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this isnt an os problem it is a bios problem, llxx found out this ages ago thats why theres a 48bitlba patch for 95 No. It is not a BIOS problem.Windows 95 does use it's own drivers to access HDD without the BIOS support. In my case the BIOS was working fine with the drive. The DOS was able to work correctly while Windows 95 was doing terrible things with the data structure. HPA (Hardware Protected Area) is the feature used by the disk tools. It's a part of the ATA specification, and it is present in all new disk drives on the market.

I've been using IAA2 with 160GB and 250GB hard drives for quite a time, already. I do not know if the older version works as good as the IAA2.

How much RAM do you have now? What service pack and autopatcher did you installed? When the GDI resource problem started to appear? Was it right after the installation, or in some other moment?

But, what caused the problem? Did you copy or delete files, before it happened? Explorer is known to lock resources during large file operations. With IE6 installed the locked resources are not released, and the system becomes unstable. With older IE versions the problem is less annoying, as the resources are released, after a while.

The file is a proper one. It opens properly on Windows 2000. The exact message is: "Wystąpił błąd podczas otwierania pliku". Also. Without a KernelEx update, there is no error message, at all. The file is opened, but the data is damaged (looks like binary).

Well. Not exactly. During my research I found out the LiteStep works quite good. There are no file operations related problems, then. But, not all themes are working with Windows 98. I've been playing with the austerity theme. It works quite good, except for the "find" feature. It is possible to rearrange menu to be more like Windows 98 explorer. It is possible to translate it to other languages, as well. (I did not finished the translating to Polish, however). LiteStep is a good solution, but the interface is quite different from the Explorer style. With a fully operational Explorer like theme, LiteStep would be a very good solution. Why I'm so much concerned about Explorer look and compatibility? Well. People got used to the Explorer. It makes easier to switch between computers, if the user interface is similiar. If I am to change the shell of all computers under my management, I have to consider what users will say.

Well. I played with Total Commander, lately. Looks like it does not use the Explorer for file operations. So, it is possible to evade the file operations related problems by using alternate file managers. Sadly the Total Commander is not a free application. It does have a nagging start screen, as well. But, there could be other file managers. Looks, like not all file managers are a solution. FreeCommander is using Explorer in file operations. So, there is no improvement, in it's casee.

I tried to add .the DOCX support to Office 2000 on Windows 98. But, I failed. Both Office 200 and Windows 98 are Polish language versions. Without KernelEx installed, an attempt to open a .DOCX file gives a binary data in the document. I think there is something wrong with decompressing routine. With KernelEx patch, all I'm getting is an error message. (Error in the file, or something like that (Translation from Polish)) I tried Your procedure on multiple compatibility package versions. The result is always the same. It istalls on Windows 98, but it works on Windows 2000, only.

All problems were gone, when I switched the system shell from Explorer to LiteStep. It is possible to restore the Windows 98 using DOS, only. But, this requires a proper backing up process. If there are no file names with OEM code page untranslatable characters, it is possible to restore the system from DOS using LfnDosMS driver.

With Windows 2000, yes. With Windows 98, no. The /d switch is not supported in Windows 9x.

Interesting, it does work, indeed. It is not possible to change multiple folders arrtibutes with a single command. The DOS does not process folders with wildard based operations. It is necesary to run a separate command for every folder. It is possible to do it in Windows 2000/NT system. But this will require a small batch program. In case of a Windows 9x system a VB script could do it, I think.

SYS command can not change attributes of folders. It works with file attributes, only. In general dos is not able to change attributes of folders, such a possibility came with the Windows GUI. Still, the system attribute of a folder requires disk editor, or some other special application. In order to get a folder with a system attribute set without additional application, the simplest solution would be to make a copy of some other system folder. Luckily, Explorer is able to change a system folder name.

The same patched pack works on Windows 2000, but not on Windows 98. Looks like the decompression part of the DOCX format converter does not work with Windows 98. It would be explanation of the binary data instead of text, I'm receiving on Windows 98. Since the XML is a text format, the only source of binary data is compression. --------------------------- I decided to test the KernelEx update. And the result is different now. So, no binary data, any more. There is an error message instead. DARN!!!

I patched the Office Compatibility Pack 3.0 and installed it on a Windows 98 Office 2000 system. Unfortunately it does not work correctly. The DOCX document opens in the Word, but the result looks like a binary file, or something. I know there were successful attempts with older Office Compatibility Pack versions.

I've been playing with the LiteStep on the Windows 98 SE. It seems to be working better than the Explorer.

I can confirm. The HP Point and Print Driver Bundles available on the HP sites do have drivers for both 9x and NT systems. The strange part is, they are located in the Windows NT/2000(...) based system options, only. I was looking for HP LaserJet 4000 Windows 98 driver, and I found it in the Windows 2000 section. Strange, isn't it?

HP lost some points in my eyes. I will not buy any new printers from HP, for sure. There is no reason to do so, since HP does not support the OS I'm using now. Luckily, there are plenty of used and cheap to buy and to print printers on the maket. The only challenge is to get drivers for them. I found no portal with easy accessible large HP drivers database. Many of portals are just redirecting downloads to the HP site, so they are useless. So, is there a site we could build our own HP driver database?

I found, there is a DOCX converter for Novel OpenOffice edition. Unfortunately, it does not work with other OpenOffice editions.

Users of the Microsoft Office 2000 package do have ability to add the .DOCX converters through installation of the Office Compatibility Pack 3.0. The problem is it requires Windows 2000 or newer to install. So, Office 2000 users running Windows 98 were left behind. Is there any solution to this dilema? Perhaps the KernelEx update can solve the problem. Or, perhaps, OpenOffice holds a solution.

I've been trying to find drivers for some HP LaserJet printers, recently. The result is there are Windows 9x systems listed as a download choice, but there are no drivers available. All one can get is some management software without any drivers included. Is there any HP driver repository with old systems drivers? I've heard Lexmark did something similiar to HP. Since, I'm not fond of the Lexmark printers, so I had no opportunity to test Lexmark drivers servers.

No, It is not a DMA related problem, certainly. It happens on 3 different computers. Two of them do have a properly working Intel Application Accelerator driver installed. I've been playing with LiteStep, and the freezing does not happen when LiteStep is the system shell. But, there is no Polish language version of the Litestep. It is possible to do some sort of a translation by yourself, however.

It is true the Fdisk does not let to create partitions in just the right size. But, if one does not have what one likes? One has to like what one has. I do not like Fdisk, anyway. The partition size limitation has nothing to do with the LBA28 limitation except for the size. Looks like Microsoft decided there is no sense creating larger partitions than 128GB. Anyways, there are two separate problems with separate solutions. Yet, the partition size limit is not important if there is no LBA48 support.

137/320=0,4281 The first partition should be up to 42% of the free disk space. The second. 137/(320-137)=137/183=0,7486 The second partition 74% of the free space available. The third one 100% The Fdisk from windows 9x will not accept the parttion sizes greater than ~64M. But when entering partition sizes in the % of the free disk space available, it should work correctly.

Windows 98 should work fine with the VIA chipset IDE drivers installed. The VIA drivers do have the LBA48 support, as far as I know. Microsoft limits the amount of clusters to 4M in their products (4M is not the exact number). This is the maximum partition size limitation cause. Windows 95 does not have LBA48 support built in, just like the Windows 98. But there are no drivers with LBA48 support for VIA or Intel chipsets available for Windows 95. I saw some unofficial attempts to add the LBA48 support to Windows 95, however. DOS with FAT32 support works fine with LBA48, as long as BIOS does support LBA48 correctly.

Darn. Format the drive. Run chkdsk and it will tell you the amount of clusters on the drive. If below 4M everything will be fine. The top partition size is not related to the LBA28 limitation, as far as I know. But, first of all: - what size HDD do you have? - what Windows version do you want to install on it? - what chipset does your motherboard have? - does the BIOS detect the HDD correctly?