owlsnesttoo

Hi all, Today Ancestry.com updated their search software for their website and once again has caused problems with my computer. The update failed, but I got messages that some "widgets" were downloaded. After it was obvious that the install had gotten hung up, I had to close the IE window by cntrl-alt-del to end the task. I also did a crash restart of my computer, but unfortunately, the changes to my system files appear to have been made anyway. Now, there are several problems, but the worst seems to be with the address bar and some other drop-down type menus in Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, MS Word and other programs. The drop-down menu opens and closes repeatedly on it's own, causing it to flicker and sometimes cntrl-alt-del has to be used to exit the program or window. This affects being able to save files under a different name or choosing files to open, as well as search options, etc. Also, there are keyboard problems where Word will act like the delete key is being held down, when it isn't. Mouse menus opened with the alt-button on a mouse can't be opened or used without problems, and keyboard shortcut keys such as cntrl-C or cntrl-V cause crashes, too. I tried to do a "find" of the C-drive for new files or modified files, but didn't come up with anything helpful. Does anybody know what files control these functions? It's not just Microsoft programs that are affected. I'm running Windows 98 First Edition (not SE as it says under my name, how do I change that?) with the latest AXCEL updates. Help please! Sharon

Thanks all! I'm sorry that I'm such a newby about flash drives, etc. My 1999 Toshiba mini-tower just keeps chugging along, which is good since I've had to spend my money elsewhere. After the 98SE meltdown, the AXCEL unofficial upgrades (30 or so) that I used on the version of Windows 98 Gold that I'd installed were supposed to be an "equivalent or better" upgrade to those used for the official Second Edition version of Windows 98. That may be why the version numbers of files are close, but not identical. There were only a couple of the unofficial upgrades that I didn't use, either I was given a warning that they weren't appropriate for some reason or I decided that I didn't need them, like the NUSB upgrade. The file ntkern.vxd version 4.10.2224 is properly installed in the Windows/System/VMM32 folder, but don't know which upgrade installed it. By the way, I have to say that the AXCEL unofficial upgrades are fantastic! My computer with it's original 98SE had always crashed at least once a day and often more than that. It drove me nuts, but now with the unofficial upgrades on the 98 Gold it only crashes when I've crammed the harddrive chock full and am trying to keep open 2 large MS Excel files (7000 rows each) at the same time, along with MS Word and a genealogy program. Even then Windows just complains that it's out of memory and I close something. So, high kudos to the creators of those upgrades! Back to the camera problem: Will using the uninstall procedure on the software for the Fujifilm Finepix A210 camera remove the drivers that it installed? If not, would those drivers contain the letters "usb" in them somewhere so that I know what to manually remove? If no one here can reduce it down enough for the ignorant, I'll post tonight on the NUSB thread. As to uninstalling the USB old USB 2.0 controllers, does this refer to removing them from the Device Manager? I don't see anything labeled USB 2.0, just (listed by connection) the Intel® 82801AA USB Universal Host controller and underneath it the USB Root Hub. The only USB device that I've ever tried on this computer besides my Trackman Marble Wheel trackball mouse is this $%*@ camera. It's supposed to be so simple and yet I feel like an id***. Sharon

Thank you so much for responding! In April I had a major meltdown of my old Windows 98SE OS, somehow half of the Windows files were "lost." It took a while, but I successfully installed Windows 98 Gold (for which I had a CD and key, unlike the 98SE OEM version). Then I downloaded and installed all of the 98FE updates that I could find at mdgx.com. My computer had never run so well as it does now, it's much more stable with crashes few and far between. Now, to the current problem of the digital camera. I have version 4.10.2224 of ntkern.vxd in my various system folders. In April I downloaded nusb98fe.exe and apparently expanded it into a folder called UW98FE under my program files. However, I don't seem to remember running the executable from there and possibly I didn't because I didn't have any flash drives or storage devices to worry about. The weird thing is that I seem to have a lot of the updated files in my system folders. However, I know that if I did run it, I did not follow the preparation instructions given in the readme document so it possibly didn't "take." I did so much updating over a couple of weeks, I just can't remember now. If I ran nusb98fe.exe now and I'd already run it, would this cause an unforseen problem? The instructions in the readme document as are follows: ------------ Native USB 3.20 ------------ ------ For Windows 98 First Edition ------- *Based on Maximus Decim Native USB ver 3.1* *Credits goes to Maximus Decim for his original work* Modified exclusively for Windows 98 First Edition English ! *Native USB Mass Storage support (without installation of additional drivers for each type) for USB flash drives, digital photo/video cameras and other similar devices. *Universal Stack USB 2.0 (without installation of additional drivers for each chipsets) with uninstall. 1.Remove ALL drivers of USB flash drives. 2.Remove ALL drivers of USB 2.0 controllers. 3.Remove ALL unknown USB devices. 4.Install NUSB 3.20 and reboot. 5.If new USB 2.0 controllers are detected a rebot may be necessary. -------------- Numbers 1 and 2 are confusing, because I don't know what the drivers would be called if I have any. I've never installed a flash drive before, but I don't know what drivers come with Windows. I can unattach my Trackman USB mouse, but don't know what drivers would have installed for it so how do I know what to remove? I will first also uninstall the yukky camera software and I read somewhere yesterday that it's not necessary anyway if the camera's storage device is recognized under system devices as a mass storage device (which mine isn't at the moment). I sure hope you can baby-step me through the rest of this...sigh. Thanks so much for the help. Sharon

Hi! My neighbor loaned me her Fujifilm Finepix A210 digital camera. I took the picture fine and can view them on the LCD screen in playback mode. However, I'm having trouble getting my computer to recognize the camera's storage device. I used the software which came with the camera, copyright 2000-2003, and it supposedly loaded the needed drivers along with the Finepix viewer which I really don't need and don't want to use. Yet, when I hook up the camera to my second USB port and turn it on, it is listed as an unenabled and unknown device within the USB tree for the system devices within System Properties. The LCD screen on the camera shows that it is operating in the proper mode for transferring data to a computer. I'm using the 4-14-2000 software version for my Intel 82801 chipset, which includes the USB Root Hub (USB Standard Host Controller) under the Intel® 82801AA USB Universal Host Controller. My Trackman marble wheel operates off of the root hub and works fine. Does anyone know what I should do now? Thanks a bunch in advance. Sharon

Thank you, thank you, thank you. This time the fix worked and I've actually opened a bunch of folders and deleted quite a bit of stuff, and I'm still running what should be normally. Amazing that Microsoft never thought this was an important enough issue to fix as it's driven me out of my mind for years. Now I can remove the 75 shortcuts from my desktop!

I recently reinstalled Windows 98 in a new Windows folder. I previously had 98SE which had a total meltdown, but didn't have setup.exe or a key for SE. I upgraded from IE4 to IE6 and didn't have any problems until I reinstalled MS Office 2000 Professional. It didn't recognize some of my DLL files. and upon reboot, it told me that the following files were missing or corrupted. They exist in the proper folders, but are files from 2002. C:\Progra~1\Common~1\System\wab32.dll C:\Outlook~1\msoe.dll C:\Outlook~1\oeimport. dll Now Outlook Express won't open claiming that oobe is missing. Is there a way to fix this problem or should I just uninstall it? I don't use the program anyway and lost all of my addresses and old e-mail during the crash of 98se making Yahoo mail that much more attractive.

Thanks so much! I had downloaded and attempted to use all of the fixes for Windows 98 from the mdgx website, but I did the Windows fixes before I did the upgrade to IE6. This meant of course the shell98.exe didn't work, because it requires IE5.5 or higher. No reason was given for the failure and I guess I deleted it. I've gotten it again and hope that it will work! I had no idea that other people experienced this same thing for all of this time and feel like an id*** for not investigating the problem sooner. Oh, I would upgrade back to Windows 98SE, but even though I got the cab files with my OEM computer, I didn't get setup.exe or a CD key. My cousin gave up his Windows 98 computer and gave me his CD and key for that. Since the computer is so old I don't really want to go spending money as the difference between that two isn't much. I've upgraded the USB support and the DUN and so far no problems. Thank you for answering so quickly.

I always had problems with Windows 98SE concerning Explorer and the Recycle Bin. Delete a bunch of files or open and close 5 or 6 folders and everything would come to a screeching halt (really slow), necessitating a restart. I recently had a major crash of the OS and installed Windows 98 instead, doing all the security upgrades and upgrading from IE4 to IE6 at once. All of my prior file storage issues went away. Yesterday, I reinstalled MS Office 2000 Professional and now I'm back to where I was with Windows 98SE. The install initiated a totally unnecessary Windows Update and I belatedly discovered that the CD contained IE5 files, which presumably were part of the problem with my Windows 98SE system. Is there any known fix for this problem? If not, and I do a reinstall of Windows 98 over the existing OS, will this get rid of the files that were messed with by MS Office and put things back to using IE4? If it did, then I could go through all the security updates and the upgrade directly to IE6. With this procedure, would my program registrations stay intact so that I didn't have to reinstall Office and start the problems all over again? This is really aggravating and I was so happy with my "new" OS. Please help, Sharon

You are correct! Last night I studied the settings for my DUN connection and vaguely remembered something about unchecking the "Login to Network" box. So, I did it, tried to connect again, and it was back to a second or two. On the DMA and such with the Intel Application Accelator, maybe it will help, I don't know. My whole OS problem started while using my HP CD-Writer Plus. I'd written to 30 CDs before and never had a problem, but this time I think I tried it with too little memory. I have 256 MB Ram, but my HDD was down to only 200 MB free out of 6 GB. I thought that my original DMA settings were Enabled for the HDD (master on the primary IDE), Enabled for the CD-Writer (master on the secondary IDE) and Disabled for my CD-reader (slave on the secondary IDE). That is what I read should work the best without causing errors and overruns. I don't know when the settings got changed, but after the major Windows 98SE crash, the settings were reversed for the CD-Writer (i.e. DMA disabled) and the CD-reader (i.e. DMA enabled) and Windows 98SE wouldn't let me change them. I tried to reinstall the HP software and lost Windows 98SE forever at that point. Hence my brand-new Windows 98 OS. Were my first settings correct? My "new" Windows 98 is running really well (better than 98SE was), but now I'm very nervous about even attempting to reinstall the software for the HP CD-Writer, let alone try to use it again, but I really need it. Thanks so much for all your help! Sharon

Bless you all! My monitor is back, although I still have some "jumpy" issues with the display while viewing sites with active scripts (like this page). For others who still might be running an ancient computer, I downloaded and installed in order the following for the Intel 810 chipset from the Intel website (using the link in the prior post): infinst_enu.zip (updated *.inf installation utility for the 810 chipset) isecdrv_enu.zip (updated security driver for the 82802 firmware hub) iaa23_enu.exe (application accelerator for the 810 chipset for slow storage issues - it says Pentium III required, but I have a Celeron and it installed without a warning, I hope that wasn't a mistake) win9xe67.exe (last but definitely not least, the updated driver for the 82810 graphics controller) The graphics controller update automatically changed my monitor settings, as the proper monitor driver had already been installed. However, in System Properties I then had 2 graphics controllers listed after the install, one operating on the updated driver (with my monitor connected to it) and one on the driver that came with the installation utility. No resources were assigned to the second device so I deleted it and am hoping it's gone after the next startup. NOW, why does my dial-up networking take 2 minutes to connect to the internet? I had trouble with the install of the drivers for my modem, and it used to take just a few seconds for the logon.

Please help! I recently had to reinstall my OS and used an OEM copy of Windows 98, because I didn't have the setup program for my old 98 SE OS. It went fine and I've added the fixes to the OS and upgraded to IE6. I finally found the installation utility for my Intel 810 chipset and it's now fully recognized, according to device manager. However, my monitor is listed as being connected to a PCI standard VGA display adaptor, rather than the Intel 82810 System and Graphics Controller. I've tried several times removing all 3 devices and restarting, but each time the same result, so my 18" Viewsonic A90f is now limited to 640x480 pixels and 16 colors. What do I do now? Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

I recently had a major crash of my Windows 98SE. I tried to resurrect it, but only succeeded in causing it to shut down immediately upon boot. Luckily, I'd already obtained a legal copy of Windows 98 and had made the preparations for installing it. I booted the computer using a Windows 98SE boot floppy disk and successfully installed Windows 98 into a new folder. Initially, the version in System Properties read correctly as 4.10.1098. However, while searching for the first service pack, I landed on the Windows Update site. Somehow, it recognized my computer registration number and reset the System Properties to 4.10.2222 (which I no longer have). Now, I'm afraid that service packs won't work as they will think I have a version that I don't. Can I reset this back to 4.10.1098 (i.e. Windows 98 First Edition)? Thanks for the help!

Oh, yea, I think I'm way past trying to recover the data that was in the obliterated Windows folders. By the time I figured out that it was for sure not a mechanical failure of the hard drive itself, but of the FAT32 system, it was a little too late to worry about having overwritten what was contained in the Windows folders originally. Lucky for me, the part of the FAT32 system that failed was in the operating system and not part of "My Documents" folder, which contains at least 3 GB of data, and is for the most part irreplacable. At least with the operating system files, I can replace them. I went through my personal data files in order to e-mail to myself at Yahoo zip files of the most important stuff (maybe 600 MB worth so far on dial-up - sigh). I was able to clean up my data files until I had about 1.11 GB of available space. Yesterday I made a duplicate Windows folder and copied into it my desktop shortcuts, and any system or program files in the Windows folder and subfolders that had a different date stamp than the OS install date. That's taken the available space down to about 850 MB, which should be more than enough for installation of the replacement OS after the deletion of the original Windows folder (so I can install into a newly created folder). What I "lost": all files in the C:\windows\application data\ folder and all of its subfolders (which wiped out all e-mail in Outlook Express and the "quick launch" icons, all files in the C:\windows\all users\ folder and subfolders, everything in the C:\windows\favorites\ and in the C:\windows\start menu\ (the most annoying losses), and all files and possible subfolders in C:\windows\help. I also lost a smattering of program, system and library files which may have been in the C:\windows\ directory itself which have affected the operation of most programs and external hardware. Also, since the above losses don't seem to equate to 250 MB, I may have lost some program files as well, but not sure about that. There is something that you might be able to help me with. I had wanted to defragment the hard drive, so that I could at least install the new OS in large sequential chunks (as I don't want to reformat the entire drive). I found a copy of defrag.exe and tried to run it, but the first thing it does is a check for errors in the FAT32 system, and the check fails almost immediately, so the defragmentation process is not possible. However, my help system is gone, so I can't read the error messages or any other help messages as to what to do about it. I ran Scandisk again with the "/all" command and the FAT32 system came back with no errors. Is there another file system program besides Scandisk.exe that might be able to repair the errors in the FAT32 system properly so that I can defragment before the reinstall of the OS? I think that I have a copy of Chkdisk.exe in the CAB files somewhere, but I've never used it and don't have normal help instructions available now. Any ideas why the FAT32 system failed in the first place? I defragmented the hard drive last year some time, so the OS should've been in fairly sequential order on the HDD, but I had been getting "out of memory" errors for a couple of weeks, which was why I was trying to get data off onto CDs in the first place (down to 200 MB available space). Sorry this was so long. Sharon

How do you lose 250MB of your OS? Very good question! An updated virus scan shows nothing ( for the last year or two can no longer scan boot records though with Norton Antivirus). A full 2-hour surface scan of the HDD shows no bad clusters. A week before the crash I added a "new" 2003 ViewSonic monitor which had showed no intervening problems (didn't update the drivers though). I was performing a very belated backup of my data files when my HP CD-writer+ froze up the system. No choice but to do a crash restart - seemed okay, but ruined the CD. Same thing once again (never had a problem before and I've burned about 30 data CDs). I had only 300 MB free space on my 6GB HDD, so thought maybe a memory problem. Burned a new CD with about 1/3 of the files and successfully ejected it (it reads fine). Did a manual restart and at that point I got a registry error, system found a new registry, and then Windows 98 SE failed to boot. I had to get a couple of .sys files off the Windows 98 CD (using a friend's computer to copy to floppy) and finally managed to get Windows 98 SE to boot, but immediately noticed that the settings, utilities, help, and a lot else were "gone." I reinstalled Scandisk and ran it in repair mode and it "returned" to me more than 250 MB of freshly released space, which I can only assume was once a major portion of the operating system (and who knows what else). The CD-writer will now read, but won't write without a new operating system (I get errors when I try to even open software so installing new is out). I'm on dial-up internet access and have no external hard drive or a friend with one (I guess we are all hopelessly out of date!). I've spent 8 hours e-mailing to myself zip files of the most important data, but don't want to lose the rest of the 2GB, so at the moment the recovery CD is out. I was hoping to copy and save my desktop icons (all that's left of my settings), plus Windows subfolders and drivers needed for the pre-installed software, although my ability to do the latter is questionable at best. I don't use that software much if at all anyway, and plan to reinstall MS Office, HP DLA (for the CD-writer), the printer software, mouseware, etc. as none of them work at the moment. Right now the uninstall utility is gone so delete by brute force to create space is my only option. Partitioning the HDD is an idea, but I've never done it and I just have no idea if it would work anyway as many Windows commands (including DOS programs) are missing. I really don't want to make the situation worse. So, I will save what I can in separate folders and I plan to delete some of the Office files to make room for the Windows 98 Gold installation files on the HDD. Then boot to the startup CD, delete the old Windows and Internet Explorer folders (I've already deleted Messenger and Networking folders), and run setup from DOS. If anybody has any ideas why all of this happened in the first place, I'm all ears! Thanks a bunch to everyone who responded, Sharon.

Thank you so much! I figured I was going to have lots of problems with the "new" files being older than the originals, but didn't know how to get around that without reformatting the drive. I've already created a Windows 98 SE boot disk, so will try to use that.