Th3_uN1Qu3

Well, i kinda like them, but i'll tame them down a bit. Edit: Another preview shot. I realized the classic windows logo isn't going to look nice here so i threw a little bit of XP in the mix. Not exactly what i wanted, but i guess it looks alright. I'll probably have to tweak the background color a little, it's all too blue.

I understand now. I'll edit my topic and just maintain the applications database from now on.

Preview on new Win98 logo: Sky blue everywhere! And more Aurora mix. Stay tuned, final version coming soon! B)

It's exactly the same for apps... Whatever, i'll decide what to do later.

Methinks it was a dodgy motherboard...

Yeah, the only Lite-On drive that died on me was a LTR-52327S killed by a bad power supply. However i have found a new board for it and it's waiting to be replaced when i get back home. Asus made some pretty good CD-RW drives too, i've repaired a 48x/24x/48x drive and it had the fastest seek times i've ever seen - 49ms random seek. I thought that disc was going to blow during the test. ^ ^ Though for some unknown reason that drive just died one day... It didn't want to recognize any media anymore. Current drives barely manage 60ms seek times, even the Lite-Ons. It's funny - read speeds increase but seek/access times increase as well, making quick access to random files pretty much impossible. This is why now games install all data to the HDD.

Well, not all the drives there were mine. 3 of the LGs and the Philips drive were mine, the rest of them i got from various people for parts. I sometimes swap boards/heads to get a borked drive working again. The only LG i used intensely was a 52x CD-RW drive, i burned a lot of discs with that, it worked fine the first 6 months, then it would only burn at 8x and only on certain media, then it died entirely. One of the LG DVD drives only burned 6 DVDs in 8 months, and two of the 6 discs weren't burned completely causing them to be unusable, and that was on high quality media. On the good side of things, i've never had any problems with Teac and Lite-On drives. In my main machine i have a Teac DV-516D DVD/CD-ROM drive and a Lite-On DH20A3P dual-layer burner with Lightscribe, in my dual-PIII i have a Lite-On DH20A1P dual-layer burner w/ Lightscribe, and in mom's rig a Lite-On LTR-52327S is doing the CD tasks, along with a LG that i got for $8. The LG is totally broken on CDs but it does fine reading and burning DVDs. Also a Teac CD-540E i recalibrated was my audio ripping drive for over an year, till i got the DV-516D. I've turned quite a few broken LG DVD/CDRW combo drives into perfectly working CDRWs, DVD lasers are a b***h to recalibrate, and it's usually the electronics failing not the laser focus.

I don't realize how this improves searching, the search button would return the same results anyway. But whatever... One less worry for me - i won't maintain that topic anymore. Whoever wants to find a compatible app, let him read the 50+ pages of the KernelEx topic. I did.

SciTE opens instantly too, and all the menus don't bother me since i know i can instantly edit code with it if i need to.

Why not merge it with the Compatibility Database i started? It's useless to have 2 topics on the same thing. I'm running KernelEx 0.3.5. On topic: Steam sucks. I am a moderator of a non-steam gaming forum and will always run non-steam. Steam CS 1.6 takes 1 minute to open on my main rig, non-steam CS 1.6 takes 3 seconds. Not mentioning Source games... Besides, HL2 is a singleplayer game. Why should i need an internet connection to play it? I'll be back with my own crappy games list.

Tell that to the 8 LG drives, an Asus, a Samsung and a Philips lying in a corner of my room... The electronics in the drives sometimes fail suddenly, as seems to be the OP's case. Some can be recalibrated, if it's an LG forget about it.

It can be configured to run in either software renderer (slow and ugly), OpenGL or D3D.

Thanks. I cleared up some space now so i'll give it a whirl.

That was your CMOS battery (the battery on the motherboard) dying. It needed a replacement. The P4s start throttling (slowing down) at 64C. 74C is way too high for any CPUs except overclocked quad cores. On the rig in sig i get 63C full load with 30C ambient, in winter (i keep my house around 20C in the winter) it stays around 55C full load. When doing regular work it sits around 45. Could be even better but i didn't bother to lap the chip. Mom's P4 2.4 overclocked to 3.6 sits at 50C when doing office work and 63C full load at 30C ambient, under a Scythe Kamakaze, which isn't exactly the best heatsink ever made. Even at that it still throttles every now and then... Download ThrottleWatch and see for yourself. But when ambient temps get cooler it performs very well and sits around 58C. Keeping it short: A P4 or Pentium D shouldn't run anywhere over 65C. Stock PIIIs take 90C no problem, overclocked and overvolted PIIIs become unstable over 55, same for overclocked socket A chips except the >2000+ Athlons, which are safe up to 70C. For C2D (dual-core) 65C max, for C2Q (quad-core) 72C max. This is coming from someone who overclocks and mods anything he can, i even got a 200MHz Pentium-MMX running rock solid at 292MHz. Two months ago it was still slow as crap. PS. 98SE runs under the latest Virtual PC fine indeed.

System protection is usually the first thing i disable. And you can get pure DOS in WinMe as well so no problem with that. One thing that makes Me superior to 98 and 2k in terms of interface is having high-color systray icons - the 16-color ones look really ugly. Yes, it's really stable, compared to XP you just have to close all applications and then give it a few seconds to settle before you click shut down, otherwise it hangs at shutdown and you have to reset the machine. Other than that, the only times i had it crash is when i was doing something wrong.

It was a pretty big file and i did indeed reach Notepad's limit later on, but till then it kept saying "out of memory" every couple words. Anyway, i'm using SciTE now with no issues.

THe last pack for windows ME was made over a year ago...... WIndows 98 se is kept more up to date with the latest patches that they steal from 2k and xp They don't steal anything... Besides, i could care less when it was updated if it does what i need it to. And it offers if not anything else, a very stable shell compared to 98SE with 98SE2ME.

CS 1.6... But i don't think that Trident chip would run it, my 16MB Cyberblade XP has just enough power to get a steady 15fps at 1024x768.

Well, KernelEx works on Me, UberSkin works on Me, there is an unofficial service pack for Me too... What is there 98SE exclusive?

Because i never ever needed Notepad for anything else than basic text editing... Something Notepad can usually do. However SciTE will do me good, it's my code editor of choice so it might as well become my default text editor too. As about Paint, little has changed in it during the years. It's just that the XP version supports JPG and PNG and they redesigned it a bit in Vista... And i think the Vista one looks ugiler than the old design.

Sometimes, out of the blue, Notepad will complain that "there is not enough memory to complete this operation" when i try to type something in an existing text file. I know i have a load of free memory as i can open my browser and a game on top of that, but Notepad still says it doesn't have enough memory until i restart it, then it works fine. Anyone else getting this? Edit: It's doing it now every couple words... Well, SciTE ftw.

To restrict email address logins you'll have to run your own server between the users and the email services, or make a front-end application to the email services.

@ DeadDude: The DOS NTFS driver works, however it is slow. I also use Maxthon because it can block ads and popups, and I don't have to install any addons. What version did you install, Th3_uN1Qu3? I tried version 2, but I return to Maxthon 1.6.3 because I prefer the button Download Control on the toolbar. And this browser has skins to change, which I like too. 1.6.3 there too, i first got the latest version but the installer was missing the exe.

Only problem is that i don't have a CD-ROM drive either, a second battery is in place of that. But to answer the question, yes, i want XP inside 98. I'll try that old Virtual PC you mentioned... However i think i'll need a bigger HDD first, i have only 2GB free of 30GB, and i need most of the stuff that's on it.

Open Process Explorer. You have quite a number of tasks running in your 98 too. The ctrl-alt-del menu only shows applications. And XP can keep its major functions with just 8 processes. However 98 is still faster, no doubt about it. If you can still use it, keep using it.