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It is not true. DOS does access disk drives using BIOS functions. So, DOS does support LBA48 if the BIOS does. It's a bit funny, but with many motherboards DOS supports larger hard drives then the unpatched Windows does. So it is possible to partition and format a large disk in DOS. The simplest way to install Windows on a big HDD is to make the first partition smaller than 128GB. Install the Windows on it, then apply a patch to access the whole HDD.

I've installed a Konica K-7130 with IP-422 controller drivers on two XP computers, today. The generic IP printing port was enough to access the printer through the network. Now, I have to do the same with a Windows 95 computer, and another one Windows 98 in the close future. I do not know much about the generic IP port printing in Windows XP. But, the most probable explanation how it is working, seems to be the through LPR/LPD protocol. Quite some time ago I had an SMC Barricade router with a built in LPT print server. The supplied driver was called SOHOmate, PRTmate, or something like that. The driver worked with every LPR/LPD print server. I'm qiute sure I could use the same driver with the IP-422 print server. The problem is I do not know, if it is legaly correct to use this driver with a none SMC print server. But, perhaps there is some other freeware driver available. Or, I'm very wrong, and will not be able to duplicate Windows XP generic IP printing port with an LPR/LPD driver.

So happens, I'm running Windows 98SE with GeForce FX 5200 graphics card, at the moment. The last ForceWare ment for Windows 98 was 81.98, I think. And, it does support FX 5200 cards.

I'm using 9x systems, because they are simple. And, simpler systems are much more easy to manage. The Flash Player compatibility forced me to move to Windows 98 on computers used for the Internet browsing purpose. All others with hard drives below 128GB are Windows 95, still. According to my experience, the best hardware platform for a 9x computer with DOS applications being used is PIII. P4 processors tend to slow down when a DOS application is working. So, with a DOS window opened a PIII or PII CPU is much faster than twice as fast (in clock) P4. A PIII computer with 256 or 512 MB of RAM and a Windows 98 running seems to be more than enough for a normal work station. Only heavy graphics, multimedia or gaming activity requires the CPU power the P4 class CPU can only deliver.

Ill start from the declaration the affected computer is not mine. The infection happened a few month ago, so it's a bit late, now. Also, the Steam Account Stealer is the name of the trojan like software. I know nothing about Valve game managers, but this is not the case, I believe. Well, it is highly possible the personal data was stolen, but there is no proof the trojan works good enough on the Windows 98 systems, as well. Since it left the trace to the FTP account it stores the stolen data on, it is safe to say it does not work without flaws in the Windows 98.

A suspecious looking file tmp.tmp.tmp was found on a Windows 98 computer. It looks like a config file of some sort. There was an FTP server URL, FTP account name and password in it. The FTP account is valid. I logged to the FTP server, and I've found several text files generated by Universal1337 Steam Account Stealer. Looks like the computer was attacked by a trojan. But, the trojan should not leave such critical data on the targeted computer, so I do believe it is not working correctly on a Windows 98 system. Still, remains an important question. Were the personal data stolen? Is the Universal1337 Steam Account Stealer able to retreive any data from an Windows 98 computer?

I do have a Windows 95 installed on a few computers. But, I had to move to windows 98 on every computer I'm using for Internet browsing. There are quite many portals using flash. Unfortunatelly, there are no proper flash player available for Windows 95. Older flash player versions are working quite well, but some Internet pages are not compatible with them. So, without a flash player 8 or 9 it is not possible to browse certain sites.

According to the license agreement this is a commercial application. It is forbidden to make copies of this application except of the archival purposes. So, it is not a shareware, for sure. The trial version excludes the commercial and public usage. So, it is ment for the private use, only.

Whait a minute! What kind of shareware is this? It is just an online converter, isn't it. It requires an E-Mail adderss to be supplied. I see a danger of being spammed after using this converter.

It doesn't make any sense to me, still. As, any DOS application can test for OS=Windows_NT enviroment variable. Also Windows 9x systems did not hide the %windir% variable, so hidding it in a newer systems does not seem to be a logical action. Going towards DOS 5 compatibility leaving DOS 9x system compatibility behind is a bad idea, I believe. It would be easier to test for just one variable, but testing for both %windir% and %OS% seems to work good enough.

The %windir% variable checking works very good with a Windows 9x. But, I found some problems with Windows 2000 and XP. The SET command displays the presence of the %windir% variable on 9x, 2000 and XP. But, a 16 bit application compiled with Borland Pascal does not detect the variable in windows 2000 and XP. I do not know where this strange phenomenon comes from.

Only the Novel edition of the OpenOffice is able to open DOCX files, as far as I know. So, it is hardly a solution, I believe.

Well. there are just three files responsible for the DOS boot. All are located outside of the Windows folder, by default. IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM. Other files used during boot will be listed in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, but are not mandatory. It is possible to modify those files when DOS is running. The exception can be COMMAND.COM. It would be good to reboot the system right after changing the COMMAND.COM. As, it is loaded and unloaded dynamicaly by DOS. Quite often, Windows GUI kernel uses the COMMAND.COM from the Windows folder, instead of the one in the main folder. IO.SYS can use the one in the main folder, when the other one is not available. IO.SYS should not be deleted. It's first cluster has to remain in the same location. So, it is possible to just overwright it. The file has to be located in the main/root directory. There is a copy in the Windows\Command\EBD folder. But it is used just to create emergency boot disks by Windows. IO.SYS will check the registry settings during boot. If the registry file is damaged or missing it will display the boot menu with the "Safe Boot" option.

The LFN support is necesary to create a long file name. If we have the LFN support the simplest thing is to write the file with a correct name in a single operation. I see no reason to create a long name and then to write a file in a separate operation. Your procedure is logical only when restoring a copy over the old operating system files. When creating the system files leaving the old ones in a different folder creation of empty file names and then writing them over would be just an unnecesary complication. Another problem is this procedure would work only, when the system is bootable. As the initial write of long file names is necesary. On the other hand, my procedure is effective also when there are no system folders, or the system does not boot. Another fact is, my procedure is not suited for partial system backup/restore operations. It always has to restore the whole system. So, in case of a incremental backups it would be necesary to process the initial backup and then all incremental backups more than once.

Yes, I have a new version. I added a few improvements: - the program always expected the Temporary Internet Files folder is in the Windows folder. Now it can be anywhere. - Microsoft Win32 Smart Card Base Components addition is creating a smartcrd.dat file in the windows folder. It is always kept open. So, it can not be backed up. It is a temporary file created on every boot, so the backup utility has to treat this file the same way as win386.swp. - I enabled the application to use DOSLFNMS utility for backup and restore. But, I did not tested it yet. The only conclusion I got so far is, the DOSLFNMS depends on the DOS codepage and requires own codepage settings files to work correctly. So, it it necesary to load codepage files before backing up or restoring. Also DOSLFNMS can not handle the file names with certain characters. It is necesary to restore those files with WIN32 application (like ARJ32 for an instance). That's why I do prefer the Windows built in LFN support. I do believe the system should not be restored by overwriting the current system file set. Such a procedure will leave unwanted software and malware. My application changes the names of the current system folders and restores the whole file set to replace them, instead. It is much easier to keep the system clean, that way. The old system folders can be deleted by the user, later.

I've been working on my own solution to Windows 98 backup/restore problem for many years, already. The result is something in between to partition copy and built in system restore function. I started from copying the Windows files to another partition with Explorer. It worked, but restoring of such a copy was not an easy task. After many experiments I've noticed it is possible to restore just 8:3 file names from the Windows folder, then to run the system with such a partial copy, then to restore files with long names from WINSTART.BAT script. And this idea and ARJ compression utility becomed the foundation of my backup application. The final version makes snapshots of Windows and Program Files folders excluding temp and Temporary Internet Files folders. This covers the system registry and all config data. With such a copy it is possible to restore the system to a new disk drive in case of a critical HDD failure, or to replace the current damaged or infected system with the previously made copy. The whole solution was targeted towards my clients needs. If the system became problematic it is possible to restore it from the CONFIG.SYS menu. That way I do not have to go to my clients office by myself, because the client can restore the system by himself in most cases, sometimes with a minor telephone help or suggestion. I found it takes much less time to restore the whole system, than to clean it with AV software. The system copies can be stored on the same partition as the Windows is located. It is possible to restore from a bootable CD drive, as well. The application was made in the Polish language only, I'm afraid.

Intel Application Accelerator provides LBA48 support for Intel HDD controller chipsets. I'm using IAA with Intel 815 and 845 chipset series and it works witout any other additional patch. According to the readme file IAA works with Intel 82801AA, 82801AB, 82801BA and 82801DB IDE controllers. Perhaps, there is a newer version available, as I did not update it for a few yers, already.

I'm testing the BookmarkBridge, right now. - It's Open Source - Works on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, XP and UNIX. - Works with IE, Firefox, Opera and some other browsers. - Can not synchronise with other computers.

The HP offers drivers for Windows 98. But, it is called a "driver bundle" and it is located in the Windows 2000 and XP sections.

In Windows 95 not many USB devices will work. It will be necesary to use Windows 98 in order to connect the computer to the internet through USB port. If you are going to visit web pages with Adobe Flash Player 9 requirement, the Windows 98 is a must. USB significantly slows down computers with slow processors. PCMCIA requires much less processor power to handle. I do not know if it is possible to use wireless in Windows 95. I never tried to do so.

Internet Explorer checks for new versions by itself. This feature is enabled by default, as far as I remember.

I would agree in case of the Windows 3 series. But, Windows 9x is much more than that. As, the 32 bit patchwork (as you call it) has it's own kernel, which takes direct controll over all system resources just like Windows NT kernel does. Also, the DOS sessions available when the GUI kernel is running is not 100% compatible with DOS, and are working more like DOS emulation services.

That was the problem. It works correctly now. The interesting thing is all my Windows 98 computers have this issue. So, it is somehow related to the default IE 6 setup settings for Windows 98, I think.

I have a strange problem with downloading files using IE 6 SP1 from Windows 98 systems. The funny thing is the same links are working correctly from Windows 2000 and IE 6 SP1. Im trying to understand where this difference is comming from. Since it works in Windows 2000, it should (in theory) work in Windows 98.

Could you backup this opinion with some evidence? Since the 9x does not have any ports opened, there is no security risk with connecting it to the Internet 24/7 without a firewall, in my opinion. It is necesary to install and run some network services software, in order to keep some ports opened 24/7 in a 9x system. So, any security holes will be related to the installed software, not for the system itself.