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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?

What size is your HDD? Let's say you have a 250GB drive. 137/250=0,548. Enter up to 54% as the size of the first partition, then.

Have you tried to tell the Fdisk to make a partition in % of the drive. Fdisk does not work correctly when using capacity as the input. But, when using % it works quite good. It just displays wrong data. It is possible to use bigger partitions than 137GB. But, some OS functions will not work properly, then. I had a lot of problems with Windows 95 and a 160GB HDD. Windows 98 can work very good with the drives exceeding 137GB depending on the IDE drivers used. DOS is working fine if BIOS supports the LBA48.

I replaced the explorer by a simple files replacement. I did not touched any registry settings, so it's quite possible the solution is somewhere there. LiteStep looks like something very interesting. Unfortunately the site was not fully recovered after the HDD crash. So, I was unable to find out what language versions are available there. --------------- I just took a look at the Revenge of Mozilla. Unfortunately it will work with English language windows versions, only. So, it is useless, to me.

I've encountered a BIG problem with Windows 95 explorer. I copied, then deleted a few thousand files. The files were deleted completely, without putting them to the recycle bin. The explorer was working as usual. But then I deleted a single file to the recycle bin. The explorer froze for good. It's quite possible this problem does not exists in the 98lite. But, it makes such an explorer replacement in an working system a bit useless. So, back to the drawing boards.

Well. Not from there, but I did. First of all, the amount of unofficial updates available to me is limited, because I do use a Polish language Windows 98 SE. There is a Polish language version of USP 2.1 available, so I'm using it. I've been working both with IE 5.5 SP2, and later with IE 6 SP1 with the Browseui.dll and Browselc.dll fix. I used updates from the Microsoft, as well. The .dll fix does help, indeed. But, the explorer locks without IE 6, as well. The Explorer with IE 5.5 locks for shorter amount of time, then it works fine. In case of IE 6 the explorer is unstable till the system reboot (with the dll fix it works just like with IE 5.5). (A note. Explorer locks are related to file operations on a large amount of files. A few thousand, at least) Windows 95 explorer is faster and locks for short amount of time only after deleting files to the recycle bin. Windows 98 explorer version locks after all file related operations (copying, moving, deleting without a difference with recycle bin or without it).

I'm not sure if it is a good idea. The 98 explorer is the one responsible for the most annoying problems. So, bringing the 98 dll's back can bring the 98 explorer problems back, as well. Well. I decided I went a bit too far during my experiments, so I restored the system from the copy I made before this whole system shell replacement. I did everything from the beginning, but this time I left IE 6, as it was. And, the PopTray closes correctly, now. I do not know what was the cause. Perhaps this problem was related to IE uninstall, or perhaps it was not. I encountered yet another strange problem. This particular system was clonned from another computer. Then I changed network name and a license number (all my Windows 9x systems are legal, I have a few certificates of athenticity). Anyways, there was a .LNK file created when the computer had a different network name. It appears at the first run of the Windows 95 explorer the links in the start menu were processed in some strange way. One of the links was changed to point on the original file on the computer with the old network name. In other words the link was changed to the original file it was created from, so it points at the file on the other computer in my LAN. Then I replaced the link with the one I extracted from the system copy. And, it remained unchanged from that time. Looks like the Windows 95 explorer at first run does believe it is the first system start after an upgrade or installation. So it does some sort of the Start menu link conversion (or something). It is a little low possible someone else will encounter a similiar problem as I did, but this particular case gives some information about what is going on in the system. I think it should be possible to persuade the Explorer to not to do the "first run conversion". But, is it a good idea? Will it work better without it? Perhaps it will, but perhaps not.

i thought this had something to do with shell32.dll and broswseui.dll v6 but it doesnt matter too much. Well. I'm copying and deleting files quite often. This particular bug is what made me hate the Windows 98 system shell. The problem does exist with the IE 5.5, as well. It is not as irritating, as the explorer returns resources to the system, after a while. In case of IE 6 the resources are never released. Windows 95 does it much faster. The only problem is deleting files to the recycle bin (It takes some time to recover in such a case). In Windows 98 deleting a lot of files files always locks explorer (no matter deleting to recycle bin, or not). that can be fixed by using reshack to change the bmp in explorer.exe Done. The Reshack worked like a charm. I've noticed the notepad is not working, so I relpaced it with the Windows 95 vesrsion, as well. Also, It appears PopTray 3.2 does not want to close itself during the system shutdown. All other applications are working correctly, I think. Another side effect is the Suspend option. It was possible to remove this option from the Start menu. Windows 95 controll pannel had a proper checkox for it. Now the Suspend option is useless, and it can not be hidden. Yet another problem: IE does not see the favourite links. The folder the links are kept in has a System attribute enabled. I removed the system attribute with a disk editor. But, it would be simpler to make a copy of the folder before switching to Windows 95 shell, then delete it and create a new folder with the same name. As, it is a bit difficult to remove a system attribute from a folder. Anyways, without the system attribute, the favourite links are working fine.

I went a bit further. I made a backup copy of the whole system. I replaced the 3 files with Windows 95 versions. The result is, it works. The side effects I found so far: - Start menu displays Windows 95, instead of Windows 98 Second Edition. - Internet links in Outlook Express 6 stopped working. (After switching the default browser to Firefox, and then back to IE links are working correctly) - The Firefox does not switch itself to default browser, correctly. - Explorer does display the folder navigation column, only. (the column width was exceeding the screen width. Woks fine, after adjusting) - File display preferences were set to the default values. - The "What's new in Windows 98" presentation is launched at every Windows boot. I'm unable to swith it off in the Msconfig. (looks, like the system shell thinks it is the first system boot after the setup. I deleted the C:\Windows\Welcome.exe and the problem is gone) - It is not possible to go to the suspend power mode. - After copying or deleting large amount of files the system works fine. Absolutely no Explorer freezing.

I started digging in the Internet looking for the informations about the 98lite. It looks like, the language versions provided by 98lite are just the installer language versions. Files used in the process are provided by user, so it should be possible to use 98lite with any language Windows 98 version. Also, 98lite takes 3 files from Windows 95 in order to replace the system shell: explorer.exe, shell32.dll i comdlg32.dll. I'm curious, if I will be able to replace the shell a by simple replace of these files in an working Windows 98 SE USP2.1.

Well, I do like the Windows 95 explorer. It's seems to be more reliable, than 98 one. There is a problem with the file set size calculation (exceeding 4GB). Yet, it seems to be a good one. But, I have a problem with 98lite. It is not available in the Polish language version. I have a few doubts in Windows 98 without IE, as well. Some software, including drivers, requires IE to be installed. It should be possible to tweak with the shell leaving the IE unused, but still available if necesary.

After playing a bit with Windows 98 and IE 6, I've started to consider switching to Windows 2000. Why?... Because it copies and deletes files without any additional effects (like desktop freezing, explorer locking and other system resources related problems). Then I started to think about how to make the Windows 98 better. The conclusion is the worst components of the Windows 98 system are the system shell (explorer.exe) and the Internet Explorer. But, it is possible to replace the system shell with any application. Well,... it is possible to do it, all right. But, it would be good to retain the system shell functionality, in the same time. Writing a completely new system shell is a bit complicated task. Is there any replacement available, already?

So, we are facing a law related problem, possibly. Is it legal to add a multicore support to Windows 98?

The greatest advantage of a Windows 9x OS is the simplicity. It's easier to backup, restore, move to other hard drive and so on. The DOS included is not without a meaning, as well. The system performance is not the most important parameter for many users. It is possible to buy a better computer with a newer OS, if the performance is necesary. That's why I do believe multi CPU support is unnecesary. A much more important task would be to remove some of the Windows 98 old issues.