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here comes another chapter of the story... The newest update solved the problem with resources and memory leaks. Everything works fine on Windows 98 systems. On the other hand, on some Windows 2000 and XP systems running the problematic function is causing the system to shut down the application. According to the log some sort of access rights violation happens. Funny thing is the Windows 98 does not have access rights, so everything is working fine, here. Apparently some faulty applications can work on Windows 98, when causing problems on the newer systems.

The forceware 81.98 does not support the newer Nvidia devices. But, there was a thread about an unofficial Nvidia driver packages, some time ago.

In my case, the faulty application does have the GDI resources leak along with memory leak. Just the memory leak would not kill Windows 98. Unfortunatelly, the bad applications can take 70% of the GDI resources in just a few seconds. The end result is, the Windows becomes unstable until rebooted. Probably the programmer forgot to take care of releasing memory after using some GDI elements (like dialogs or icons). The more data were processed the more memory gets locked. The most probable cause is a faulty progress bar update code, I think. It should be possible to improve the performance on Windows NT based systems, as they will survive the GDI resources leak. The Windows 98 does not stand a chance in such a situation, I believe. Still, I'm curious if the Clarion 6.3 can be blamed for some of the Windows 98 related problems. As, everything was working fine when an older Clarion version was in use.

The last official Nvidia Windows 98/ME drivers version is 81.98. 82.69 does need Windows 2000 or newer.

Recently, a new update to the complex integrated management system made in Clarion 6.3 brought a problem. Some of the reports are causing Windows 98 to hang or go unstable. After an investigation, it appeared the system GDI resources get depleted, and Windows 98 goes nuts. In the same time the same functions were seeming to work correctly on Windows 2000 (as it does not have the GDI resources limited). We have sent a report to the application manufacturer, about the problem. The answer was, they are unable to make it work with 98. So, they officialy dropped support for 9x as the answer. But, the problem still exists. The functions are working in Windows 2000, but they do have a memory leak. After each event of running the faulty report creator, the application locks more and more RAM. So, the application creator went the easy way to shut up complaining clients, leaving a bug in the code. This is just one of many reasons, why software creators are leaving Windows 98 behind. If they make a bad code it will be working on newer systems somehow. Unfortunatelly Windows 98 does not forgive bad and careless programming. I will send another bug report. But, it will be focussed on the memory leak, this time. With some luck, it will let the application to work correctly on 98, again.

If the external drive is not formatted with FAT32 the Windows98/ME will not be able to access it. Since it is a 1TB drive, it is highly possible it was formatted with NTFS. Windows 98/ME is not able to access NTFS, I'm afraid.

The patch is not necesary, any more. Just the KernelEX is enough, now.

I've been observing the same issue with Adobe Acrobat Reader. It could be related to graphics driver, as well. In my case, the Nvidia graphics was present on both affected computers. Also, the problem does not seem to happen with Nvidia driver 61.76. I have to confirm this observation, still. And I do not have the UberSkin installed.

I'm experiencing the same symptoms, but I was unable to link them to the Flash Player, so far. Still, the problem has something to do with opening web pages with java script and flash. Leaving such a page oppened for long time period makes the icons dissappear. I'm using Opera 9.21 and the Flash Player version is 9,0,115,0.

I've been playing with Opera 10 alpha a bit, yesterday. The first impression is, the file download part has to be improved significantly. - there is something wrong with the file type selection, while saving files. All the files were saved with the same extension (the first one I've used). - not the default skin can cause the popup text to be invisible - there is something wrong with the dowloaded files sorting Also, I've noticed when running links from desktop with Opera selected as the default browser. While the error condition dialog gets displayed, the desktop gets locked, to the moment the dialog is closed. So, the error condition message comes from Explorer.exe shell (not from the Opera).

Have anyone tried the Opera 10 for the problems with oppening links related to Explorer and DDE? I'm getting tired of waiting for this problem to be handled. So, far it appeared, the Opera creators were not willing to take care of it. If the Opera 10 will not solve it, there will be a good time to do something by ourselves. The simplest action possible, would be to locate the place the DDE related registry entries are stored in the Opera files. By changing them to some neutral text it should be possible to disable DDE registry keys for good. ----------------------------- I've just installed the Opera 10 alpha. Nothing changed. ----------------------------- I've just tried the skin on Opera 10. And, I must say I like it. It is much better than the other skins provided with the Opera 10, for my taste.

The SMPlayer and FLVPlayer do play the FLL files, after renaming them to FLV.

Well, the file association will not solve the problem, I'm afraid. The GOM opens the .FLL files, but it is unable to find a proper codec. On the other hand, SMPlayer (Mplayer) does not open the .FLL files. But, after renaming them to .FLV it does have all the necesary codecs. -------------------- As for the VEOH country support. It looks extremely weird (if not stupid). I'm just curious, if the lockout is IP or the user language based. -------------------- I've been playing with the Orbit Downloader a bit. But, it did not worked well enough for me. So I'm using the Video DownloadHelper plugin in the Firefox, instead. But, I do prefer to download files with Opera, after capturing direct http links to video files with www.graber.pl portal (There are other better portals like that, I believe. As, the Graber does seem to support just the polish language). The VirtualDub does not seem to be able to play files in the full screen mode. So, I do not see a good video player in it.

The quality is good enough, for me. Besides the details are not very important, when reading subtitles. Also, the GOM Player does have a quite effective quality enhancement filters. The real video would suffer significantly after applying the necesary video compression. But, in case of cartoons and anime the result seems to be not a bad one.

Here is a direct link to a .FLL file (62MB): http://content.veoh.com/flash/f/2/v3317692...974a445928955ac You should be able to download it without entering the VEOH www site. It is posible to download .FLV files from the VEOH, as well. It appears the .FLL was used with older video clips. The newer clips are in coded with .FLV. Still, in order to play an .FLL file it is necesary to change the file extension to .FLV.

It appears, the VEOH holds significant amount of video clips. Unfortunatelly, I found no good player able to play VEOH .FLL files on a Windows 98 system. I know about two players able to handle the .FLL files. But, both are not perfect. 1) FLV Player. Well, it seems to be working. But, the hardware requirements are huge (or the player is no good on 1.8 Ghz P4). 2) SMPlayer (with MPlayer). Plays the .FLL files significantly better than the FLVPlayer. But, there are some problems with Windows 98 support, probably. The volume regulation does not work, at all (for an instance). My favourite one is the GOM Player. But, for some reason it is unable to locate a proper codecs for the VEOH .FLL files. Is there a better solution than FLV Player or SMPlayer?

I did some tests of the Explorer lockup problem. Apparently the the browser dll replacement removes just some of the all shell and explorer lockup events. It helps, but it does not remove the problem. Another solution is "Unofficial Explorer Lockups SHELL32.DLL Fix". It does not solve the problem completely, but removes some of the lockups as well. On the other hand, when these two fixes are applied together, the explorer and shell lockups are as good as gone.

But, there are java applications compiled to be working on the 1.6. A good instance is one of the Polish govermental programs. According to documentation java 1.5 is required. But, at some point, a programmer compiled some modules with 1.6 requirement. As the result the application stopped working on java 1.5.

I'm using the RealVNC as well. In my case the biggest problem related to the RealVNC is inability to watch remote DOS full screen mode sessions. It is necesary to switch to windowed mode. Then a remote DOS application can be used.

In case of a LAN ARP poisoning attack Windows 9x systems are difficult to defend against. Static ARP entries are not working as expected. Setting a static entry just makes it not to time out. Such an entry will be overwritten by the attacker, and then it will remain that way. This problem has not been solved, so far. The NT based systems are much better in this case. A static ARP entry will remain as set, ignoring all the ARP poisoning packets. There are trojans poisoning the ARP tables of other LAN computers. They are modyfying the HTML code by adding redirections to spam or dangerous sites. If one computers in the LAN gets infected, other computers can be affected as well. The NT based systems can be easily protected through a static ARP entry for the internet gateway. The 9x computers can not be protected that way.

Since the Sinowall is highly integrated with NT kernel, it seem to be highly unlikely for it to be able to work with DOS based Windows 9x boot sequence. The Sinowall integrates with Windows NT networking functions. Windows 9x seems to be completely different on that plane.

Another possibility is to use GO-OO OpenOffice edition. It both runs on Windows 98 sysems and supports the Microsoft Office 2007 file formats. Yet another possibility is to use OpenOffice.org 3. It can work on Windows 98 with the newest KernelEx.

Indeed, the DrWatson can do it. But, I'm trying to find out what files are oppened, not loaded. In other words, I want to know what files are between oppen and close operations. Perhaps a better question would be: What files were not closed?

I'm looking for a possibility to check what files are oppened in the OS. It would be good to know what application oppened them, but it is not a mandatory function. There is a Microsoft utility available, but it records file operations and it is quite difficult to extract informations what files are oppened in a particular moment. I'm curious, if it would be possible to list all the open file handles, or something like that.

It seems NOPEY's shutdown functions are not working correctly in Windows 98. The "shutdown -force" and "poweroff -force" functions are closing the applications. However, some applications are not closed (with the system shell included), so the system keeps running.