CharlotteTheHarlot

I can't reproduce this. What do you see when you go to the parent directory ... ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/services/technet/samples/ps/win98

UPDATE TO POST #1 The top post has been re-written to describe the current ZIP package suite dated: 2012-04-16.. Win9x fans will notice that ONE more utility no longer operates. -CTH-

Even though we nowadays call it Win3.yuk, it was the cat's meow for a few years. Maybe two. I had what seemed at the time a very mature program called CorelDraw versions 3 through 5. It was seriously amazing what they managed to get that one to do on the Win3x platform. The main Office style app that was everywhere was Microsoft Works which was really tailor made for the limited resources of the time : i486, 4 or 8 MB RAM, Hard Drives still measured in MegaBytes. Games that were always DOS based were quickly being re-written for the GUI, with stuff like checkers, chess, tic-tac-toe, asteroids, missile command. Without Direct-X this must have been one heck of a chore, I don't know how they managed at all during this time period! But one good thing was that the finally acceptable, standardized GUI desktop was working correctly and the Icons and PIF files let us centrally manage our collections of hard core DOS games and other programs. This was a paradigm shift from the previous decade (seems like an eternity) of incredibly creative uber BAT files and CONFIG.SYS menu selectors (or DosShell or GEM or whatever Menu launchers). This was the strong point IMHO, point and click with predictable results. The pre-PnP environment gets a bad rap. If the cards all behaved (they had enough DIP switch possibilities) one could successfully configure the IRQ's and I/O and everytime the computer was booted the system was in an identical state. This consistent static state was sorely missed in the early PnP days when the neither the card manufacturers, the system BIOS programmers, nor Microsoft (Windows device manager) were on the same page. Having said that, the jump to Win95 still could not come soon enough.

I have noticed that WinXP records much more reliably unique information than Win9x did. It uses the drive MFG, Model and Firmware plus a 40 character hash concatenated into what we can call for the purposes of this discussion a unique identifier which is used in these locations under HKLM\System ... [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\DeviceClasses\{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}\... identifier ...] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Enum\IDE\... identifier ...] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Disk\Enum] "String Value"="... identifier ..." [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\PartMgr\Enum] "String Value"="... identifier ..." [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\SnapMan\Enum] "String Value"="... identifier ..." NOTE: There is some variance to the above (it does not appear exactly as shown, the ellipsis '...' is a placeholder for anything) with extra data included such as CLSID and underscores, but the core information should be easily discernible. Also note that ControlSet001 will be 003 or 002 or CurrentControlSet. The trick is to first obtain the unique information to be expected for each drive in your box. It pays to be very systematic about this, and this means using another different computer to obtain a record of the fingerprint left by each drive by saving a registry export after using each drive, then using WinDiff to compare the registry exports: - Go to neutral computer and save a registry export #A. - Power down, Install first of the drives, power up, save registry export #B. - Power down and remove that drive. power up, save registry export #C. - Power down, Install next one of the drives, power up, save registry export #D. - Power down and remove that drive. power up, save registry export #E. - Repeat this for each drive. You might notice that there is an extra step in there (removing the drive and exporting the registry before installing the next one), this is intentional in order to minimize registry changes between drive swaps. The goal is to WINDIFF two exports with as few differences to click through (F8) as possible. The sequence to WINDIFFing these exports would be like this: #A to #B ... for the 1st drive #C to #D ... for the 2nd drive #E to #F ... for the 3rd drive ... etc ... Catalog these changes carefully into a reference file. As you proceed through each WINDIFF you will get the hang of it, anticipating what to expect for each drive. You should then be able to take this information and using a registry export from the production machine know exactly what strings to search for to correlate what drives were used. You can also determine which drives were used before/after another given drive because the keys will be created sequentially as are the values inside the keys, the export will reflect this and as you proceed through each WINDIFF this will make sense. EDIT: fixed typos and tried to make clearer

I voted for Opera (obviously since there are only 2 votes so far, and they are both for Opera :-) However, in my opinion there is no reason to choose one over any of the others exclusively, meaning the typical argument to replace xxx with yyy is pretty silly. I am looking at four icons in my quicklaunch: Opera, Firefox, Chrome, MSIE. They all co-exist quite happily. They even run simultaneously if you are so inclined. Having the free choice to use any of them is a good thing. Just be sure to install them with care, de-select any optional garbage like toolbars that are un-necessary. This means to click 'Custom' in the setup to see all the install options, which is necessary because I believe all four now pre-select themselves to become the default browser. An added benefit to doing this is that you can you use different browsers for different things. Do your secure shopping in one. Log in to blogs and forums with another (I find that Opera is very good with remembering passwords, thread locations, sessions and similar things). When a site just does not work for some reason you can try a different one. In fact you can try the same site in all four of them at the same time. If you do any web developing (or just blogging) you can open up your page in all four browsers and ALT-TAB between them for quick comparison. Obviously MSIE is required for manually using Windows Update, there is no getting around this. Also, there are sites that have secure contests using flash that I have only been able to use MSIE for. One of these days I might just resurrect Mosaic as well. The original early 1990's browsers were always very fast and even with broadband access some of today's browsers chug away at the lousy coding, tangled CSS, Google metrics and insane scripting that make up today's internet. P.S. the same multi-browser strategy works okay in Vista/7 also. Haven't tried it in Win8 CP.

Since you are new to this I'll give you the cliff notes. Assuming you have a typical router with ethernet ports on it as well as wireless transmitting and receiving. Specific terminology varies from router to router, the details below are pretty much using Cisco Linksys verbiage ... - Grab yourself an ethernet cable and connect your computer using this cable to one of the router's outputs (note that there is also one input already connected to your Cable or DSL or FIOS or whatever modem). - Find the Instructions that came with your router and look for the mention of the URL you need to type in to your web browser in order to access the router's configuration. It should look something like this: 192.168.1.1 - Once you are browsing the router config pages you will likely need the default password (also in your manual). And, you really should change this to something else (save the changes and write it down). To secure your router there are two main ways, I always suggest doing both but at least do the first one ... (1) Under Wireless Security you will want to switch to WPA2 (not DISABLED and not WEP) and add a password aka Shared Key. Make it a long complicated phrase. Note that this will need to be entered once one each wireless device that tries to communicate with your router. The other line of defense is to use MAC Filtering. In a nutshell, this creates a whitelist of wireless devices allowed to use the router (and they still need to know the password as well). Any device not listed (the MAC address is what is actually listed) is effectively blacklisted, it never even gets the opportunity to try a password. Note, that this MAC filtering takes some practice to master, usually the MAC address is not printed on a nice sticker on every Wi-Fi device. Also note that enabling MAC filtering means this: when your buddy comes over with his laptop or iPad or whatever, they will not be using your home Wi-Fi unless you go through the trouble of adding their MAC address *and* you give them the password. Or you could temporarily disable MAC filtering while they visit (they'll need the password though). Or you could just let them plug into the Router using an ethernet cable if they have such a port. This is the part that takes some patience. Gathering up all the MAC addresses of all the iPhones, Laptops, iPads, eBook readers, Netbooks and whatever comes next is a pain in the butt. It is the reason many people do not bother. However, this two pronged defense makes it impossible for anyone to leach your bandwidth without physical access to your router, or one of your allowed devices. How it's done: (2) Under Wireless MAC Filter you would ENABLE the function and then select PERMIT ONLY devices listed. Clicking into the EDIT MAC Filter List is where you can add the actual addresses. With a bit of practice you will learn how to grab an unknown MAC of a device that hides it (iPhone, iPad) by first DISABLEing the MAC Filtering, then copying the MAC address from the CLIENT LIST, then reENABLEing the MAC Filtering and then adding this address. There might even be an easier way these days. There is even more stuff that can be done, like enabling logging, renaming the router's signal (what other people see) or hiding the router's signal name altogether (disable the SSID broadcast) and constraining internet access, setting caps, and complicated port management. All of this is simple to learn by Googling. But the two main things I mentioned above are the locks on the door that will make it impossible for leeches to use your bandwidth, which is very important. Remeber that you need to SAVE your changes that you make when you adjust the settings. BTW, the answer to the first question is NO. You will not use software from the client side of the router to do the job that the router itself is equipped to do. If you are trying to set up a trap or something you cannot do it with consumer equipment (well not easily). But what you can do is this: lock down your router as described above just at the moment you believe someone is busy gaming away your bandwidth on Crysis, and then open your windows and listen for their screams when their leeched connection is suddenly dropped. Then you will know who the culprit is

Huh... not the total. 1PC sold is still 1 licence sold, how do you go bankrupt from that ? No, I didn't mean Microsoft was hurting (financial trouble) or anything like that! I am only talking about the "Windows 7 sales are very strong" nonsense which always emanates from the tech press, CNBC, FBC and of course Redmond (and yes, we can substitute any previous OS's for 'Windows 7' as well). It is simply a meaningless measure of sales performance of an OS product. I'm not sure how to qualitatively compare 'sales' of a new OS versus a previous (killed) OS. Sales totals these days are certainly more a measure of laptops and smaller hardware sales than anything else. In previous years it more about OEM desktops. And then there is the huge business and corporate footprint which often lag the current release by a version (or two) which mucks things up further. It is such a unique market with seldom more than one real product available. NB: this is definitely not a call for government interference either! They need to stay out because it could only make it worse.

Um... over 350 million Windows 7 licenses have been sold since launch, which includes 175 million from 09/2011 through 12/2011. I'm not too sure about exact iPad numbers, but an estimated 48 million iPads sold in 2011. So maybe you meant some other Microsoft product, let alone everything the company sells. Well of course you are correct. But what really helped the 'sales' of Windows 6.1 was in the killing of its competition, XP (and even Vista). Kinda like a NASCAR race where all the cars except one is removed from the track. Microsoft showing off their OS 'sales' these days is deceptive, to say the least. If XP had been released (maybe as retail MCE) *and* still offered as OEM pre-installed, the numbers would surely be entirely different.

EDIT: Oops, sorry guys. The thing said 'Error Occurred'. Hit it again and it duplicated. Weird!

Can someone be so kind to do this, if not point me to the tools so I can give it a shot? I have a time constraint presently, else I would do it (err, maybe not, because I am not sure if any of my remaining Win9x systems even require the WMI9x.exe changes). But what you could do is this (presume you have a spare HDD kicking around) ... * Do a fresh install of Win9x onto another drive (be safe, disconnect your useable Win9x boot drive) *or* just clone your existing one. * Save a registry export and also a filelist of the drive (DIR C:\*.* /A /S). * Run the WMI9x.exe. * Repeat: Save a registry export and also a filelist of the drive (DIR C:\*.* /A /S). * Put back your normal Win9x drive and slave the other one as a D: or E: or F: ... * WinDiff the snapshots you made. * Collect the needed files from the slaved HDD and gather up the added registry settings from the export. NB: Besides added files and registry keys, there are other things to watch for. For example, there may be edits made to INI files (SYSTEM.INI...etc). These will show up in the WinDiff as modifications to said files in the 2nd filelist. You would then need to further WinDiff your original SYSTEM.INI (from the original drive) with the modified one on the auxillary HDD. Such changes can happen to other files as well. This is why you step carefully through the WinDiff of the filelists. This is why it is very handy to keep a collection of Hard Drives around. You can really do almost any experiment that suits your fancy

Antivirus running on the Win9x computer? They really like to drive you crazy when using flashdrives. Or, if the long copy delay happened just after you had downloaded the file from the 'net to the Win9x computer, then the culprits could be browser/javascript/memory issues. I would reboot Win9x and then immediately try to offload the file again to the flashdrive to rule out a one-time situational coincidence. I wouldn't assume that the hardware went bad.

And of course I meant RJ11 or whatever they call it (not RS232 LOL!) in that previous post. It is the old normal POTS phone jack for telephones.

Interesting that they also apparently use the TV on the cable modem. I can't remember a time here (USA) that I ever saw that for either digital or analog TV's, and we've had this kind of arrangement for somewhere between 10 and 15 years. For the past 5 years since they began digital telephone (to compete with the old baby bell telcos) we've put the telephone into the cable modem RJ11 jack, and of course the router (or computer directly) has always hung off the ethernet jack. I'm thinking that they may have used the cable modem to allow two-way communication for something like pay-per-view maybe. Over here, at first we had a tuner/converter box for that purpose and it had a normal phone line jacked into it. Then later when the system went digital we used a newer addressable box with no phone line attached. Nowadays it is a single DVR unit with everything combined and all comm is on the single cable coax. So what we do now is split the cable-in feed and send one branch straight to the cable modem (telephone + router), the other branch straight to the DVR's which each feed a TV (also to some TV's without DVR's). The good thing about this arrangement is that when you reboot the cable modem, no TV's are affected. EDIT: RJ11 (or whatever they call it) instead of RS232!

If you are using Opera you should note that the 'Indenty' string actually makes a lot of difference on some websites. This is because of browser sniffing and branching to a different set of code. I have my own word for this practice, but it isn't allowed in this friendly forum. For example until recently using Opera on YellowPages.com/map would not even show the birdseye view (street, etc) map controls when the Identity was set for 'Opera'. This was fixed in either the 11.xx versions of Opera or when they began using Bing at YellowPages. Note: remember this problem when at map sites and switch the Identity to Internet Explorer instead. (This may also fix your Gmail or eBay problem). Another example, If you try to use Opera on KeepVid.com on a YouTube video URL and Opera is set to 'Identify as Internet Explorer', it completely fails and you see: "It appears you do not have Java installed or it is disabled on your system." That message is bogus. All you need to is switch the Identity to Opera or Firefox. What I always do in Opera is this ... - In Tools > Appearance go to the Toolbars tab and make sure that the Status Bar is checked (and while you're in there make sure that the Progress Bar is set to pop-up at bottom). - On the Buttons tab go to the category Preferences and find the drop-down box gadget with the text Identify as xxx (where xxx is Internet Explorer or Opera or Firefox, they're all the same) and drag it and drop it on the Status Bar on the bottom of the screen (or wherever you may have moved it). You should now always have available on the status bar a handy drop-down box showing the Opera browser current Identity string (i.e., Identify as Opera) which you can change anytime you want. You must press F5 refresh after switching it for the change to be seen by the website. So whenever you run into an odd problem with a webpage, it pays to test the three possible settings (F5 refresh!) and see if it is solved. I suspect this may apply to your posted problems.

Since I couldn't quite remember which is which, I just ran an experiment with a Sansa Clip. Set to MSC mode ... - Autorun appears (selected Explorer) - SysTray 'Safely Remove' appears - UsbDeview shows 'USB Mass Storage' connected. - Explorer shows the root folder with all the SYS firmware files and subfolders - Doubleclick 'MUSIC' subfolder, it is shown as empty. Set to MTP mode ... - Autorun appears (selected Explorer) - SysTray 'Portable Device' icon appears and then disappears - UsbDeview shows 'Unknown' connected. - Explorer shows an object called 'Internal Memory' - Doubleclick 'Internal Memory' shows folders and one single file. - Doubleclick 'MUSIC' subfolder, it correctly shows MP3 files. Set to Auto Detect ... (exactly the same as MTP Mode It would seem that MTP mode is the most useful, at least for adding and deleting songs. If I were you I would probably start over now. Get the program mentioned above from Nirsoft: UsbDeview and delete the Sansa references (Sansa unplugged). You will probably see at least two. Also, if you know how, boot once in Safe Mode (Sansa unplugged) and go to Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager; click 'View' and 'Show Hidden Devices'. Look for and delete any Sansa references. Then after you reboot to normal mode, plug in the Sansa (Settings set to MTP). Then wait for the thing to finish configuring. Now remove it. Now insert it again. Now try to recreate what I did above under Set to MTP mode .... This is how I would access the MP3 files and add or delete them. I'm wondering if perhaps you still have the default settings for Explorer in place? You know, Control Panel > Folder Options > View. SHOW Hidden Files. Uncheck Hide Protected OS Files. And so on. Those are the first things I change. It is possible that the firmware changed in the Fuze, and it might require drivers after all, but at least try the above first. And I believe you're right, in Vista/7 this is probably a moot issue since they did seem to get the USB connectivity correct.

Another one is Seagate ST32000542AS which is (was) very common until recently. I fear that the HDD crisis is going to completely sell out the existing inventory on shelves even at these crazy prices. By early next year probably every single drive for sale will have been built since Winter 2011. The question is whether or not the older style 512 byte sector drives will be manufactured anymore in volume. This whole disaster could be the vehicle for the 512 byte > 4 KB transition. I'm trying to determine exactly what drives are in the FreeAgent and similar enclosures (only the 3.5" models). Their prices are up but not insanely higher. It might be a good idea to get a few and yank the HDD's out.

You should not need any drivers for this on XP. Maybe the CD that comes with it is for Win9x (but I don't know). I have always just plugged them in and then wait a bit for the computer's USB detection to finish completely. On the Sansa, look in the menu (with Sansa unplugged from the computer) under Settings > USB Mode. There should be at least three of them in the list: MTP, MSC, Auto. Try each of them. What probably happened is that the computer configured the USB device from one setting and then the setting changed (under Auto this can happen). I forget which is which with MTP and MSC, but one represents the Sansa as a mass storage device (the mp3 files are seen in Windows like any filelist) and the other presents it as a music device and the files are invisible. NOTE: If you change the Sansa firmware and bootloader using a 3rd party custom (very popular on these) and then change back to the original, then these quirky USB problems might be explained. I still have one that I have yet to be able to restore to original config. Never should have installed that Rockbox.

Root Folders What I meant here was something like this (if the 2TB was D:) ... + Drive C: + Drive D: - (Folder) Disk-1 - (Folder) Disk-2 - (Folder) Disk-3 - (Folder) Disk-4 - (Folder) Disk-5 - (Folder) Disk-6 Note that the folders (off the root) with short compact names helps keeps the 'path' field in results windows small and manageable. You could just use 1, 2, 3 .... How cluttered the results will look depends upon the subdirectories below these root folders that were copied from the original paths on the source disks. But keeping them short on the front-end helps, as opposed to root folders called 'Game_Backups_Seagate_250' or whatever. The single partition means you can just use D: in dialogs for search/compare/dupe and whatever. I wasn't sure if the OP was going to do all that, but I always do and find it easier to target one disk. Realize that the sorting/de-duping process can be (depending upon what you are doing) extraordinarily CPU intensive. Diff'ing folders with GB of files has to rank up there with processing video effects on movies. Especially if there are ZIPs, ISO's sound files and games wads and other large beasts. I always use the *fastest* computer that is available for this kind of work! The HDD is never the bottleneck here IMHO, at least not on the 2TB ones. Software for COPYing. Well there are many GUI based replicators/mergers/synchronizers out there, here is a list of some of the ones I think are very nice. Keep in mind that there may well be a hundred more that I never heard of. * This is the one I use. KarenWare :: Replicator by Karen Kenworthy (older versions from WinMag aka Windows Magazine rest in peace). It is very lightweight and uses a plain text file for the jobs. Many times simple is just better. Win9x freeware. * If you happen to already use PowerDesk (originally from Mijenix then OnTrack then V Communications and now Avanquest), you should have the PowerDesk Folder-Synchronizer built in. It is adequate. Versions 6 and earlier were Win9x, and versions 7 and 8 are WinXP+ (well, actually parts of v7 work in Win9x but it s a major hack and not worth the effort because they added nothing of substance). All versions are shareware. * This one is very good and is also lightweight. Shirouzu Hiroaki :: FastCopy. Win9x Freeware. * GrigSoft :: Synchronize-It!. Win9x Shareware. * Scooter Software :: Beyond-Compare. Win9x Shareware (not sure about newer versions on Win9x). * Funduc Software :: Directory Toolkit and File Merge Express. Win9x Shareware. * Glenn Alcott :: Directory Compare. Win9x Shareware. * Jam Software :: SmartBackup. From the guys that make the excellent TreeSize. WinXP+ Shareware. * Centered Systems :: SecondCopy. WinXP+ Shareware. Please note that some of those 'Win9x' may have been recently updated in which case they probably are now XP/Vista/7 only.

And, with all due respect , you completely fail to listen to his/her requests. What you suggested (BTW containing a lot of "common sense" ) are UNrelated to the question. Guilty as charged ( and thank you for the critique ) I had thought about a single sentence preface, perhaps: "this is off-topic to the OP question but perhaps it will help others ...", but didn't do it. (sigh) My bad. Alas only one person ( you ) so far thought it was - inappropriate. I'll try harder next time. Anyway, the point is that there are multiple ways of doing things as you full well know. Others read these threads and might like to consider alternatives.

Looks like the avatar (with the pink tutu) is a clip from the first Ace Ventura movie, when he gets committed to a sanitarium. Just sayin'.

I always ask the client, What's your backup plan? Drives fail, especially when you need them not to. Anyway I would do this differently. - Get a 2TB drive. (These have massive density so even the 5400 rpm disks are fast enough for most jobs). - Copy the six drives to six root folders (one at a time naturally :-). Use something like a replicator or sync'er instead of plain copy so that you don't get an error in the middle of a multi-hour operation. If the drives are full the entire six drives will probably take at least a day (depending on CPU etc). - Store the six drives, this is your temporary backup. - Process, sort, de-dupe or whatever needs to be done with the data on the 2TB (having all the data on one partition in folders makes searching, copying, de-duping, and comparing a lot easier) and then defrag the completed disk.. - Get another 2TB and clone, image, or copy the first one to it. This new drive (or the original 2TB if you prefer) is your new permanent backup. The other is the live mass storage. Do incremental backups to it periodically. - The six drives are now free to be wiped and formatted for other use. They're getting rarer by the moment and are great as boot drives for various OS's. If you were near me I would trade you a 2TB for the six 250GB's. (*** Well in normal times anyway). Six individual drives taxes the power supply, is a cabling mess, is a waste of power and increases the risk of a failure sixfold without any of the performance or data integrity benefits of RAID. Cooling is a major concern if they are in a computer case because the drives and cables displace a lot of previously empty space, block air flow and add heat to the total. Hard drives and data are the most important thing you own (everything else is a replaceable commodity) so I treat them like gold. Personally I always cut the front bottom of cases open and put a 120mm fan right on the hard drives. Six of them would require two fans in front and at least one more in back so that their hot air isn't blown onto the CPU, chipset and videocard. I just noticed that this is on a Win9x thread. So I should add that IMHO this procedure really should be done on an XP+ computer with NTFS for less headaches with large copy operations and other weird errors. Now I believe the guys here have figured out a way to do 2TB on FAT32, but if they haven't, you could always use an XP+ computer for the massive storage and crossover ethernet for NAS to the Win9x box (pretty sure this will work). Or even easier is to walk the files back and forth to Win9x with a USB thumbdrive when necessary. *** Of course there is the little problem of HDD prices tripling in recent weeks. So unless I had some spare 2TB drives, what I would do is wait until next year! I was getting them as low as $69 until Thanksgiving, now they are $200+.

Time, my friend. Lack of Time. (sigh)

Some us believe that WinME --> Win98se is actually an upgrade. I remember that WinME was the testbed (and we were the guinea pigs) for System Restore. A dress rehearsal for inclusion in WinXP. Ummm, no thanks. Saving thousands and thousands of files in protected folders was yet another persistent infection vector waiting to be exploited either by malware, or Windows itself which is stupid enough to save an infected file into the _Restore area. Coupled with increased System File Protection (compared to earlier Win9x) it became much more difficult to remove an infected file if it got in. The final straw was Removing DOS at Startup, removing the chance to delete a system file manually, thereby locking a possible infection in place. Three strikes you're outta there. Ordinarily with an infected system file, it is just reboot, F8 to DOS and manually over-write files from a safe location. This doesn't have to be about a virus though. Any tweaking or experimenting with Drivers and System Files is pretty much rendered moot by those three mentioned WinME advancements. Yes, you could just keep a startup floppy handy and boot to a DOS prompt to perform manual surgery, but this means the probability of leaving floppies in the drive and the BIOS set to boot from it, which of course opens another infection window. So what they really did to WinME is to make it unfriendly to the experts, the hackers, the experimenters that enjoy playing under the hood. But they did tweak some parts okay. Scandisk works better in Windows, and Defrag in Windows seems to be perfected. USB was better out-of-the-box of course and many of the supplied drivers were newer. Memory management seems to have been improved since it looks like the maximum allowed RAM is higher. Interestingly, one other major change was in RegEdit, where they were apparently toying with the NT idea of separate hives, but not exactly. They uniquely decided to break the CLASSES tree out of HKLM\Software and store it separately on disk. Which made for three files instead of two, and SYSTEM was now smaller. Looking back now it was an odd idea because NT always separated the root keys, not a piece of a key. I think what happened is that it was simply a stop gap for the increasingly bloated registries causing instability and which could no longer be /c rebuilt manually anyway. One thing is for sure, never use the RegEdit from WinME on earlier versions! If it were possible to completely remove System Restore and revert System File Protection to it's former benign self (only protect a few files but not automatically replace them), and of course fix the IO.SYS problem with DOS, then WinME would be an upgrade. IMHO, of course.

Thank you for your idea. I will visit a computer shop and ask for a DVD for Ubuntu (or any other Linux with friendly user interface). Either that, or you (or a friend) could just burn a CD with the latest Ubuntu v11.10. Is there really a DVD? I have only burned CD's up to now. As far as Win9x computers, they should be free if you look around. I saw truckloads of relatively recent, probably 5-7 year old computers (and TV's, etc) destined for the scrap heap at a recent recycle collection for so-called 'hazardous' waste. I didn't try but I imagine that a few bucks and some kind words I could have gotten a pile of them. Failing that, ask around before it's too late. Keep an eye out for people that are upgrading their computers and ask if they will let you have the old one. I junked a lot of them in the past few years myself, but I am hanging on to a few just for kicks. The Intel boards using i865 with Pentium 4 Northwood or Prescott era chips are nice because they have onboard USB 2, Audio, Video, Ethernet and DDR. As dencorso said, the AMD boards from the Athlon XP era are also very nice and lots faster, with similar integrated features. I think up to nForce2 video has Win9x drivers (but I'm no longer sure about that). The Intel boards were simpler because the INF installer handled everything. It was always slightly more time-consuming to get all the Via or whatever drivers than the single Intel file. Regardless, both these systems, Intel and AMD were nice all-in-one solutions for Win9x (although they were targeted for WinXP). So, finding any of these 'obsolete' systems with the Win98se CD would solve all your problems at once.

What they need to do is build a webcam or an array of them into the back of the monitor. The monitor could then display what's behind it as wallpaper. Something like the .