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Well, that's not the case. There is another version of the Windows 98 Unofficial Service Pack made by a small group of polish people (I would rather say teenagers because of their language habbits). The core of their distribution is the good old USP 2.1 from Gape. They added some themes, utilities and made some improvements through resource editing. Then presented their creation as USP 4.x So, they are Windows 98 fans, as well. But, they do not like the MSFN, as their creation got significant amount of bad opinions here. The term "Windows 98 USP wars" is my own name of the USP related flame war. Apparently, the changes introduced in the "new" polish USP edition were not considered as significanly usable by the majority of the local community. The Gape refused to include the changes in his package, as well. The flame war was suppressed by moderators, as far as I remember.

The 137GB barrier is very real on many 9x systems because esdi506.pdr, the FAT32 filesystem driver, has a bug in it. If you attempt to write above 137GB on an unpatched system you'll crush the data at the beginning of the disk. As for the 32GB barrier in Win95 I dunno because I am not knowledgeable enough with 95 but BenoitRen will be able to tell us probably if you are right or wrong. There is no 32GB limit in Windows 95. I've been running a Windows 95 OSR 2 on a 60GB HDD without any problems. On the other hand I had data corrupted, when I switched to 160GB hdd. Since there were no 137GB patch available then I had to switch to Windows 98 + Intel Application Accelerator driver.

I'm do not have any proof, but the whole case seems to be related to Windows 98 Unofficial Service Pack wars.

Windows 95 USB support is very limited. There are almost no USB devices able to work in Windows 95. So, if USB is to be used, Windows 98 is the right choice.

Yes, the LAN I'm accessing the MSFN from does have a static IP, indeed. But, It looks like everything started to work correcly, again.

The MSFN related DNS queries stopped working again. So, I can safely assume the attack from the Polish IP space was made, again. Perhaps I could be of some assistance with legal actions against the attacker. But, the first thing to do would be to find out what company is the the Internet access service provider of the attacker.

The largest Internet access services provider in poland is TP. Their main offer is ADSL with dynamic IP. The TP keeps track of what IP was used by whom in what time period, so it is possible to track a "villain" down and prosecute accordingly. The TP has a right to disconnect the user violating the law, as well. By knowing the IP used it should be possible to track down the provider and perhaps the country region, as TP does use different IP ranges for them. Perhaps, an official investigation will be the most effective tool to get the "punk" stopped.

The next thing to check would be: - Is there a "Atheros L2 Fast Ethernet Adapter" entry present in the Device Manager? - There should be also one or two PCI Ethernet Controller entries present in the Device manager. They should be marked as switched off, or without a correct driver installed. If they are missing it means network card is disabled in the BIOS settings. - What is the contents of the protocol.ini file in the WINDOWS directory?

I've noticed the network file sharing functions are working extremely slow. It is many times faster to transfer files using EEE PC as a client, than server. It is caused by the DOS mode LAN driver, probably. Apparently, network drive sharing requests from a DOS mode driver are processed very slowly.

In theory the NDIS driver setup procedure should add a correct AUTOEXEC.BAT entry by itself. If nothing went wrong, there should be a "C:\WINDOWS\net start" entry in the AUTOEXEC.BAT.

For about a moth, I'm unable to enter the msfn.org. I've tried different DNS servers with the same results. The same problem exists from many locations and different Internet services providers. I can access the msfn.org by using US proxy server, only. I'm starting to believe the whole Poland is affected.

The Windows 98 on my old Asus EEE PC 900 was made quite long ago with many small steps. Now, I've got to do the same in the best possible order. Since the Windows 98 setup did not detected ACPI, it would be good to enable ACPI on as early stage as possible. The problem is the old and proven ACPI enabling procedure does not seem to be working. And I do not know why. Some things have to be installed first, probably. The ACPI support enabling procedure requires to reinstall all PnP device drivers. So, in order to reduce the time spent on the job, it would be good to do it as the first task.

This is a shortened guide of how to make a dual Xandros/Windows 98 system on an EEE PC while using just the flash drives. Pehaps it will be worth to add more details to it in the future and create a separate thread. Before we begin. Setting up a Windows 98 as a second OS along with factory Xandros Linux on Asus EEE PC is a bit complicated task. There are a few reasons for it. - no built in FDD - no built in CD drive - it is not possible to change Grub OS loader settings from Xandros. The XOSL is a boot manager capable of storing the original MBR in a file and swapping drives when booting. While using the swap drives function it will be possible to boot from a flash drive and then to change the boot drive to the built in drive. So, a FAT32 partition with Windows 98 system files could be booted without destroying the Xandros Grub boot loader, that way. One or two bootable flash or USB HDD drives will be necesary. One drive with SysRescue CD and the other with Windows 98(9x) DOS mode files. (Or one dual boot drive with two partitions). The DOS drive should contain XOSL, Windows 98 setup, SYS.COM and HIMEM.SYS files. And perhaps some DOS file manager (DOS Controller or Norton Commander). Also the XOSL should be installed on the DOS drive (preferably with the Rainish Partition manager). The first thing to do is to upgrade the BIOS, as it works only when the factory partition layout is untouched. It will stop working after the FAT12 partition is deleted. Installation 1. Boot the SysRescueCD and resize the the second EXT3 partition with GParted. The GUI is run through "startx" command. The GParted utility is accessible through context menu on the desktop. GParted has some difficulties with handling FAT32 partitions. It failed in my case. So, other partition manager should be used to make the Windows 98 FAT32 partition. 2. Boot the DOS flash and start Rainish Partition manager from XOSL boot menu. Use (Ctrl-P) on the boot manager screen. Then Delete third FAT12 partition and create a new FAT32 in it's place. 3. Boot the DOS and put Windows 98 system files with SYS command to the new partition. Then copy the Windows 98 setup and HIMEM.SYS files there. (creation of a proper config.sys file could be necesary to make the HIMEM.SYS work). 4. Boot the DOS drive again. This time it will be necesary to add an additional boot option in the XOSL. Select the new FAT32 partition and check the "Swap drives" checkbox. It will make the new partition to be the C drive after booting. Then install the XOSL on the C drive. After a reboot The Xandros boot option will require to boot from the original MBR, while Windows 98 partition can be booted directly. 5. To setup Windows 98 boot the system from the new partition, then use the SETUPCOR.EXE, as the SETUP.EXE will not work on the EEE PC. Also the keyboard and touch pad will stop function after Windows 98 will do PnP devices check. It will be necesary to switch off the computer, when the date and time settings dialog is displayed. Luckily the setup will continu from the same point after booting the Windows 98, again. 6. After finishing the Windows 98 setup, it will be necesary to restore the XOSL and Xandros booting option, as Windows 98 destroyed the MBR OS loader durin the setup. In order to do so: - Boot to the SysRescueCD again. - mount the new FAT32 partition. An examplary commands are: mkdir d mount -t vfat /dev/sda3 d cd d - restore the Grub boot loader from orig_mbr.xcf file using DD DD if=orig_mbr.xcf of=/dev/sda - boot to Windows 98 as it was in the step 4 again and install the XOSL. Now you should be able to boot to Windows 98 and Xandros at will using the XOSL.

I've just received a brand new Asus EEE PC 900 with factory Xandros setup. It had exactly the same BIOS version, as the old one. But, in this case I was able to successfully upgrade the BIOS. The BIOS upgrade procedure requires to reboot the system. Then another OS is started (it's probably some kind of DOS). After the BIOS upgrade, the computer has to be switched off. Then the Xandros starts, again. I do believe the factory third small FAT partition is used during the BIOS upgrade. So, when making a dual Xandros/Windows 98 system, the default 4 partition layout is changed. And thats the reason, why I was unable to upgrade the BIOS in my old EEE PC. The only BIOS difference visible on the first sight is the table showing the PnP interrupt assignments and hardware details before system booting starts.

I've got two scenarios, of the critical system resource depletion. 1) The bad flash web contents code does allocate more and more system resources. The same web pages are causing resource depletion on many different browsers. The best defence is to lock the URL the fault causing flash contents is comming from. 2) A faulty application has some sort of a resource draining bug in the report manager function. Every time a certain reports are being created 2-5% of system resources are being locked in Windows 98. However, there are no problem in Windows 2000. I'm suspecting the report manager function has it's own resource table assigned. So, every time it is oppened a new resource table is created. The application manufacturer does not want to deal with this kind of a problem, as they do not want to accept any bug reports with just the Windows 98 in them. The only bug I can report in Windows 2000 is a small memory leak (less than a 100kB locked with every report manager session). It is enough to run the report manager about 10 times on Windows 98 to get the system unstable, or locked. Appart from the resource leak it does allocate over 40% of the system resources when working, as well. On the other hand, on Windows 2000 the application worked correctly after 500 iterations of the report manager sessions. The only side effect was about 50MB of memory being locked. In the end all I can do is to tell to the Windows 98 users to close the application after every few reports. So, in my case, the ability to displace the forgotten resource entries to some other table, would significantly increase the Windows 98 stability.

The thread you've mention was a significant part of my research. I've just encountered another case of the resorce eating application. The problem is the manufacturer does not accept error reports with Windows 98 in them. So, I have to persuade them the Windows 2000 is affected, as well. I do not know of a system resources meter capable of measuring available user and GDI resources in Windows 2000. The only idea I have now is to repeat a faulty application function until it will display an error message. It will take many (20 or more) iterations, so AutoIt could be a nice help in such a task.

I've been researching the GDI related problems, lately. Apparently, Windows 2000/XP is not immune to the problem, as well. The difference is, each application in Windows 2000 does have it's own GDI resouce table. So, going over the limit brings just one application down (while in Windows 98 the whole system stability is at the stake).

My client's worker bought an application designed for .NET 3.5, while having just Windows 98 installed on his computer. They do have a spare Windows 2000 license, but I've decided to investigate the possibility of using the KernelEx along with .NET 3.5. All easy available .NET 3.5 packages are ment for Windows XP at least. But, I've found a different distribution: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en I'm a bit confused. Could it mean there is a possibility to install it in Windows 98? Even .NET 3.5 in Windows 2000 would be a nice solution for me.

Wrong analogy. There are also plenty apps that run on w2k and onwards but will never run on win9x by design. Kernel modifications like KernelEx don't change this. The analogy was a correct one, I believe. All applications suffering from the GDI resource limits on Windows 98 are working on Windows 2000 with no apparent GDI shortages. The applications designed for just Windows 2000 are not a problem, since they do not work in Windows 98. The thread adresses Windows 98 and compatible applications related problems. Applications not compatible with Windows 98 are out of the scope, in my opinion.

I've been thinking about the GDI resources limit while reading this thread from the beginning. There are many opinions telling it can not be done. My conclusion is, it was done somehow in Windows 2000. Since the same applications are working in Windows 2000 and 98, it should be possible to increase the resource limit in 98 without recompilation of the user applications. I would like to know how Windows 2000 does manage the GDI resources. And where is the difference from the Windows 98 point of view.

My Flash Player version is 9,0,115,0. Well. It is true. Still, the Flash Player provides litle or none security in the resource management. So, the possibility of the GDI resource leak could be treated as a safety related bug.

I've been observing Windows 98 GDI resources to be depleted when diplaying certain web pages through a long time (several hours). But recently, I've found the www.onlygoodanimes.com portal is able to eat all the GDI resources in less than an hour. Both Opera 9.2 and Firefox 2 were affected, so it looks like the flash player 9 contents is the source of the problem. Apparently the direct cause on the www.onlygoodanimes.com portal is the flash chat window. So, the temporary fix is to block the chatango.com in the Opera. But, it will not fix the problem with other web pages. Other solution is to close Opera or Firefox to free the GDI resources, before the system crashes for good. I did not tested the problem with the Internet Explorer. The flash player code could be a bit different in this case.

I've experienced such a problem when doing power related settings from the Desktop properties screen saver dialog. On the other hand when set from the Control Panel power related screen everything worked correctly.

I've been experimenting with an application on Windows 98. It was working in general, but at some point the results were not displayed correctly. When trying to run the same application on Windows 2000 professional, a missing .dll message was displayed at the beginning. It appeared the application required Microsoft Visual C++ 8 libraries to be installed in the system, and the installation package did not contained them. After adding the Vicual C++ libraries to the application folder, everything started to work correctly in Windows 98. For some reason the Windows 98 did not displayed any missing .dll message, while Windows 2000 professional reported the problem immediatelly. Some other time, the Windows 98 crashed because of the GDI resource leak in a Clarion application, while working correctly in Windows 2000. Futher inspection revealed the Windows 2000 also has some limits to how much GDI resources could be assigned to the Clarion application. So, Windows 2000 was not immune, as it appeared to be.

I did not made any progress, unfortunatelly. I had some more important matters to attend to, and I'm quite satisfied with the dual boot Xandros and Windows 98 marriage. Windows 98 is sufficient and efficient for working, while Xandros is used just for wireless network and entertaining purposes. There is a new 0906 BIOS version available for the 900 series. But, I was unable to upgrade the BIOS, so far. I would like to see some power and VGA BIOS improvements, as it could push the thread forward.