sp193

No. We mean that Firefox becomes sluggish (When you have many items in your download list), and takes a while to initiate downloads. Once the download starts, the saving/download speed is (More or less) normal. This is 1 very important factor: Most (If not all) download managers allow you to resume interrupted downloads (Firefox 1.x/2.x/3.x can't do that). Other than allowing you to resume broken downloads, some download managers also serve as download accelerators. I use Orbit downloader, and am quite satisfied with it. But some sites frown on you using download accelerators/multiple connections (So please read if they don't allow them!!). I never knew that! It seems to be. Firefox seems to become more sluggish when the number of items on my downloads list (completed downloads + active downloads) increases. I guess that it's got something about the increased requirement of memory/increased requirement of CPU time.

Sorry if some of you find this old - but I feel that I'd better highlight this once again: The SH95UPD installer did seem to have given me problems before (Some library/compiler issue). Sometimes, it doesn't start at the first launch (Closes very fast with a message of something like "Failed to start application"). Worse still - this seems to also occur when SH95UPD is in verification mode (After a fresh installation). So please, do run the verification manually if SH95UPD fails to verify itself automatically. However, it'll usually work if you launch it again.

Unfortunately, yes. This is true, even on newer OSes (I use Windows XP x64 and Windows 7 too). Somehow, this "bug" is still present, even in Firefox 3.6 (At least I still think it is). It's actually not Firefox taking a longer time to initiate a download, but it seems to be actually Firefox slowing down (if you have enough completed/progressing downloads in this list, you'll see everything running slowly). You can achieve this, even if your downloads are small (But huge in number). The only workaround to this is to periodically clear any completed downloads from the download list. I first noticed this when I was mass-downloading many CGs off the Danbooru image board.

I think it's because Windows XP does cache some read and writes - even if you "disabled" them (Feels like that, since I did catch Windows XP doing write-behind caching on drives that have that option disabled... and caused data lost when I unplugged the disk without "Safely removing" the device.). Windows 9x does not do write caching, and you need to enable that option yourself (But don't, since it can cause problems if you don't disconnect your disks properly). It could also be your USB drivers... since Windows 9x uses different drivers from Windows XP (Even if they were from WinXP, they may be older). Since I'm a little rusty on my Windows 9x knowledge (Since I had to change my PC)... someone please add on/correct me if I'm wrong.

For *almost all* video players like Windows Media Player 6.4, you can install FFDSHOW (Build 2322 was the last version that can run on Windows 98 without any "assistance") and VSFilter (aka "Vob Sub"). Actually, the MPC's subtitle filter never worked properly (Even on Windows XP) for me.... I heard that it's too outdated to work with the newer subtitle formats (Or something like that).

Seems like some other unofficial extension which you've installed is conflicting with KernelEX. Please state what extensions you've installed. Does that happen when you install Firefox 2.0? BTW what is your Windows 98's locale? I had my Chinese IME broken whenever I install KernelEX(All versions after 0.36a?), and had to disable KernelEx extensions for firefox.exe for it to work though. From what I remembered: It MUST be v1.1.3790.0. No other version would work, and may cause crashes.

I'm aware of that - I've actually done that before with Windows 95/95B/Nashville (aka Windows 96) and Windows 98SE. It's quite a pain, especially when the WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI files were particularly vulnerable to corruption on my old USB stick in that year (Worn out flash memory). Not to mention that it isn't really feasible after considering all the work to engineer such a system (And maintaining it afterwards)... even if my new PC supports booting to a USB device. I wished. But running Windows 98 on a 4GB x64 is quite a death sentence (Plus my dad won't allow me to - He was quite against me using Windows 98 on my previous PC in the first place). I am aware of the fixes for VCACHE (And other tweaks to remedy the large RAM issue) though. But installing Windows 98 now is a pain because I will have to uproot my entire HDD now. That'll be the best option. Oh well.. let's see what will happen in the future... Thanks though... you've given me things to think about (And seriously consider).

I think that those who have been reading this thread (the 1st page) has noticed that the Intel Application Accelerator(IAA) was installed on one of the poster's system. Just to share my personal experience: The IAA can cause disc read errors (And write errors too!) with certain optical drives. I had 2 Benq drives (1 DVD-ROM and CD-RW), and I wrecked the DVD drive trying to adjust it's laser (Thinking that the read errors were caused by the weak old lasers in those drives). I was shocked that all the read errors I had immediately disappeared after I had uninstalled the IAA and rebooted. My mainboard was a Gigabyte GA-6OXM7E, running Windows 98 SE(4.10.2222A). The DVD drive ran at ATA-66 mode (It was a little newer), while the CD-RW drive runs only at ATA-33 (UDMA mode 2, I think).

Thanks to you too. His problem is probably the most unique one I've found. But it's also evidence that some 3rd party upgrades you may find here may cause side effects when mixed together with other unofficial upgrades. If anyone needs this special build of SH95UPD, please feel free to contact me. However, I think that I need to let you guys here know: SH95UPD is now on life-support... My development PC (A run-down Pentium III @ 1.0 GHZ) has finally been decommissioned in February this year (Partly because of all the imminent cascading hardware failures in it, not to mention that it was really insufficient). It has been replaced by a 64-bit Core 2 duo E7500 installed in an ASUS LGA-775 mainboard. Hence, I had to install Windows XP x64 on it to run it efficiently and reliably. If I can't install/run Windows 98 from a USB HDD(Or if it was really not feasible to do so) with my development environment, then I'm afraid that SH95UPD is really dead.

But the normal Microsoft FDISK (That can display disk sizes > 64GB properly) cannot display the sizes of my 200GB Hitachi HDD properly (The values "warp" around during partition creation, but a large partition that was already created has it's capacity properly displayed). Plus when there is space left (But above the "warped" value it has), it will keep saying "There is no space left on the disk". This is true even if you use percentage to create a partition.

I thought that that "v2.28" was an unofficial, hacked version (Not released by Panasonic, but was a v2.27 hacked by someone)? Won't work on older systems (circa pre-2001) as they don't allow booting to USB devices (Even if it pretends to be one). Plus, why do you want to emulate a USB FDD (Just curious)? You could just format a USB flash drive as a system disk... Windows 98 is sitting on top of DOS, so you can say that Windows 98 IS DOS. But Windows XP is the operating system itself, and the DOS prompt you have in Windows XP is just emulated (Or virtual). You mean in pure DOS right (Boot disk or a reboot into MS-DOS mode)? If you intend to add the drivers into your CONFIG.SYS, don't add it into Windows 98's main CONFIG.sys (You WILL cause Windows 98 to go into "MS-DOS Compatibility mode" as the drivers will conflict with Windows 98's) So you either use a DOS boot disk, or use dosstart.bat (Although I'm not too sure how to set up a "special" CONFIG.SYS for it that way) BTW if you still have problems, mind posting your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT where you loaded your drivers here? Plus can you state which drivers you've used?

Please note that your drives MUST be only either have FAT16 or FAT32 as it's filesystem! If you use a pre-MS-DOS 7.10 MS-DOS (Windows 98, or 95B to be precise), you can only use drives that have FAT16 as it's filesystem. No version of MS-DOS supports NTFS without any extra software. Old versions of MS-DOS up to 7.10 only supports FAT16. So if your drive uses a unsupported filesystem, you may need to format it correctly before use. USBASPI.sys supports EHCI, UHCI and OHCI controllers. I didn't like the DUSE drivers too much because of the lack of compatibility with my hardware. Also, if you need to write data to your USB device (Flash drive, or USB HDD), you should use IOMEGA's ASPIEHCI.sys, ASPIOHCI.sys or ASPIUHCI.sys (Depending if your adaptor which your device is plugged in to is a EHCI, OHCI or UHCI controller) as Panasonic's USBASPI.sys does not seem to have proper write support (Windows 9x setup crashes because of that). In general: EHCI - USB 2.0 OHCI - USB 1.1 UHCI - USB 1.1 OHCI and UHCI were once opposing standards(At the host side; The adapter and software design). You can also try to use NOVAC's DI1000DD.sys instead of Adaptec's ASPIDISK.sys (Or even IOMEGA's GUEST.exe) as the ASPI layer for DOS after loading your USB ASPI manager (Which is ASPIxHCI.sys or USBASPI.sys). BTW the latest version of USBASPI.sys from Panasonic is v2.27 (Released in 2008). If you really can't get you device to be recognized, it may just be that it isn't compatible with the MS-DOS USB drivers. My Norton Ghost 2003 bootup disk uses ASPIEHCI.sys, followed by GUEST.exe. It uses PC-DOS 7.00 though (At least I think that it did). Those are the default drivers bundled with it originally. Have been using it for years without too much issues.

Can you list here what hardware exactly did you swap? Also, uninstall all unneeded drivers/software that belonged to the old hardware that no longer exist on your machine (And tell us what you did). It seems like some old, derelict driver/software is conflicting with your installshield programs. It is known that installshield does cause problems for some people though. Sounds like your mainboard drivers may also be messed up. Yes, do that. Some of the driver files are listed there as "oemx.inf", where x is a number. Just delete those files if they are old drivers that are not for any hardware in your system. I am not familiar with this trick... but something tells me that you should not do that (May cause some harmful side-effects?)! If you need to do that, there must be something very wrong with your Windows installation. Your PC with a VIA chipset should work on Windows ME though. I used to have Windows ME on a system with a VIA 686B chipset, and it did not have any problems. Just make sure that you install the correct chipset driver from VIA for your chipset before installing any other device driver (This may also solve hardware detection/installation issues on new Windows 9x installations, sometimes even on Windows NT 5.x). Don't do that either! Doing so may break the uninstall capability of the other programs that use installshield on your system! Also, it doesn't really solve anything as your underlying issue is still there. You're quite right. Driver installation problems may be caused by old derelict device drivers/software that were not properly uninstalled.

Uninstall Watchtower Library 2009 and delete it's folder in "Program Files", if it still exists after uninstallation (To clear any VC2008 files installed there). Then install/copy the VC2008 files into your windows\system folder. Reboot. Reinstall Watchtower Library 2009. Also, you may want to try enabling compatibility mode for that program (Try disabling KEX extensions, or enabling compatibility mode for Windows XP SP3).

There was the official "Bittorrent" bittorrent client. Then there were others that created their own clients (Like there are many other web browsers out there). Bittorrent was the official bittorrent client, but it did not allow certain things like selective downloads (You must download the whole torrent, and not only certain files). It was also not the smallest and most efficient client available. utorrent is, by far, the smallest bittorrent client which I've ever used and seen. But I can't get any version of utorrent above 1.77 to work properly on my Windows 98SE box (HTTP trackers will get "hostname not found" errors).

I'm no expert at this, but did you edit layout.inf to reflect the correct file size of msbatch.inf? If I remember correctly, the Windows 95 setups will reject any setup information file as corrupt if it's actual file size did not match what was stated in layout.inf. I agree. Windows 95 (Or Windows 4.0) was the first version of Windows that managed to get a huge user base. It's also the base which Windows 98 was built on. I would have used Windows 95B (OSR2.0/2.1), but it's limited USB support and FAT32 support isn't too good for my system (Although I believe that there are solutions for these problems), especially the large incompatibility it would have with my programs (KernelEx does not support Win95, so neither will some of my programs). Otherwise, I have to say that it's much faster (Smaller too!) and stabler on old PCs than Windows 98 or Windows ME (Unless you really modify it). At any rate, my Pentium III PC is really dying fast. Today, the USB 2.0 adaptor is now not properly detected (Hence not working). You really got to be kidding. Windows 98 BETAs were mostly unstable (Not to mention incomplete)! You don't know about the incident at the Microsoft demonstration at Comdex in 1998? I have Windows 98 build 1535, but it will not run on my PC unless I set my system clock to 1997/1998 due to a check in it that prevents booting once the beta testing date has passed.

ADSL uses the telephone line, but has higher speeds than a 56K dialup modem because it uses a wider frequency spectrum. Talk to your Internet Service Provider, and see what other connection options they have for you. Or see if you can get a older Wireless adaptor for your computer that supports Windows 98 officially. Try your local stalls first, and EBay last.

Windows cannot uninstall itself. It can only get corrupted and become unbootable at most. The "Illegal operation" in Windows 9x is the application crash dialog. Some application has crashed, and has taken Windows with it. What was the program which crashed? Also, can you please be more specific to where Windows crashes at? (e.g. At startup) What was the last thing you did to your installation (Install/uninstall a new program, install new hardware etc) before your installation broke?

Why not invest in a cable/ADSL connection instead? If you use wireless, you'll still need a ADSL/cable setup to connect your wireless router too right? If a manufacturer says that Windows 98 is "not supported", it doesn't mean that you can try installing the Windows 2000/XP drivers. After all, Windows 98 does support WDM 2.0, which is what Windows 2000/XP uses. You may still have luck with those drivers. But do ensure that you know how to access safe mode in case those drivers screw Windows 98SE's boot process. Also, try installing KernelEx to try forcing those stubbon install programs that don't allow you to run them on Windows 9x. It can mean 2 things: 1. Newest updates for Windows 98SE (As in the previously released) 2. Windows 98SE support has officially ended. You can also try drivers for a similar product from a different manufacturer, if you know that they built their products with similar hardware. Or you can try the driver for a similar, but older product from the same manufacturer (That supports Windows 98). Look around this forum... I remember that there were a few threads a few weeks old that talked about your issue. Everybody started off with zero knowledge after all right?

Sure thing. Pity about the lack of UDP tracker support though. But still better than without the "new" encryption though. I'll post my results here when I find a copy. But either way, did anyone here manage to get Orbit Downloader (Any version) to work properly with Windows 9x (All parts, including the grabber)? EDIT: I tried 1.84, 1.83, 1.82 and 1.81. All don't work properly. I get "hostname not found" errors for ALL trackers. It did seem like trackers listed with IP addresses could work, but I can't confirm that as most of them don't work in the first place (Offline(Timed-out) ). Anyway, I checked again, and I found that I did NOT have utorrent 1.7.2 but 1.7.7. I guess that that's the only version which works properly on my setup.

a. No host file loaded or present. utorrent 2.00 shares the 1.72 configuration files. I also tried installing 2.00 somewhere else, in case the 1.72 files has caused the problem. But the "hostname not found" error is still there. b. No firewall nor anti-virus installed. My PC is too old, and has too little resources to run them and yet get a reasonable performance. c. Not pirate bay. All trackers, regardless of where they are from, cannot be connected (Even those that have an IP address listed there). 1.72 works properly, and can contact those trackers (Same torrent). Same setup. Everything on 1.85/2.00 works properly for me, but the only thing it can't do it to connect to any tracker except for DHT. 1.72 works flawlessly here. I also can't rule out system file damage though (Although highly unlikely. utorrent 1.72 and other Windows 98-compatible programs work properly). But I cannot format my system anymore (Too much data to shift, not to mention that it won't be worth it. This PC is already about to be decommissioned). It can't be my SHELL32 as utorrent does not import any "new" functions that were added by SH95UPD (Neither are there any missing exports). utorrent 1.72 works properly here. The ports are opened on my router (Meaning properly forwarded), and all options are set correctly. I just updated my router's firmware last night (DLink DIR-655, v1.30WW).

Windows loads it's own 32-bit protected mode drivers at startup (After WIN.com has loaded). If you boot into MS-DOS (At startup) or reboot into MS-DOS, those 32-bit drivers won't be loaded. You need to load the MS-DOS drivers (Not installed by default, but some OEM manufactures install them though). I think that MS-DOS drivers are real-mode 16-bit drivers (Someone correct me if I am wrong). It's CTRL (Or F8). Hold F5 to boot directly into safe mode without displaying the boot options screen. If your options in config.sys and autoexec.bat are correct, your drive is installed on a IDE bus right (And not a SCSI bus)? Also, the options are CASE SENSITIVE. MSCD001 is not the same as mscd001. Ensure that the driver name after the "/D:" switch in your config.sys is exactly the same as the device name typed after the "/D:" switch in your autoexec.bat. So you should get something like this: Config.sys: Or whatever driver you use. Autoexec.bat: replace MSCDEX.EXE in the above line with SHSUCDX33.EXE if you don't use MSCDEX

But can your client connect and get information from the torrent's trackers? I get "hostname not found" for ALL my trackers. Only 1.72 (The only old client which I have) works properly for me. Maybe your build is older that the 1.85 which I used to have. I think that I DID manage to get an "old" 1.85 to work (Before upgrading to the final 1.85 release)... but I can't remember clearly. BTW I now only have utorrent 2.00 beta build 17668 on my system now (Other than 1.72), and have KernelEx 4.0 Final 2 installed. That build, and all post v1.72 builds that I had in the past work properly on my Windows XP installation (Same PC, just multi-booted). Maybe... but what about Windows NT 4.0 SP4? It's supported by utorrent officially but doesn't come with IPv6 support out-of-the-box. IPv6 is also alien technology to Windows NT 4.0 (Not to mention Windows 9x too). The only "official" version I have which I still have which still works with Windows 98 is 1.72. Does 1.82 already have the "new, improved" encryption which 1.85 offers? Also, pre-2.00 versions do not have UDP tracker support. My ISP totally blocks out bittorrent traffic, legal or not (0KB/s upload and download speed, unless I use lvl 4 encryption). Also, Orbit Downloader has a similar problem. It grabber does not work on Windows 9x (Maybe more than just the grabber does not work?), but Windows NT 4.0 is again listed as a supported OS. From what I know, Windows NT 4.0 is just the NT counterpart to Windows 95 (August 24, 1995 release). It does. If you don't have KEX installed, you'll get "This program expects a newer version of Windows" when you launch utorrent (Uninstall KEX and run utorrent 1.85 to see that message). KEX also disables the Windows version check. Keep me posted. I think that this may be possible. I also remember that there was a site saying that there WAS a bug in Windows NT 4.0's (And Windows 95's) Winsock2 stack (But did not say anything about WIndows 98 nor Windows ME's stack).

Some programs like utorrent, which have previously support Windows 9x, have now discontinued Windows 9x support. For utorrent, only Windows NT is support (Windows 2000 and XP are also Windows NT builds). With KernelEX, some of these programs will work. However, I've noticed that the networking parts of some programs built for Windows NT will NOT work properly on Windows 9x. I've done a high-level comparison on the Winsock 2 API (And compared the oridinal numbers), but I can't see any difference in functions between the Winsock layer of Windows NT and Windows 9x. I know that newer versions of Windows NT (2000 and XP) have extra functions built into it's Winsock 2 layer, but Windows NT has a layer that's similar to Windows 95's Winsock2 update. Any ideas on why such NT-only programs don't work on properly Windows 9x? Utorrent 1.85 and later may give a "hostname not found" error (Error 404 I believe), and Orbit Downloader's grabber will not be able to capture streams. For some of us, using utorrent 1.72 is not an option as some ISPs have sandvine to brutally throttle(Or totally block) connections.

You didn't load the drivers for MS-DOS to access the drive. Correct. I think that it's also important to add that OAKCDROM (And similar IDE CD-ROM drivers) only works for IDE optical drives. They won't recognize or detect optical drives installed on other buses (e.g USB, IEEE1394, SATA). You need to install and load the appropriate drivers for your bus (And optical drive) if OAKCDROM does not work for your system. OAKCDROM and MSCDEX work with DVD-ROM drives (In fact, all drives I've seen so far). DVD-drives are actually similar to CD-ROM drives, work similarly, and share the same ISO9660 filesystem. However, the media, laser and some parts of the DVD-drive are different to support the new DVD medium (CD-ROMS have a lower density). If DVD-drives were really so different, then you can't boot from a DVD drive from the BIOS of a old PC, as some old BIOSes were made in the era of CD-ROM dominance (Pre-2000, but you CAN boot from DVD drives installed on such machines.). They actually can't tell the difference between a DVD-ROM and CD-ROM device, but only identify them as a "ATAPI CD-ROM device" (Depending on your BIOS). I even managed to get MSCDEX to work with my external USB DVD-RW DL writer. I had to use USBASPI.sys, usbcd.sys and load MSCDEX.exe to access it though. You can't view UDF-formatted discs from MS-DOS and old versions of Windows (Pre-Windows 98 I believe) without 3rd-party software installed. You may not even be able to view Joliet filesystems. I think that MS-DOS only supported ISO9660 out-of-the-box with MSCDEX loaded and resident. You'll need some other software to read UDF and Joliet filesystems from MS-DOS.