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The problem is solved, it just took a little trick I can now print under Win98SE from a DOS window to my HP Color Laserjet 2605dn connected to the router (i.e. IP based printing via HP Standard TCP/IP Port). From a DOS window it works even better than when the printer is connected to the USB port of the computer (The HP2605 printer doesn't have a parallel LPT connector, only USB and Ethernet).The Capture Printer Port button in the Details tab of Printer Properties does NOT work with the port type "HP Standard TCP/IP Port" because there just exists no standard UNC path to the HP2605 printer connected to the router, nothing which could possibly be entered into the field "Path" in the window Capture Printer Port. I was looking for something that didn't exist And here is the trick which allows to print from a Win98 DOS window under port type "HP Standard TCP/IP Port": When you create the "HP Standard TCP/IP Port", instead of using the port name suggested by the "Add Standard TCP/IP Printer Port Wizard" (e.g. "IP_192.168.1.100") use LPT2, LPT3 or LPT4 (LPT5-9 don't work in a DOS window under Win98SE). That port (e.g. LPT2) is then the port name for printing, under both Windows and a DOS window, when the HP2605 printer is connected to the router via Ethernet cable. Using this trick, printing from a DOS window is better with a laser printer connected to a router (via Ethernet cable) than with a laser printer connected to the computer (via USB): - printing from a DOS window starts immediately - the last page of a DOS printout (e.g. DIR>LPT2) prints immediately, it is NOT stuck anymore for a minute or more in the printer buffer; instead it gets printed immediately - there is no need to Capture Printer Port to enable DOS printing, which may be cumbersome since an entered Capture Printer Port setting is in effect only until Windows shutdown, unless you select in the "Capture Printer Port" window "Reconnect at logon", which may have its own issues. - in short: when printing from a DOS window, the laser printer has become as responsive as an old dot matrix printer connected to LPT1 Maybe this trick also works for the automatically created port names USB001 and USB002 (Virtual printer ports for USB), by renaming their occurences in the registry. Maybe this could bring about more responsive printing from a DOS window, when the laser printer is connected to the computer via USB cable ...

Thanks Roman. My main concern is not DOS printing, but that I may have entered a wrong network setting into the printer or the router, and that this wrong setting may raise its head somewhere down the line.I am able to print under Win98SE, with the printer driver extracted from the HP CD, from a DOS window to a local (=physically attached) printer and to a remote Network printer attached via USB cable to a peer-to-peer print server computer. But I cannot print from a DOS window, by means of the HP Standard Port Monitor, to a network printer attached to the router. I assume I did not properly enter the network settings for the HP2605 printer or for the router, and it might just take a few tweaks to get it right, but I am at the end of my know-how. Eventually I will look at a Win98 version of "Install HP Network Printer Wizard', maybe it's the successor version to HP Standard Port Monitor for Windows 95/98 and just requires the entering of the printer IP for IP based printing?

Thanks supem, this is a major find. The HP Standard Port Monitor for Windows 95/98 works great on my HP Color LaserJet 2605dn under Win98SE. The network printing software for the 2605dn (dn=duplex+networking) on the HP driver CD is not for Win98SE, only for WinXP. For Win98SE Hewlett Packard had provided only printer drivers for a USB cable connection of the HP2605dn, which I could only get to work Ok after extreme fiddling.Up to now, in order to have a Network Printer, I had the HP2605dn connected to my eMule computer, which is continuously running, and had it set as shared in a peer-to-peer network and then set up Network Printer icons in the Printers folder of the printer clients with the Add Printer Wizard. Now, with the HP Standard Port Monitor, I can print to the HP2605dn connected via an Ethernet cable to the router, after assigning an IP to the HP2605 (via the front panel of the printer). Printing to an IP under Win98 works fine: duplex (=automatic 2-sided printing) works fine, color and B&W work fine. One question: What are the benefits/disadvantages of printing to a printer connected to the router vs. to a printer connected to a print server computer? Up to now having the printer attached to a print server computer has worked fine for me, but now there are 2 choices Another question: I am trying to enable printing from a DOS window under Win98 with the HP Standard Port Monitor by clicking on Capture Printer Port in the Details tab of Printer Properties. What exact UNC Path should I enter into the field Path? I always get the msg: Cannot access + entered UNC Path. I have set the IP of the HP2605 to 192.168.1.100. Network Neighborhood displays the HP2605 printer as NPI191D57 (displaying a computer icon for the NPI191D57, not a printer icon). My router, a Netgear WNR854T, in its router-control html page, under Attached Devices, does not list the HP2605 printer, only the other computers in the peer-to-peer network, but the printer can print ok under Windows. I have tried many combinations, like \\NPI191D57\192.168.1.100 or \\192.168.1.1\NPI191D57 (192.168.1.1 is the IP of the router), but they just gave me the above error msg. The question is: what is the print server name, and what is the share name of the printer. The HP2605 has still the defaults: Host Name=NPI191D57, Domain Name=blank, WINS=0.0.0.0 (nothing entered). HP Standard Port Monitor hat added the port "IP_192.168.1.100 (HP Standard TCP/IP Port)". When I double-click on NetHood, then double-click again on NPI191D57, an empty window "NPI191D57" comes up, no printer icon with a share name. When I enter in a DOS window: net view \\NPI191D57, the reply is: Shared resources at \\NPI191D57 There are no entries in the list BTW, the HP2605 came up in Network Neighborhood, under the name NPI191D57 and as a computer icon, about 10 minutes after I changed in the router setting: - RIP (Router Information Protocol) Direction from None to Both - RIP Version from Disabled to RIP_1 Maybe the appearance of the computer icon in NetHood was enabled by the above 2 changes. When I printed to the HP Standard Port Monitor under Windows before, I had not noticed this icon. Any ideas on how to solve this problem, so that I can get the HP Standard Port Monitor to print from a DOS window?

Thanks jaclaz, I'll give it a try during the next deployment of HDDs to my laptops.

Oh me oh my, that looks involved. Any suggestion which byte to change with a disk editor? Or is it maybe easier just to continue cloning the internal HDD to another HDD in an internal drive bay, and forget about cloning to a USB drive?What about another method of cloning the internal laptop HDD, if I - insert the laptop drive into a USB enclosure, then - connect the USB enclosure to my modern desktop with a recent BIOS, then - clone the laptop HDD in USB enclosure#1 to a HDD in a 2nd USB enclosure (i.e. USB to USB), then - insert the cloned HDD into another Inspiron Will the cloned HDD, when inserted into another Inspiron, NOT have disk geometry errors when PartitionMagic is run? BTW, I have been using Acronis Migrate Easy 7 for disk cloning under Win98. Is that Ok, or any better suggestions?

Hi jaclaz, Great idea. For my next deployment of an internal main HDD to my old Inspiron laptops (in about 2 months) I will try to: - clone the internal HDD to an external USB HDD - then change the partition type from currently 06h [= FAT 16B greater than 32MB] to 0Eh [=FAT 16 LBA] while the HDD is still in the external USB enclosure - then insert the cloned HDD from the USB enclosure into another Inspiron, as its main HDD In about 2 months, after my next deployment, I will post here whether PartitionMagic still reports a disk geometry error when the USB-cloned-HDD is inserted into the Inspiron laptop as main HDD. On the HDDs which I am currently using I don't want to try changing the partition type, I don't want to get into trouble now. PartitionMagic v8.01 build 1312 cannot change partition types. Acronis Disk Director 10.0 build 2117 can change partition types, but does not list 0C or 0E in its partition type menu. Paragon Partition Manager 9 (is about the same as V-COM Partition Commander 10) and Partition Table Doctor 3.5 CAN change to partition types 0C [=FAT32 LBA] and 0E [=FAT16 LBA]. Which of the 2 tools would you recommend for changing the partition type to 0E? My gut feeling is that PTD works better on partitions used by Win98 than Paragon Partition Manager. BTW, I have been using in the extended partition of the cloned HDD a mix of FAT16 [type 06] and FAT32 [type 0B] partitions. Should I also change for the next deployment the partition type of the 2 FAT32 partitions inside the extended partition from 0B to 0E? On one of these FAT32 partitions inside the extended partition I am using WinXP. Or is it sufficient to change the partition type only for the FAT16 boot partition C:? Another complication may be that I am using as boot manager on the Inspirons old System Commander 2000 v5.01 (on my desktop I have installed newer v9 for Windows Vista), which installs its own MBR. @joe tweaker: Did the partitioning of your HDD inside of the USB Acomdata enclosure solve your problem?

When I clone the main 120GB HDD of my Inspiron 7500 laptop to a another HDD in one of the 2 drive bays of the laptop, and then put the cloned HDD into another nearly-identical Inspiron 7500 as main drive, the cloned HDD works fine, no errors detected by PartitionMagic 8.01 or Partition Table Doctor 3.5. But when I put the cloned HDD into a USB enclosure, PartitionMagic reports disk geometry errors (255 heads vs 240 heads) and displays the cloned disk as Bad, even if Win98 Explorer can handle it Ok. Partition Table Doctor 3.5 also finds unrepairable errors in the partition table of the cloned HDD put into the USB enclosure. Acronis Disk Director 10 finds no errors. The BIOS of my old Inspiron 7500 reports at POST the internal 120GB HDD as 65535 MB.When I clone the main 120GB HDD of the laptop to a USB drive, and then insert the cloned HDD into another Inspiron 7500 as the main drive, the Inspiron will not load Windows and has an error msg on a black screen. Again, as long as I clone the internal HDD to a HDD in a drive bay module, the cloned HDDs work fine as the internal HDD of another Inspiron 7500. But I never clone (or partiton) a HDD in a drive module for use in an USB drive. This may be related to joe tweaker's problem, since he has partitioned the HDD inside his desktop, and then uses it in his USB drive. Maybe joe tweaker should partition the Acomdata HDD in the Acomdata enclosure, not inside of his desktop.

I doubt the surface scan will be of much use. How about clearing the USB disk & then partitioning it into a single logical partition, 160GB is Ok on USB? My partitioning tool of choice for Win98/FAT32 is PartitionMagic 8.01, which can partition external USB drives.My next step would be try the shutdown/restart sequence with another make of external USB HDD. You could also check whether it's the fault of nusb, which I would doubt: 1) with your Acomdata USB drive connected, rename Windows\INF\USBSTOR.INF and USBSTOR.PNF to something like\Usbstor.inf.deactivated and usbstor.PNF.deactivated New devices will not be detected by nusb anymore 2) go into Control Panel -> System -> Device Manager select (probably under Disk Drives) the Acomdata USB drive -> click on Remove 3) reboot 4) install the Win98 driver from the Acomdata CD 5) reboot again, when your system is up again, plug in your Acomdata USB drive, Win98 should detect it Ok 6) shutdown/restart again, with the Acomdata drive connected: do you still have the same problem? To re-activate nusb for installing other devices: just rename the renamed USBSTOR.INF & USBSTOR.PNF to their original names.

The mule may surely help, even with ancient Hard Disk LED 1.1, which may be the only utility of its kind for Win98. Any other experiences or issues detected after testing for more than 30 minutes?

If I understand right, you have a shutdown problem when your Acomdata USB drive is connected. Have you tried ScanDisk on your USB drive?

Hi dencorso,I tried their latest version v1.09.0006 of 23-May-2008, its installer states that it's only for WinXP/2003 and Vista. It installs under Win98, but does not run. Any idea where there are older versions which run under Win98? v1.6.002 seems to have run under Win98 http://www.sharewareriver.com/product.php?id=8494 but its not there anymore.

I have experienced twice on my desktop some corruption of Windows Explorer after having installed Hard Disk LED, I never had this before: when I double-clicked on the StartUp folder, it didn't open, but another software loaded, the same happened when I clicked on some, but not all, desktop icons. After rebooting, this happened again after some time, but I haven't been able to repeat this corruption so far.When I play a movie from an external 1.5TB USB HDD on the fast desktop or on the slower old laptop (which has a modern 120GB HDD), the system tray icon of Hard Disk LED does not show any perceptible disk activity; the physical access lights of the Thermaltake USB enclosure do flicker slightly however. Maybe current disk access times are too fast for Hard Disk LED .

That's nice to hear, so there should be still some ways to increase the uptime of my mule, which is running on a 10-year-old USB 1.1 laptop and is connected via wireless LAN to the router. My router, with 3-5 computers connected, has itself an uptime of 30-60 days until it hangs.

My initial impression is that Hard Disk LED v1.1 of Feb.1997 seems to work fine under Win98SE on my old 750MHz Inspiron 7500 laptop (120GB internal PATA HDD) connected to a 1.5TB SATA HDD in an external Thermaltake USB enclosure. The read and write lights flash in the system tray when there is HDD read/write activity, regardless whether from accessing the USB HDD or the internal HDD. It works fine with ScanDisk and NDD, the activity lights are flashing while ScanDisk/NDD is accessing the internal or external HDD.On my desktop (2.2GHz dual core, GeForce 7800GS and a 750GB internal HDD) this utility had initially a display problem under Win98: The activity lights rarely flashed during disk activity. After setting the Priority on its system tray icon to "Lowest", the activity lights flashed much better, but still not as well as the actual LED on the computer case. One big gripe: the 2 activity lights in the system tray are miniscule, a magnifying glass could be handy. My initial impression is that Hard Disk LED v1.1 seems to work fine under Win98 with old hardware (e.g. my 10-year-old laptop), but has some issues with modern hardware (e.g. my desktop with a 2.2GHz dual core). Maybe somebody else could join me in testing this 12-year-old software on modern hardware, to make sure that there are no hidden issues.

The safely-remove-utility of nusb3.3 has a problem with multi-card readers: having to safely-remove 5 drives, one after the other, takes nearly as much time as a simple reboot. The manufacturer-provided driver by Genesys, for example, does this with a single removal selection from the system tray: "Stop Genesys USB Mass Storage Device J,K,L,M". Another issue of nusb3.3 with card readers with several drive letters is that nusb3.3 does not indicate in My Computer which drive-letter actually contains the inserted card. The manufacturer-provided driver by Genesys, on the other hand, has 2-state-icons in My Computer, red when the card is inserted, grey when no card is inserted; this also identifies in red which of the several drive-letters of the multi-card reader I should double-click to open. Also, the 4 drive icons of the multi-card reader in My Computer are marked CF, SM, SD and MS, according to card type. The discussion nusb vs. manufacturer-provided drivers is comparable to the discussion of printer etc drivers 10 years ago (compare p.812 in Minasi's Expert Guide to Windows 98, "Printer Drivers: Use the Manufacturer's or the Ones in Windows 98?") In general I don't like multi-card readers which assign a separate drive-letter to each slot, it's a waste and clutters My Computer. If you use the card reader constantly, maybe you might consider a single-card reader just for the specific card type you use. I do use one multi-card reader as a special-purpose device. I have a hama/EasyLine 55745 multi-card reader with a built-in hub, which I have been using as a dedicated eMule download station, without any problems, for 24-hours a day during the last 3 months. This eMule download station is similar to a solid-state drive (SSD), but with removable media (3 SDHC cards) so that I can remove the SDHC card containing the completed downloads, without the need to stop eMule. I have a 16GB SDHC card in a card-slot of the multi-card reader plus 2 single-slot SDHC card readers at the USB connectors of the built-in hub, altogether 48GB (3 SDHC cards) for eMule incoming+multiple temporary directories. Typical eMule uptime with this dedicated SDHC download station has increased under Win98SE by about 1 day over an internal HDD, to 3 days 10 hours +-2hours. So physical read-write issues of HDDs definitely contribute to eMule crashes under Win98SE. I haven't figured out yet why my eMule v0.49b under Win98 on the download station with SDHC cards crashes regularly after about 3 days 10 hours.

Not on my desktop with 2GB of RAM and Internet Explorer 5.5 installed

Hi Wolfgang,Windows Explorer under Win98Se has no major problems copying large amounts of data IF you have installed Internet Explorer 5.5 SP1. Internet Explorer 6 or higher, however, corrupts Win98SE, and makes file copying/moving a major headache. I have been using under Win98SE 1 ext.USB HDD enclosure with 1.5 TB SATA HDD and 2 enclosures with each 1TB SATA HDD, for about 2 months now. I have copied with Win98SE Explorer maybe 5TB and over a million files in these 2 months. When connected to my dual-core desktop with a modern motherboard (Asus P5PE-VM, 2GB of RAM) with IE 5.5, I did not encounter major file-copying problems with Win98SE Explorer, except: - Norton Disk Doctor has problems with files with names containing international characters, originally created under WinXP - when the ext.USB HDD is connected to the USB port of an eSATA/USB/IDE combo PCI card, instead of being connected to the onboard USB controller (I am still fiddling around with this problem): System freezes when copying large files (e.g. 700MB) but not small files (e.g. 10MB), maybe 5 seconds after starting to copy. Again, when the ext.HDD is connected to the onboard USB controller, even if this PCI card is in its slot, there is no such file-copying-problem. The onboard USB controller uses a special Intel ICH4-5 edition of the OrangeWare USB driver (v1.1.0.2). When connected to my 10-year-old Inspiron 7500 laptop (512MB RAM, USB 2.0 via PCCard only, buggy PCMCIA controller chip, BIOS is not LBA and in POST internal PATA drives >64GB are indicated as 65535MB) with IE 6.0 I did encounter major problems, like freezing during the file move with Win98 Explorer. Beyond Compare has been for years my tool of choice for file-moving and file-copying on the IE 6.0-tainted laptop, instead of Windows Explorer. But when I used Beyond Compare with this old laptop for file-moving to the 1.5TB ext.HDD, somehow the target and source partitions got corrupted. Unlike moving with Beyond Compare, copying with Win98 Explorer didn't corrupt the HDD and data on the source drive didn't get lost , it just caused a lot of lost clusters on the target drive when the system froze. After the Beyond-Compare-disaster (losing about 150GB of data) I eventually deleted the source and target partitions and created new ones in their place, good that I had a backup of all the files on another ext.HDD. Since then I try to write as little as possible with the old laptop to the 1+TB HDDs. Also, if you use a small ext.HDD, you may avoid some new problems. On the Asus P5PE-VM motherboard in my desktop, for example, Legacy USB Support works ok with an 80GB ext.USB HDD, but with a 300GB USB HDD connected under Legacy USB Support, the computer freezes at POST. I have Legacy USB Support disabled on the Asus P5PE-VM desktop, the old Inspiron 7500 laptop doesn't have this BIOS setting.

Hi dencorso, I tried to download the Texas Instruments PCI-1225 CardBus Controller 5.0.2183.1 from ZDNET http://downloads.zdnet.com/abstract.aspx?docid=458239 but ZDNET only passes the download request to Microsoft with MS Windows Update, and then I get the request "Install and run Windows Update signed on 8/26/03". I have my reservations about installing MS Windows Update - does it still work for Windows 98SE? Will I just install spyware, and then get a msg like: "Sorry, Win98 is not supported anymore"?

Hi Roman,Unfortunately this CPU is not on the compatibility list of my Asus P5PE-VM, the last BIOS update for this motherboard (for new CPUs) is v1501 of 25-Jan-2008. If it's not possible, let's make it possible.The S.A.D. Dualcore Tuner installs, but when I ran it under Win98SE I got 2 err msgs at startup: - dctuner.exe: A device attached to the system is not functioning; and - Error Starting program: The DCTUNER.EXE file is linked to missing export NTDLL.DLL:NtQuerySystemInformation The THG Task Assignment Manager http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/bang-d...g-buck,815.html runs under Win98SE, but under Win98SE only CPU0 is selectable in the window Set Affinity, the other 31 CPUs are greyed out; when selecting an application to be assigned to CPU0 the error msg "This function is only valid in Win32 mode" pops up. Do run this little program, it opens up a whole new perspective. SMP Seesaw http://www.mlin.net/SMPSeesaw.shtml is open source, maybe it can be made to work under Win98 + a couple of WinXP dlls. Maybe Tihiy could help and give a definite answer on whether it could be done, I would be available for testing.

I have been using Win98SE on a dual core for about a year now. But unfortunately your hardware is not Win98 compatible. I am using an Asus P5PE-VM motherboard, which also has an Intel 775 socket, with an Intel Core 2 Duo E4500. Your E8500 is not on the CPU compatibility list of my P5PE-VM, and I doubt it is on the CPU compatibility list of any other motherboard which works under Win98. So in addition to a graphic card and a motherboard which are not Win98-compatible, you may also have a CPU which does not work in Win98-compatible motherboards. It is quite time-consuming to find modern hardware which works with Win98SE. Basically you have to custom-build your computer, and you have to spend a lot of time on each piece of hardware in it. Also, finding Win98-compatible components in Croatia may be very difficult, maybe at ebay.de Another possibility would be to buy at ebay a used computer which has a Win98-compatible motherboard which works with a dual-core CPU. Dencorso's list of working configurations http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=118097 is an excellent starting point for custom-building a modern Win98-compatible computer. When I decided a year ago on which motherboard to get, the 2 main criteria were Win98 compatibility (as stated by the manufacturer in the user manual) and a dual-core CPU. Very few motherboard models fit this requirement. I plan to replace in the next few months the E4500 CPU with an X6800 CPU, which should make my custom-build one of the faster Win98 computers around. Another project would be to find a way to use both cores under Win98, maybe there is Win98-compatible software to manually assign programs to specific cores.

System.ini on my desktop, which has a relatively recent installation of US Win98SE, confirms that vgaoem.fon is an indicator of the US code page. Here some lines from system.ini of this desktop computer:oemfonts.fon=vgaoem.fon oemansi.bin= aspect=100,96,96 woafont=dosapp.fon On my laptop, however, which reflects an installation of Win98SE of originally maybe 9 years ago, I have the folling lines in System.ini: oemfonts.fon=8514oem.fon oemansi.bin=xlat850.bin aspect=100,120,120 woafont=app850.fon On the laptop I have selected the Windows setting of large screen fonts [large (120 DPI) display], which seems to have replaced whatever original setting there was with 8514oem.fon http://www.psc-consulting.ca/fenske/publish.htm The other entries in system.ini look like I have code page 850 installed on the laptop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_850 but I have no idea whether this would indicate the code page used during the original installation of Win98SE.

Thanks Drugwash, your suggestion looks like it will produce the right results, if one knows Regular Expressions. But learning Regular Expressions looks quite time-consuming, I would only need it for multi-renames of eMule downloads.I looked at Beyond Compare, which I have installed, and it also supports Regular Expressions.

Thanks Ninho. I don't remember under which code page I installed Win98SE originally on my laptops many years ago. I have been using several Inspiron 7500 laptops with different built-in national keyboards, with the corresponding code page set or remmed out in config.sys. I am using on my main laptop a US keyboard, with the US International keyboard set in Windows.Is there a way to find out under which code page Win98SE was originally installed? I always use ASCII characters when I enter the name of a file to be saved, or for renaming, which has kept me out of mischief, until I started to use eMule. eMule downloads have created this file name problem on my computer, under Win98 at least, because many files downloaded with eMule have names containing non-ASCII characters: a ) eMule downloads sometimes have finished downloading, but then are stuck at "completing" because their filenames contain e.g. Chinese characters. The solution is to select the file stuck at Completing in the Transfer window of eMule -> right-click Details -> Name tab -> click on Cleanup button ->Ok. This will remove the '?' (=Chinese, etc characters) from the filename. Then select in the Transfer window the file with the cleaned up name -> right-click Resume and the download will be completed ok b ) eMule under Win98 sometimes creates download files which cannot be renamed etc under Win98, only under WinXP, probably because of something in the filename. c) and now this ScanDisk/NDD problem, when I access eMule downloads having filenames with international characters, stored on an external USB HDD. Under ScanDisk I can select at least -> Advanced -> de-select "Invalid file names", but under Norton Disk Doctor I have to select "ignore" for each "erroneous" filename with international characters (the default selection of NDD is "delete"[the file!!], not "ignore"). Ninho, I guess you are using the French code page, which already contains ' í ' with an accent, so the file name "María' might be Ok for you, but do you get the same error as I do with María, when you create a file named 'Niñoß¿" (ñ with a tilde, German ß, Spanish punctuation mark ¿)?

Part #2 of bug puzzle: Why did ScanDisk on computer #1 detect file name errors, but not ScanDisk on computer#2? 2nd reproduceable example a ) on computer#1, with the USB drive containing the file María.txt connected, run ScanDisk and select Repair in the small window displaying "... ScanDisk repairs the error.... b ) rerun ScanDisk: no more error msg c ) after "successfully" repairing the error, connect the USB drive containing María.txt, to computer#2 and re-run ScanDisk. Lo und behold: the file name error with María.txt is reported again! Apparently repairing the file with ScanDisk didn't do anything to the USB HDD containing María.txt. But why did ScanDisk not report a file name error anymore on computer #1, after the repair? Possibly because ScanDisk wrote somewhere in \Windows\ or in \Program Files\ a list of "repaired" files for which ScanDisk/Windows should not report file name error messages, and María.txt was not yet on such a hypothetical list on computer #2. And such a hypothetical file list, if it exists at all, where could it be? In the cloaked files named Index.dat, or in \Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5, which cannot be readily accessed, or in the registry? A special feat of this "repair" is that a file name error, once it has been repaired by ScanDisk, is not reported anymore by Norton Disk Doctor either - except if you connect the USB HDD to another computer and run Norton Disk Doctor from that other computer, which results in the "repaired" error being displayed again by NDD. Re: File name cleanup The only utility for filename conversions I have seen under Google is convmv under Linux http://www.linux.com/feature/58689 but convmv seems to be made for converting to UTF-8/Linux. Again: Does anybody know of Win98/WinXP utilities which convert filenames with Western international characters to plain ASCII file names?

Here the most likely cause of the file name errors messages: They are not phoney messages, they are real errors as seen by Win98. Win98 cannot properly read all file names of files created under WinXP FAT32. Or in other words: WinXP FAT32 filenames are NOT backward compatible to Win98 when they contain international characters. I originally got into the mess because of the sluggish file delete problem under Win98 on my laptop, caused by the installation of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 on the laptop. As a workaround I did most copying/moving/deleting/renaming not under Win98 anymore, but under WinXP, which does not have this sluggish file delete problem. So when I process my eMule downloads, which contain a lot of files with international characters in their names, I boot from Win98 into WinXP, and move the eMule downloads under WinXP, from the internal HDD to an external USB HDD. But WinXP uses UTF-16 encoding of international characters, while Win98 uses UCF-2 encoding for international characters. WinXP apparently can read UCF-2 and UTF-16 encoded characters, but can only write file names with UTF-16 encoded characters. Win98 apparently can only read and write UCF-2 encoded characters. So by moving Win98-created-files under WinXP to the USB HDD, the international characters in their file names get converted to UTF-16, and Win98 has problems it. Here a reproduceable example: 1) create a file named María.txt (with an accent over the i) under WinXP. WinXP creates a UTF-16 encoded file. 2) boot into Win98. ScanDisk will display a file name error for María.txt, because Win98 wants UCF-2 encoded filenames. Here some info: "UTF-8 is, however, currently used primarily on AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, and Linux... UCS-2 encoding is a fixed two-byte encoding sequence and is a method for transforming Unicode values into byte sequences for Microsoft Windows platforms. It is the standard for Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, and Windows NT... UTF-16 is a superset of UCS-2, with the addition of some special characters in surrogate pairs. UTF-16 is the standard encoding for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003" http://www.datadirect.com/developer/odbc/u...round/index.ssp "UTF-8 [e.g. of Linux]... is able to represent any character in the Unicode standard, yet the initial encoding of byte codes and character assignments for UTF-8 is backwards compatible with ASCII. For these reasons, it is steadily becoming the preferred encoding for e-mail, web pages,[1] and other places where characters are stored or streamed" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8 File name cleanup When you manipulate files with international characters in their file names under WinXP, you create problems under Win98 (and probably also under Linux). The easiest workaround would be to use only ASCII characters in file names. Are there any Win98/WinXP utilities which convert filenames with Western international characters to plain ASCII file names? (e.g. remove accents in filenames + language specific changes in file names, such as ß->ss, ä->ae, ë->e, ñ->n, etc)