of the screen, go to "Tools > Options". Click on the "Main" tab. The Options Screen should then look something like this: At the bottom of the screen, in the "System Defaults" section, there is a place which says "Always check to see if Firefox is the default browser on startup". Make sure that the box before this is checked in. There should also be a button to the right saying "Check now". Click on this button. You should then see a window allowing you to set Firefox as your default browser. If there is no "Check now" button, then restart Firefox and you will get the same window. Once you set Firefox as your default browser, most programs should work properly. And, at least in my opinion, it's a good idea to have IE working as well. Believe it or not, there are still some web pages that won't work in Firefox. Some websites seem to have never heard of it. And some even still refer to "Netscape" instead!

Not sure, given the shape of my computer, how valid this report is, but posting it just in case others had the same problem. The Autopatcher August 2007 got stuck at the following point. The report and log are also attached. I_Result_September_6__2007.txt Report_September_6__2007.txt

It took me several days to get the installation disk from Totonto. I am in Montreal. I deleted WIN.COM and then tried to run the installation disk. The computer fiirst kept trying to boot from the hard drive, but I managed to set the bios to boot from the installation disk. It got as far as copying the files to the disk. Then there was a need to reboot, and afterthereboot, I got the following error message: A device has been specified more than once in the SYSTEM.INI file, ora device specified in SYSTEM.INI conflicts with a device which is being loaded by an MS-DOS driver or application or a device loaded from the registry file. Remove theduplicate entry from the SYSTEM.INI file, and then restart Windows. Duplicated device: vcd Press a key to continue At that point, pressing a key still worked, and I may have succeeded in replacing the old OS. However, the screen resolution was now only 640 by 480 with 16 colours. I got a message saying that an NVidia driver was missing. I made the mistake of tryinto runAutopatcher to see if it would help, and things just screwed up more. At this point, if I try to boot from the hard drive, I just get the above error message, and pressing a key does not allow me to go on. Even pressing f8 does not bring up the customary menu. If I try to do the reinstall, the farthest it will go is thefirst reboot. If pressing a key has an effect at all, I only get the the messge: Windows 98is now setting up your hardware and any plug and play devices you may have. Then there is another reboot, followed by the above error message. The most pressing a key then does is causing another reboot, until the computer becomes completely unresponsive. I noticed that two of the options on the installation disk result in DOs prompts, so maybe the problem can besolved from there, but I have no idea how to do it.

I seem to have made a mess of things. I was trying to install some NVidia 3d drivers, and somehow managed to destabilize my whole system. I am wondering if the kernel ex update may have anything to do with it, but am not sure. In any case, among other things, any attempt at sending or receiving e-mail, whether yahoo, gmail, thunderbird, outlook express, etc., seems to cause my computer to freeze/crash. I may still be able to post on this forum, though. My primary drive is Drive C. I also, have a Drive D, which still has the OS on it the way it was before it was ghosted onto the present Drive C. What I was wondering is, is there any way to access the WINDOWS on Drive D, perhaps through DOS, and run the computer through it, at least until I can figure out a more permanent solution? I tried things like : RUN "D:\WINDOWS\" , but it seems to be a Bad Command.

I managed to find the file.Strangely enough, it only existed on Drive D. When I received my brother's old computer in 2005, the hard drive on it was only 6GB. In December 2006, I had a 29 GB hard drive put in, with all the contents of the 6 GB drive ghosted onto the 29 GB one. The 6 GB drive remained in the computer as Drive D, while the 29 GB one became Drive C. When I did a search, the file was nowhere to be found on Drive C, which is the one the computer uses now. However, it was on drive D. I copied the file and put the copy in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM. Hopefully, this will solve the problem.

DO us a favour can you and do a search of the program folder for the following file: kb918144.exe and run it. If everything is OK you can back out of the installation, but my guess is you will get to see what the error message is telling you. Please let me know what happens! I ran kb918144.exe, and got the following error message: I then ran the update mentioned in the error message, followed by kb918144.exe . I was then instructed to restart the computer, which I did. On restarting, I received the following error message from the Windows System: According to the attached report, the update is installed, but the error message seems to contradict this. Report__June_13__2007.txt

I've looked at your log file -- very useful as it goes back quite a few versions, do you have any older ones by any chance? Has it always said it was looping thru for those 2 updates? Did any version of AP work properly ie without looping thru? 1. kb918144: Unofficial Hotfix for various issues in the Jet 4.0 data engine This particular update has ALWAYS looped through right from the beginning. The other update was not included in the Autopatcher until very recently, so it wasn't there to loop through until very recently. I_Result.Log_March_and_April_2007.txt

I decided to try the part of the Autopatcher that searches for any missing updates. The following two were listed: 1. kb918144: Unofficial Hotfix for various issues in the Jet 4.0 data engine 2. TOOLS9X: Unofficial Improved Replacement Tools What has been happening is that when I run the Autopatcher, it seems to loop through these very same updates. So the question arises; Have these updates actually been installed, but the Autopatcher can't detect them and keeps trying to re-install them? OR Is something in my system preventing the Autopatcher from successfully installing these updates, and they are still not installed? I_Result.Log_June_11__2007.txt Report__June_11_2007_for_Autopatcher.txt

Greetings. Firstly, thank you, Soporific, for the new AUTOEXEC.BAT text . The "too many parameters" message has been around for at least a year. The gtk was installed so that I could run the Gimp, and somehow it got installed incorrectly. I don't know if there is a connection, but I have noticed that my computer has had a tendency to crash any time I tried to view three dimensional images. Of course, that particular problem could also be due to the fact that I only have 224 MB of RAM. In any case, after fixing AUTOEXEC.BAT, I installed and tried version 1.96.55. It worked for a while until it eventually aborted. I have attached the log file. Jack I_Result.Log_for_version_1.96.55.txt