Multibooter

My favorite disk utility was Disk Fixer (of V-COM System Suite v6.0.14 or Fix-It Utilities 6), but I changed over to NDD 2004 about 3 years ago, when an external USB HDD of 250 GB (in reality about 232GB) was too large for Disk Fixer. Here an old note of mine, in my system log of Jan.2004:"Disk Fixer Is a better repair utility than Norton Disk Doctor or ScanDisk: NDD crashed when attempting to fix H: when a lot of files were cross-linked (err msg: "cannot copy - access denied") ScanDisk refused even to start diagnosing, err msg: "not enough memory" DiskFixer did it Addendum in Feb.04: the HDD may have been damaged by the sp.exe virus, identified on 25.Jan.04 This is a reason why to have several different utility packages installed - in case of a virus infection maybe one still works! " By the way, the infection with sp.exe was the only malware infection I had in the last 10 years, Kaspersky at that time had only this short description: "September 11", now no more description. Disk Fixer under Win98 does NOT work on a 250GB USB HDD, it terminates after nearly completing the File Allocation Table check Under WinXP, however, Disk Fixer does work Ok with a 250 GB USB HDD, 232GB FAT32 partition. So maybe Loew's 137GB patch can put good old Disk Fixer back to work under Win98? But since the HDD was a USB drive, could it be that the drive capacity limitation of Disk Fixer was caused by the Win98 USB driver for the HDD (WinXP does not need a special USB driver)? Is there a different USB disk/partition size limitation if I use an external enclosure with a different USB driver? Livingston & Straub in "Windows ME Secrets" (p. 1091) state that the DOS version of ScanDisk always uses the primary copy of the FAT (unless ScanDisk finds a physical disk error), while the Windows version of ScanDisk uses both primary & backup FATs. You must have run Scandisk under Windows when Scandisk detected and fixed mismatched FATs.

The DOS Scandisk.exe does NOT look at the backup File Allocation Table, while the Windows Scandskw.exe looks at both Primary and backup File Allocation Table and determines which File Allocation Table is better in case of errors.Is NDD.exe (DOS) smarter than Scandisk.exe (DOS), does it look at both file allocation tables? In that case, the renaming trick would be rather useful.

There are separate threads about Firefox & Win98:http://www.msfn.org/board/Firefox-3-on-Win...Me-t115594.html http://www.msfn.org/board/Future-versions-...-98-t72957.html

Wow, I didn't think of mirroring a partition to RAMDISK. Eventually I will have to set up with my boot manager (System Commander) a separate "private" Win98 opsys selection which runs completely in RAM, besides the regular Win98 opsys selection which runs on HDD.Over 10 years ago, before there were USB memory sticks, I set up Win95 to run on a laptop without a HDD, just from a boot floppy and an external (non-bootable) 1 GB Jaz drive connected via a SCSI PCMCIA card. Now the privacy aspect would be important, at that time it was a slick way to circumvent some mean copy-protection schemes which created hidden bad sectors (the Iomega Copy Machine sector copier even copied bad sectors). Booting into a completely RAM-disk based Win98 would even delete at shutdown the info added to the "cloaked" (=not visible & access denied under Win98) Index.dat files created by the MS proto-root-kit in Win98 http://support.it-mate.co.uk/?mode=Product...=index.datsuite

Thanks for the link. I'll be back in the US in Sept. and will try it then on a resized partition >137GB. On a USB HDD I cannot try out the DOS version of ScanDisk: Although the motherboard I am using has USB legacy support, I have disabled it because when USB legacy support is enabled, the system freezes when the BIOS is checking the connected USB HDD (750GB, 4 primary partitions).This leads to the next can of worms, USB legacy support at the BIOS level: What is the largest USB HDD capacity for USB legacy support on Asus motherboards? Can you have more than 1 partition? What partition types are recognized? (ExtendedX/Logical, Primary, FAT16, FAT32, FAT32 EXT). Is there a conflict if you have a USB HDD driver installed & the USB HDD is already recognized at the BIOS level? I remember vaguely, when I had USB legacy support enabled, Win98 came up with Windows Explorer showing about 20 HDD icons.

A Win98 which would have the registry and the directories Windows, Program Files and My Documents in RAM (after copying a virgin installation to RAM) would be very interesting, no more traces left behind after you turn the computer off.The difficulty would be to create the RAMDISK and to copy the files of these 3 directories (long filenames!) to RAM BEFORE Win98 is loaded. If you can get these files/directories into RAM, you could boot into a virtual Win98 on the RAM disk.

Opera just released v9.50, which works with Win95 and higher.Win98 will die about 2 years after there is no more active development for a Win98 browser. To demonstrate the slow death of a software package I am posting this message with Netscape Communicator v4.8 of 2002. Browsing with it feels kind of weird, but the result (i.e. the posted message) will be probably Ok. In Feb.2003 I changed from Netscape Communicator v4.8 to Opera v7.02. Until about 3 months ago my main browser was Opera v7.23 (released about Jan.2004). An old note of mine about Opera, from that time, states: "a secure non-US browser, an alternative to Internet Explorer & Netscape" I was never a fan of Firefox. Firefox is a major source of instability under Win98: after browsing for while with Firefox, Win98 tends to crash. Using Firefox & then loading Acrobat 5 will quickly crash Win98. I will continue using Firefox v2.0.0.14 occasionally for printing odd webpages, which usually print more compact in Firefox than in Opera or IE.

"The same err msg with a 232GB FAT32 partition of a 300GB ext.USB HDD" http://www.msfn.org/board/Windows-98SE-LBA...772#entry773772 The maximum size of partition which I was able to make Norton Disk Doctor 2004 swallow was 240GB http://www.msfn.org/board/Help-I-need-to-G...468#entry763468 Disk size apparently doesn't matter to NDD, only partition size, I have tried various disk sizes up to 750GB. The new Scandskw.exe works on all my partitions, but I don't know yet whether it works correctly, time will tell. Norton Disk Doctor 2004 has worked correctly for me EXCEPT FOR FIXING PARTITION TABLES/BOOT RECORDS (use Partition Table Doctor v3.5 for it!). But right partitioning for large disks so that NDD under Win98 does not hang with BSOD on large disks, after err msg "Error on drive xx: Invalid Disk Table in Boot Record", is VERY difficult:1) if you want to create large logical partitions inside of an ExtendedX partition (partition type 0F=ExtendedX): only use Powerquest Partionmagic v8.01 (max.Partitionsize=196GB) or Acronis Disk Director v1.0. build 2089 or earlier (build 2160 hangs if you have a 2nd internal HDD partitioned as NTSF by Vista, when the Acronis hdd engine starts while the splash screen is displayed). If you use Acronis Disk Director you can create much larger FAT32 (EXT) partitions, but after partitioning with Acronis Disk Director you SHOULD repair(!) the created partition tables with Partition Table Doctor. VCOM Partition Commander 10.0 and Paragon Partition Manager 9 can only create large logical partitions at with Norton Disk Doctor 2004 will choke with BSOD. 2) To create large primary partitions acceptable to NDD 2004 (I use 4), you must use a little trick: you must leave some free space (e.g. 7.8MB) after the last primary partition. Acronis Disk Director and PartitionMagic v8.01 can in this way create large partitions acceptable to NDD, not VCOM Partition Commander 10 and Paragon Partition Manager 9, however. The little bit of free space after the last primary partition will apparently cause that the last partition is properly seen. Without using the free-space-trick when creating primary partitions, Partition Table Doctor will display the last primary partition as free space and VCOM Partition Commander 10 & Paragon will hang at the startup splash screen. c) For the moment I have decided to use primary partitions instead of logical partitions contained in an ExtendedX partition, because I want to be able to use Paragon & VCOM, perhaps for accessing/exporting data of NTSF partitions. Paragon and VCOM just choke under Win98 at large ExtendedX partitions. Eventual problems with drive lettering under different opsys, however, might make me reconsider. NO, I still have a 2GB FAT16 and a FAT32 partition <128GB on the 1st HDD (PATA). Eventually I may reconsider increasing the FAT32 partition, but I want to see what the experience of others is, and there is no urgency. The only huge directory I have does not have to be on a bootable drive. It is on my 3rd HDD (USB), it's the install-to directory of the German Digitale Bibliothek, currently about 120+GB with 430.000 files. Is the ME version available anywhere?

dskmaint.dll is in Windows/System. You installed it in the wrong folder, therefore it didn't work. First of all, my apologies for posting wrong information. I actually had searched my HDD for the wrong file name, diskmaint.dll instead of dskmaint.dll, and nothing was found, the filename was misspelled twice in this topic as "diskmaint.dll", and I had copied & pasted this wrong filename into Find (I remember wondering why it had 9 characters, but didn't investigate further, and even more amazing, I posted the correct spelling: "(there was no dskmaint.dll before in \Windows\)").I have tested the new versions of scandskw.exe & dskmaint.dll [the latter placed in \Windows\System\], they DO WORK on a USB HDD (698GB=Seagate 750GB) with 3 large partitions (2x240GB & 218GB). Thanks again, SlugFiller. Delving a little deeper into ScanDisk, another question arose: Does Scandisk.exe (NOT scandskw.exe) work with partitions >137 GB? There are 2 versions of ScanDisk, and the one running at startup with a blue screen seems to be Scandisk.exe (see pp.428 of Windows 98 Resource Kit). This Scandisk.exe in \Windows\Command\ seems to be the crucial one which gets called after a bad shutdown: "During reboot, Win.com reads that bit [fourth bit of 8th byte of the reserved first 112 bytes of FAT32]. If it is set to 0, it runs ScanDisk [scandisk.exe] to check the drive for errors." (p.451 in Windows 98 Resource Kit) I prefer to stay away from installers, it's much easier to undo a file copy. The eMule software, for example, is posted in 2 versions, as an installer and as a zip file for file copy, which does not modify the registry. About 9% of the 11 million downloads of the eMule software are of the zip file for file copy, rather than the installer http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=53489

CORRECTION - 6/19/08 - IT DOES WORK - see my posting below It does NOT work for me. I extracted dskmaint.dll and scandskw.exe, both v4.90.3000, and copied them to \Windows\, replacing scandskw.exe v4.70.1998 (there was no dskmaint.dll before in \Windows\).This new ScanDisk did work on a 123GB FAT32 partition of a 750GB ext.USB HDD. But on the 3 other partitions of 192GB each, the new ScanDisk produced the err msg "ScanDisk could not continue because your computer does not have enough available memory." The same err msg with a 232GB FAT32 partition of a 300GB ext.USB HDD. I am using the Genensys USB Storage Driver v1.61 Any suggestions? Maybe a 3rd file is required? I am using regular Win98SE, no additional updates.

The exact English error msg is: "Cannot find the file xxx.url (or one of its components). Make sure the path and filename are correct and that all required libraries are available." The exact msg text may be helpful for internet searches.I first encountered this problem in Jan.2007 when I installed Opera v9.10 (International_Setup.exe). Before I had been using Opera v7.23 as default browser for 3 years, NO problem with internet shortcuts. The internet-shortcut-bug is rather a bug of recent versions of Opera than of Win98. In Jan.2007 I considered this bug so serious that I immediately reverted to Opera 7.23. I have one important internet shortcut on my desktop, which is to the configuration of the wireless router. In Jan.2007, when I looked at the internet-shortcut-bug, I got the feeling that this is a major can of worms for Opera, that's possibly why they never fixed it. Here a link to related info from my notes: "Unable to view Internet shortcuts" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/175306 Maybe this link is helpful if somebody wants to delve into this problem. I doubt that the people at Opera will fix it. In March/May 2008 I installed v9.26/9.27, both still had the internet-shortcut-bug. But it didn't matter anymore since I had set Firefox as the default browser, which is the easiest workaround to Opera's internet-shortcut problem. Setting a browser as the default browser does not necessarily mean that it is your main browser (Opera is still my favorite browser). It just means: open internet shortcuts with it. If I remember right, this internet-shortcut problem of Opera also occurs when you click on links in the About screen of software packages, e.g. for registering or buying a software package, or for getting Help via the internet, or in eMule for making a TCP/UDP port connection test. Amazing that the people at Opera haven't fixed this one.

Even older FlashGet v1.65 could cause eMule to crash shortly after Flashget started downloading.Is v1.96.1073 better than v1.73, or just more never-used-features?

Flashget works fine, I had no reason yet to upgrade from old v1.65 of Sept.2004. I just checked their old website www.amazesoft.com it's dead, also www.flashget.com. Maybe it's time to look for their last good version without ads http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashget Which version/build of FlashGet would you recommend?

The best solution is running eMule on a dedicated old computer. I gave up on Azureus & uTorrent because they don't provide additional downloads and conflict with eMule, under Win98 at least. Uptime >3 days is helpful for downloading rare files, sources are not always online, and queues may be very long. eMulePlus had an option to save/load sources, but not eMule, as far as I know, but since Kademlia has become the major network, eMulePlus is out.

My experience has been a minimum of 30 minutes and about 2-3 hours to get the mule going, but with a large download list (about 1200 files). I just checked, uptime is currently 1 day 5hrs and the system clock is 24 minutes late.Added: uptime is currently 2 days 8 hours, system clock is 26 minutes late, very little download activity, maybe 0.5GB in last 24hrs Added: uptime is currently 4 days 1hr, system clock is 33 min late

I'll be in Europe until September. After that I'll run a test of the uptime of eMule under Win98 with 512MB, then with 1150MB of available RAM. If the increase in available memory from 512 to 1150MB indicates a significant increase in eMule uptime under Win98, I'll buy your patch. By the way, for getting a quick look at the uptime of a dedicated computer running only eMule, I am using a nice little piece of freeware by Donald Leavitt called Uptime http://home1.gte.net/dgl1/uptime/uptime.html I am not sure a large RAMDISK would help eMule. The critical directory is that of the temporary files, which is huge. I have put the Temp files onto a separate 2nd internal 80 GB HDD. The size of this directory is currently around 60GB. eMule can get around the 127GB HDD limit, it lets you define multiple harddisks for temporary files http://www.emule-project.net/home/perl/hel...mp;topic_id=112 An old dedicated eMule laptop of mine (Inspiron 7500) can have up to 3 internal HDDs, so a max. of 240-360 GB of space for temporary files should be enough for the next couple of years.

Microsoft had a lot of problems with the Arabic version. If I remember right, there are 3 families of Windows 98: Western, Arabic and Chinese. WinXP is superior to Win98 in these areas. Other areas where WinXP applications are preferrable include burning CDs/DVDs (better burn quality); defragmentation of FAT-cum-NTSF disks. Eventually most of my Win98 applications will migrate to WinXP, with one general exception: applications which access the Internet will stay with Win98. Under Win98 a heavily loaded mule (e.g. 1200-1700 files in the download list, max 99 simultaneous connections, max 400 sources, max 5000 sharers in the queue) uses all system resources to the extreme. Running a second application will very often cause the mule under Win98 to crash within a couple of hours, otherwise it runs from 3 to 10 days before crashing. I remember increasing RAM from 256 to 512MB made the mule run days longer under Win98 before crashing (there is a memory leakage problem) and allowed substantial increases in the number of files in the download list and of the max.number of sources, effectively increasing the GBs/day.The mule is running day and night, so using an old laptop which doesn't make any noise seems the best choice. Desktops are just too noisy and too energy-inefficient. This raises the next question: Does anybody have Win98 running on a LAPTOP with 2GB of RAM? Which make and model?

Yes. In a multiboot-system it is essential that the older opsys can function with the newer hardware. Whether Win98 actually can use the additional memory is of secondary importance.

First of all, congratulations to rloew that the patch has become more generic. The real test that it works with international versions of Windows 98 would be if it also works with Arabic Win98. Here a question to rloew: Which Win98 applications or combinations of applications benefit particularly by having 2GB rather than 1GB of RAM? What's the benefit of having 2GB of RAM available? How about some benchmarks? How does eMule on Win98 run under heavy load with 2GB vs 1GB?

Dr Octagon reported about the transmissions by Tiny v2.0.15 to a Polish server http://board.protecus.de/t22085.htm , and recommended Kerio v2.1.5 instead.But Kerio v2.1.5 is the next software version of Tiny v2.0.15A. There are 2 versions of Tiny 2.0.15: an initial one (without the A) released on Oct.12, 2001, 30 days after 9/11, and a final one ("A version") released 10 days later on Oct 22, 2001. Somebody paranoid might hear voices: "You've got 30 days..." In my experience the second-to-the-last version of a piece of software is often the best version, the last version often contains lots of issues/bugs, which nobody cared to resolve anymore. Which versions of Proxomitron and System Safety Monitor can you recommend?

Very well expressed. It was already revealed in 1999 that "special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows" http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/5/5263/1.html People at the Moscow Institute of Technology in Dolgoprudny were saying in 1997 that the raison-d'être of PTS-DOS was that you "cannot have an American operating system in Russian tanks."IE 6.0 was released on Aug.27, 2001. Microsoft was very vulnerable at that time, "The DOJ announced on September 6, 2001 that it was no longer seeking to break up Microsoft and would instead seek a lesser antitrust penalty. On November 2, 2001, [52 days after 9/11] the DOJ reached an agreement with Microsoft to settle the case." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft My suspicion is that the problem of the sluggish deletes covered in the forum under http://www.msfn.org/board/98-FE-98-SP1-98-...fix-t84451.html may have something to do with it, together with the Active Desktop introduced in IE 5.5 SP2. I am currently setting up a fresh Win98 system and have decided to install only IE 5.5 SP1, released on Nov.4, 2000, together with the latest Opera (preferred, from Norway) and FireFox.IE 5.5 is sufficient for wireless cards with WPA encryption, even Adobe Flash Player ActiveX v9.0.115 can be installed with a trick (Adobe's last supported version for IE 5.5 is Flash Player 8). I came across a few rare nasties when using IE 5.5: Adobe's website crashes IE 5.5 when going to http://www.adobe.com/go/EN_US-H-GET-FLASH; CSPAN at http://www.youtube.com/user/CSPAN doesn't show anything, possibly because of some server-side exclusion of IE 5.5, otherwise no major browsing problems with IE 5.5. De facto, however, I have decided to give up IE for the sake of a better working, and a hopefully more secure, Win98. In any case, my principal use of IE was only as one alternative for printing tricky-to-print web pages. And Opera and Firefox will hopefully improve their printing. Thanks for your long and interesting posting. I'll continue with my reply tomorrow.

Very interesting. Under what names are these malware files known? Yes. For this reason I was not convinced of WinME. Kerio 2.1.5 was released after 12 Sept 2001 ("post"-software) and is based on Tiny v2.0.15. Here the translation of the German text quoted in my previous post: "Tiny 2.15 transmits intermittently to a server in Poland" compare: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantle...nce_controversy The only malware infection during the last 9 years on one of my Win98 machines was 4 years ago with the trojan spooner.c, then described by Kaspersky with the short comment "9/11", currently no more description by Kaspersky. SWIFT, for example, representing the 2500 largest banks worldwide, has decided to move by the end of 2009 the data processing of their international transactions away from the US to neutral Switzerland http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/zuerich/ein_...e_1.695602.htmlI like the easy settings for peer-to-peer networks by Tiny 2.0.15 and Kerio 2.1.5, but they are "post"-software.

I used to think this as well, but it's not true. You can hide rootkits with FAT32 from the kernel as well. Which root kits work Ok under Win98?The Kaspersky on-demand scanner detects about 3-10 virii per day in my downloads under Win98, and after having read your posting I was hoping to have caught a rootkit under Win98 With the method indicated in "Detecting Rootkits in Windows 98/ME" http://abuibrahim.castlecops.com/archives/...in_windows.html I checked my HDD (leaving out the /b parameter in the dir statement, because Beyond Compare isn't good at comparing/aligning long & short file names). Great disappointment, no rootkit detected. Did ANYBODY in the Forum ever catch a rootkit under Win98? "Windows 98 rootkits are rare since malware writers like to spend their time coding for OS that will get them the most bang for their buck. Because the Windows 98 design is very different from Windows NT based operating systems, rootkits that run on Windows NT cannot be successfully ported to Windows 98. That ensures some type of protection." http://www.castlecops.com/postx166220-0-15.html posted on Apr 23, 2007 "Mit einem Rootkit kann man u.a. Prozesse verstecken. Das sind dann Prozesse von der Art, wie sie in WinNT/2k/XP benutzt werden. Win98 arbeitet anders. Man muss da nichts verstecken, weil es gar keine solche Prozesse gibt. Außerdem gibt es in Win98 nur den Benutzer Admin und Software hat auch alle Rechte. Win98 hacken ist unter der Würde der meisten Hacker, weil es sich nicht wirksam schützen lässt, sozusagern ist es keine Herausforderung dort einzubrechen." http://www.pcwelt.de/forum/sicherheit-vire...tkit-win98.html posted on 22.12.2005

Windows 98 is a much safer system than WinXP: no vulnerability to root kits, for example. How much of the new malware is Windows98 compatible? The only infection on my Win98 system during the last 10 years was with the trojan spooner.c 4 years ago, quickly detected - because the printer wouldn't work anymore i.e. not enough testing by the malware authors with legacy software and legacy operating systems.

The Advanced Troubleshooting Settings page of the MS System Configuration Utility msconfig.exe is problematic with 2GB of RAM: If you make ANY changes on this page [e.g. about ScanDisk] & then click Apply - Ok: If the entry "Limiting memory to (max.possible:) 999MB" was selected: this will cause a change in System.ini - the previous entry for MaxPhysPage will be remmed out: ;Rem TShoot MaxPhysPage=48000 - a new entry will be put into System.ini, e.g. MaxPhysPage=3E6FF - there is NO notification by the system about the change in available memory, RAM will be reduced to 999MB and a week later you may ask yourself: "Why did the additional 250MB of RAM disappear?" If the entry "Limiting memory to (max.possible:) 999MB" was NOT selected - in System.ini the previous entry for MaxPhysPage=48000 will be deleted by the system - you will not be able to boot into Win98 anymore [until you re-enter under DOS the value of MaxPhysPage in System.ini] LIST OF SOFTWARE WITH ISSUES WHEN 2GB OF MEMORY ARE INSTALLED: Fast Defrag v2.30 [by AMS] cannot use automatic memory cleanup because of 2 err msgs after each cleanup msconfig.exe changes in Advanced Troubleshooting Settings either delete MaxPhysPage entry or replaces it with 999MB, without notification xmsdsk [RAMdisk software] when using the RAMdisk for the swapfile; when running programs from RAMdisk (e.g. games)