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IrfanView is "FREEWARE (for non-commercial use)". Unfortunatelly, this kind of a license will not do in this particular case.

I started to look for a suitable application for picture printing, again. This time, I'm searching for something able to print large bitmaps, or having a simple and easy to use resize or color depth change function (preferably with polish language interface option). In the process I've found two free applications able to print large bitmaps, but without polish language support. Preclick Gold Photo Organizer - it was included in HP Photo Essentials package. Now it is available as freeware. The user interface is somewhat strange, yet effective. Picasa 2 - from Google. (Picasa 3.6 seems to be working with KernelEX to some point, but I've just checked if I can run this version.)

Poor performance of the SATA HDD to PATA adapter could be related to 40 pin connection detection and transfer limited to UDMA2. It is possible to force the detection of 80 pin cable through grounding pin 34 in the IDE interface. After such a modification my adapter outperformed PCI SATA controller. As for the Software HDD LED. It does seem the Rubber Ducky does not work for me. To be more specific, everyting is working, except for the HDD activity detection. ------------------ The pin 11 of the SATA power connector is used to provide HDD LED function in SATA docking stations. With pin 11 grounded drive works as a standard internal drive, in other case it can switch to "deferred spin" or some other features.

Well, both devices PCI SATA card and SATA to ATA converter do not have HDD LED connector. Also, the motherboard controller HDD LED does not work when SATA drive is connected through a converter. Software HDD LED emulation could be not a bad solution, but the software has to be Windows 98 compatible.

I think this is it. I've tried 14MB and 19MB uncompressed bitmaps. The smaller does print, the larger does not.

I made another interesting observation. Some 24 bit images are printing fine, others do not. It could be related to the bitmap size. At first look, problems with printing are related to bigger 24bit bitmaps. The small ones are printing fine. So, the problem could be the overall size of the bitmap, not the color depth itself.

I,ve installed a SATA drive to the ATA motherboard, a while ago. I did tested two solution in the process: 1) SATA to ATA converter At first it was not not a good choice, because the motherboard built in controlled detected the connection as 40pin cable. So, the mode was reduced to just UDMA2. But, I've learned, the 80 pin connection is recognized by the pin 34 of the IDE connector. If it is grounded, the controller complains about 40 wire connection, no longer. After modifying the adapter the UDMA5 mode kicked in, and the overal performance was higher than with the PCI SATA controller. 2) SATA PCI Sil 3512 controller with the built in BIOS. At first I had some difficulties booting the system, but after installing the driver, everything was working fine. The controller driver was placed in the SCSI section, I saw no other problems with it. The performace was a bit worse than the built in motherboard controller with modified SATA to ATA converter. It could be related to slower performance of the PCI bus. Apparently the built in controller on intel 845 chipset can outperform the PCI cards. Unfortunatelly, I've lost the HDD LED, in both cases.

Perhaps it would be easier to backup and restore the whole network configuration, instead.

No, I have not. I have no license for it.

If it would be me, I would not mind using any application for photo printing. But, I have a problem with a client computer. Everything was fine for many years. But, suddenly, he wants to print some photos. I tried many photo printing applications, and they had problems with printing some of the pictures. I took me a lot of trouble to fully understand what is going on. For now, I have to consider, the Windows 98 is not a good enviroment for easy photo printing. Unless, I find a free application able to provide easy photo printing for dummies, I have to recommend migration to a newer system.

Investing in software working under Windows 98 is a nonsense. For the same amount of cash I can buy a whole computer with a Windows 2000 professional OEM sticker on it. The Paint Shop v9.0 price will give me almost two 2.4GHz second hands Compaq with Windows XP professional licenses. There are plenty of free software working correctly on Windows 2000 and XP. I had a big problem with integrated accounting system on Windows 98. The printout background was missing, so there was just a text instead of a form. Luckily the background was kept in separate files, so I was able to replace them with a lower color depth bitmap. In the same time everything was working correclty on Windows 2000 and XP. Now I do understand it was the same issue I do have while trying to print high quality photos. Keeping the Windows 98 usable requires more and more effort. At some point it is simpler and cheaper to replace the whole system. The only advantage of Windows 98 for me, is it's quick crash recovery ability. But, I'm closing to a point where I can do the almost the same with newer operating systems. What's more important, I can do it remotely, now.

According to wikipedia all Jasc Paint Shop versions newer than 4.12 are commercial software. The Windows 98 support ended at version 9.01. One month later the Jasc Software was acquired by Corel, and the Corel Paint Shop Pro 10 was not Windows 98 compatible. It's a good hint, but I would like rather to find some free software.

I did another experimet. Apparently a fresh installation of Windows 98 SE with just the USB drivers added and a Windows supplied Epson Stylus Color printer driver does have the mentioned problem. A printout of the JPG file from IE does have just two bytes. So, the problem is clearly related to the OS. Apparently, some applications do use own bitmap conversion routines. That's why those applications are printing correctly, while others do not. Does anyone know a good Windows 98 compatible application with easy to use picture printing functions and not affected by the bitmap conversion problem?

Well. I think I do understand what is going on, now. The error message comes from the Windows printout buffering routines. It appears only when the function of "starting the printing after the first page is ready" is selected. In case of a direct file print there is no buffering, so there is no error message. As for the direct file printout. Depending on a printer driver the file does have just a few hundred bytes, or is not created, at all. So, the 24bit image conversion routines could be the problem, indeed. I tried the Windows Epson Stylus Color ESC/P2 printer. The result is a file with just two bytes in size. So, the problem is not related to just HP printers.

The problematic images do have 24bit color depth. But if it is a case with the color conversion problem, why the printouts are saved to files without reporting en error. Such a condition should be reported in both cases, as the conversion happens when saving to a file, as well.

Well, the problem is present on multiple computers with different printers. This should be enough to exclude a simple printer driver related problem. The related printers I can remember at the moment are HP DeskJet 6122 on USB cable, and HP 2500C connected through LAN with JetDirect 400N. ----------------------------------- On the other hand, everything seems to be working fine, when printing to a file. ----------------------------------- I can add yet another printer to the list. With HP LaserJet 4100MFP there is no error message, but there is no printout, as well. This time it was printed through an other Windows 98 computer acting as print server. The printer was connected through an LPT port.

I do have a Polish language version of Windows 98 SE USP 2.1. Recently, I've noticed problems with printing certain bitmaps. The problem is visible in many applications (IE, Opera, Vallen JPegger,...). Others (Open Office, GIMP,... ) are printing fine. In most cases it is enough to change the color depth of a picture to be able to print it. Without such a trick an error message appears: "There was an error writing to xxxxxxx for the printer (yyyyyyyy) There was a problem printing to a printer due to an unknown system error. Restart Windows, and then try printing again." The same situation happens on multiple computers with different printers. I have no idea what could be causing such a phenomenon.

Windows 98 SE USP 2.1 PL Revolution pack: 9.6.0 KernelEX 4.5 Beta 2 The polish language translation is fine with just one exception. All the polish characters in the "Close Program" window are replaced with "_".

Further testing considering the UltraVNC file transfers revealed the issue is present in UltraVNC viewer working on the Windows 98 system, only. Everything works fine on Windows 2000. The problem was present, when testing the newest UltraVNC viewer with the KernelEX running, as well.

The video driver used in this project does not support DirectX. So, video playback abilities of this compilation are very limited.

Well. I've encountered some serious problems with the Ultra VNC file transfers. I was able to download a file with VNC viewer runnig on Windows 98 system without a problem. But an attempt to send a file destabilized the local system. I'm planning to revert back to the TightVNC. As, the Ultra VNC seems to be too troublesome.

I was able to get the desired result through the file association. But, there are several conditions to be met. Apparently, Windows does check the type of the target application. If the type is unknown, or it is a 16 bit application the file name is sent a a short one. So, it is necesary to direct the output to a Win32 application. The full file path to the EXE file is necesary as well. In order to meet these demands I've used the C:\WINDOWS\COMMANDS\START.EXE application. As command line parameters I've used something like that: c:\xxx\batfile.bat "%1" But, the same trick does not work in the Send To menu.

The whole thing gets more and more complicated. So, I've decided to write own utility to do the job. After a brief test I've confirmed the LFN DOS extension makes possible for a DOS application to find a LFN while searching for a short file name. So, using a "proxy" DOS application I shoud be able to convert the short filename to the LFN one.

I've found no way to get the LFN from the short name with the use of FOR command. If the searched file mask refers to a short name, the output is also a short file name. FOR %%A IN (%1) DO ECHO %%A The %%A will be a short file name if the %1 is a short file name.

You did put quotes around the filename, didn't you? The problem is not related to copying files. What I'm trying to do is to run a .BAT file with a LFN as a command line parameter. The Send To option using /Windows/SendTo folder does not seem to care for the command line arguments provided in a .PIF file. The result is the same in case of both .BAT and .EXE.