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Caution : MDIE6CU.EXE (v3.4) contains version 6.00.2800.1599 (xpsp2.040919-1003) of 'mlang.dll', which exhibits the same problems reported for version 6.0.2600.0 : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318256 The last version of 'mlang.dll' which seems okay is 6.00.2800.1106. Joe. PS. The broken version of 'mlang.dll' seems to come from Q886677, the okay version comes from IE 6.0 SP1, specifically : http://download.microsoft.com/download/ie6sp1/finrel/6_sp1/W98NT42KMeXP/EN-US/IE_S3.CAB

Charles, I'm not sure why you say only 'spool32.exe' can be displayed. Either it is or it isn't. As to whether this is what gets invoked on printing, that will depend on what printer driver is installed. In my case, 'cpc10q.exe' (Canon PageComposer Queue Manager) seems to be used instead of 'spool32.exe', due to the printer driver I'm using. In any case, I've checked the "print preview" function and this works for me, regardless of whether or not I've disabled KernelEx compatibility mode for 'cpc10q.exe'. In other words, even when printing via KernelEx-enabled applications was broken, the "print preview" function would have worked (although I hadn't previously tried it, since it would have been pointless). So my situation was completely opposite to yours. For you, the "print preview" function is broken, yet printing itself works. Is this also the case for non-KernelEx-enabled applications? Joe.

Firstly, does the 'notepad' compatibility-mode trick show what gets invoked (in 'wintop') when you print? If so, try targeting that. If nothing is shown, then an alternative tool to 'wintop' may be required. Since the problem you have is with "print preview", try the 'notepad' compatibility-mode trick using "print preview" (aka. "page setup") instead of "print". For me, the problem was that none of my KernelEx-enhanced applications (Open Office 3.X, Acrobat Reader 7.09, Opera 11.XX) would print, now they do. Joe.

Hi Xeno, Actually, I've been using 11.50 for the past few days, works fine. The installer package had KernelEx compatibility mode for XP already there, but it just silently exited. So I changed this to W2k instead, tried again, then all went smoothly. The only problem so far is some parts of some eBay pages don't render usefully when using the "fit to width" option, but that's likely an Opera issue. Joe.

After installing Opera 11.11, I also tried printing. The printer driver pop-up appeared (BTW, I use a network printer), but after clicking "OK", no actual printing occurred. Then after a reboot (more on this later), I tried printing from Notepad and Wordpad, with and without various KernelEx compatibility modes. Basically, if I use any NT mode (I tried NT 4.0 SP6, 2000 SP4 and XP SP2), the same occurs as for Opera (except that for Notepad, the driver pop-up window only flashes briefly, which is normal behaviour). Furthermore, after resetting Notepad and/or Wordpad to KernelEx default mode, I must either log-off/log-on or reboot before printing will work again. So, this problem is not specific to Opera. Joe. Well, I've managed to fix my printing problems with KernelEx (4.5.1), here's how ... Background : I'm using a networked printer, Canon model iR-ADV-C5045. This has no W9X drivers available, however, the "Canon iR C3220 PCL5c" W9X drivers do just fine. (Edit : Actually, to install as a network printer, I first had to install this as a phantom local printer, then edit the properties to use the network details. This work-around, which is unrelated to KernelEx, avoids a Spool32 crash.) 1. Install the 'wintop' utility from 'W95KRNLTOYS.EXE'. 2. Configure 'notepad.exe' for KernelEx W2kSP4 compatibility mode. 3. Start the 'wintop' utility. 4. Start 'notepad', type some random junk, then try to print. 5. See what program shows up in 'wintop' after 'notepad.exe' (eg. 'cpc10q.exe'). 6. Set the KernelEx compatibility mode for the above to "disabled". 7. Close all apps, log-off or reboot. 8. Optionally, reconfigure 'notepad.exe' back to KernelEx default mode. HTH Joe.

OK, since this isn't a KernelEx issue, I'm creating a new thread here ... Note, to download the FineSSE application, see : VLC 1.1.9 has an internal error handler that often quietly terminates the app when an illegal instruction is encountered. It reports the error as "handled" rather than passing it to the system default handler for debugging. To enable FineSSE to have the first chance to handle the errors, launch VLC by dropping it onto FineSSE. Or do as I did and modify the VLC desktop shortcut target to be: "C:\finesse.exe" -v "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" Answer "No" if asked to send a bug report. I have KernelEx 4.5.1 installed. VLC 1.1.9 will launch on my VIA C3 but opens off-screen. After moving it back on-screen (every time!), the menus don't open. I'll try VLC 1.1.10 soon. -jumper Thanks, jumper. Well, this looked like a good thing to try, so I did (KernelEx 4.5.1, VLC 1.1.9, FineSSE 27a). However, I encountered the same problems you did. VLC would open off-screen (so I used the context menu from the taskbar to maximize it), the menus didn't open, and it didn't seem to initialize its font cache. Yet running VLC directly produced none of the above problems. Everything worked just fine, until a media file (audio or video) was actually opened. Then the playback window would pop up briefly, before it and the initial VLC window silently closed, as previously described. So there seems to be something wrong with how FineSSE loads the VLC application in this way. OTOH, with the 'win.ini' way of using FineSSE, the exception handling is apparently internal to VLC ... Joe.

You are right. For my part, I have tried with 4 MB for USER & GDI and doesn't see a real difference. So, Tihiy if you are here what would you recommend currently for those tricks? (with last builds of RP & KernelEx already installed). Well, if you use RP, this defaults to 4MB for the GDI heap, so setting this explicitly would make no difference. As for myself, I should mention that I'm running KernelEx but not RP. Since RP has an inbuilt version of the "GDI Heap Extender", the GDI heap requirements would be lower than for a system without RP (such as mine). I should also mention that 8MB was the one and only setting I've tried, it is possible that a 4MB setting would also be sufficient to exhibit markedly improved stability. Joe.

Thanks for the heads-up about that selectors thing, even if I don't quite know what it means. However, Tihiy didn't specifically say that setting the heap limit above 4M would cause a problem, simply that RP10 would default to 4M and that setting too high a limit may deplete selectors. How high a limit would cause problems is not specified, although we can infer that it is somewhere above 4M. Anyway, I'm still learning these old tricks and simply report my finding, that setting the limit to 8M (on two machines now) has made a noticeable improvement to stability. Joe.

Well, there's a good chance the reason is that this device originally had drivers for both W9X and WNT (and no, ME will not work any better for you than 98). So try to find an older edition of the drivers, before they deleted the W9X support (I've done that previously for a similar Ralink card). Then try dropping the older INF files into the current driver file set and see if it can install and work properly (you may need to first nuke all traces of the newer INF files, and corresponding PNF files, if any, from your \W\INF and \W\INF\OTHER directories). If that doesn't work (newer DLL, VXD or SYS files are unsuitable, or 9X-specific files are missing), just go with the original, older driver file set. Joe.

The IE dependency might be due to system file 'shlwapi.dll', which IE installs/updates (a suggestion from Den). Joe.

Well, none of the GDI Heap Extender links work anymore, including the recommended Beta 1, however, I've tried the above 'win.ini' setting (set to 8192) and it's improved stability markedly, particularly, Shutdown no longer hangs. Joe.

Any program running under KernelEx compatibility mode, even say 'notepad', fails to print on my system. As for the features you seek, have you tried IrfanView? Runs on W9X natively (except for the OCR plug-in, which needs KernelEx). Joe.

Thanks, Den. Well, my installed version of 'shlwapi.dll' is 5.00.3314.2100, which is consistent with the version numbering for IE 5.01SP2. SCR579X seemed to have installed fine with this, however, if I do encounter Javascript problems, I'll try extracting the IE 5.5 version and seeing if that makes any difference. BTW, that link was an interesting "can of worms"! It's a shame, I can't help but feel we are missing some potentially valuable members and are poorer as a result. (The sudden disapperance of LLXX is one example that comes to mind.) Joe.

Any idea what is this requirement for IE 5.5 or higher? I've just installed with IE5.01SP2 and everything seems normal. (What's the best way to test?) Joe.

All Flash Player versions 10.1.* and 10.2.* are OK for me using KernelEx 4.5.1 (even on a P2, with the help of P3CPU.VXD and FineSSE27a.exe). However versions 10.3.* are no good. Furthermore, when you try downloading the earlier 10 series versions from FileHippo, you actually get 10.3.whatever instead, so beware! Joe.

Well, I was kinda wrong about being wrong ... the following page shows that at least versions 9.0.6.* supported RAR decompression (the page relates to a security fix for the decompression engine) : http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH102208 Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any publicly available upgrade paths from a version 9.0.X.* to a version 9.0.Y.* (which might even fix the broken real-time/on-access/auto-protection with current virus definitions) Joe.

KernelEx works by modifying 'kernel32.dll' so as to expand its symbol resolve engine via the KernelEx core. So having this file change from the "known good" version is not necessarily indicating a problem. Copy your "known good" version of 'kernel32.dll' to your 'c:\windows\sysbckup' directory, so that KernelEx can uninstall correctly if required. Do try removing CleanSweep, this might have compatibility issues. Also remember that "Safe Mode" can help when you have these sorts of start-up issues. Finally, do download the trial edition of Avast 4.8 Professional (the home edition is no longer available), also the updated virus definition files, and check your system out! There is a menu option to do a boot-time scan, which you should do, to get those nasties that load early. BTW, I've found that running the Unicows installation package and pointing it to 'c:\windows\system' works properly, whereas copying its contents there manually, doesn't (YMMV?). Joe.

Just found there's a little security update to the W98 Resouce Kit : ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/reskit/win98/ Also, for those wishing to download the RK (etc.), the 'wget' (or 'wget_w32') utility works a treat, recursive syntax is : wget -r ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Services/TechNet/samples/PS/Win98/Reskit/ (start near the root directory of your local drive, to limit the overall directory depth created) Joe. PS. The version of 'reg.exe' that comes with ResKit 98 is 1.0.3. If you need version 2.* of 'reg.exe' (the command options are significantly changed), you can get version 2.0.0 (for W2000, but runs on W98, at least with KernelEx installed) from : http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/0/C/20C1B0F7-B803-4BAB-BA2F-27DDCADAD68E/sp4supporttools.exe (open with 7-Zip to get 'support.cab', then extract 'reg.exe' from that).

VLC 1.1.9 works great on my P3. However on my P2, it crashes right after opening any media file. Joe.

Brilliant! I'll try this tonight! BTW, not directly related to this thread - can anyone confirm whether versions 1.1.* of VLC (using KernelEx, of course) can work on a P2, or do these require P3/P4 instructions? In any case, I'll try version 1.1.9 again using the latest FineSSE. Joe. Update: OK, I've installed FineSSE27a on my P2 machine and all is well. The first thing I tried was VLC 1.1.9, but again, this didn't work (I did find a reference in the VLC forums, to versions 1.1.* not working on P2 machines, which confirmed my suspicions about this). I then tried the following clip : www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJt0LJZG2k As before, Flash Player version 10.2 displayed many more frames on the P2 that did version 10.1. Next I tried our reference clip : www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdHOm256N4&feature=related Again, despite the improved video performance of FP 10.2, Kate's lovely voice unfortunately suffered from the choppy audio. So if it's a music clip you want to see/hear, you're better off (on lowly hardware) to use FP 10.1. I did persit with more testing of FP 10.2, listening to some of Kate's more recent songs (eg. How to be Invisible, King of the Mountain, Pi, Joanni, etc). I found that if I paused the clip until it was fully buffered, often this would result in nice audio (I presume the TCP/IP stack consumes a good portion of the CPU resources). Similarly, I found a version of "King of the Mountain" that had the official video, and another version that just had a still of the "Aerial" album cover. There was a huge difference in the choppiness of the audio between the two, so clearly the video decoding load is also a big factor in the CPU resources required.

Hmmm ... Is that why I can't seem to get Java working for Opera 11.11 (with KernelEx 4.5.1)? I've JRE 1.5 update 22 installed, and this is confirmed using web page http://javatester.org/version.html with both IE and Bon Echo (FireFox), but not Opera. Is there any work-around to get Java working for Opera 11.11? Joe. PS. This questions really belongs in thread if not for the fact that the above information concerning Opera and Java is found here, in this thread ...

There are bugs in IO.SYS that, for some combination of partitions, cause CHS addressing of LBA partitions, with wrap-around issues and corruption. Since you haven't described your partitioning details, it's not possible to say if this is/was a factor. For details, see : There are also bugs in earlier versions of 'fdisk'. In any case, I'd trust the 'fdisk' utility from FreeDOS over that from MS (even the updated version). Finally, knowing nothing about Boot-US, I can only say that 'grub4dos' would be my choice to do multi-booting, it's very flexible and AFAIK, more capable than 'grub' (which I've no experience with). Otherwise, in the "native" scheme of things, you need to mark the partition table to indicate which partition is the boot partition (ie. what O/S you wish to boot). Well, I don't know if that explains things or helps, however, I'm running late ... Joe. PS. If you chose to install a W9x on a drive/partition other that C:, a small portion of the installation will be located on C: anyway (default C:\WINDOWS). This is probably due to the 'WinBootDir and 'HostWinBootDrv' settings created in file C:\MSDOS.SYS (which as you should know, is a hidden text file, not a BDOS binary). To have multiple W9x installations, without contending C:\WINDOWS directories, choose alternative directory names, such as "WIN95" and "WIN98". But I'm not sure if you boot from a drive other than C:, whether W9x will look for the MSDOS.SYS file on that drive or always on drive C:.

Well, I have installed 10.2.161.23_Beta_2 on my P3 and it's working fine, however, I haven't tried it on my P2 (with P3CPU.vxd and FineSSE23.exe) as yet. Joe PS. Well, that was interesting. I've just installed 10.2.161.23_Beta_2 on my P2 and again, the earlier sync problems are no longer evident. However, this version seems to give much higher priority to video content that version 10.1.82.76, so that there are many more still frames displayed when the CPU load is excessive, but at the expense of the audio, which is often somewhat choppy (for testing, I use the Kate Bush "Army Dreamers" clip URL given some time ago by Larry).

Well, I can confirm that INF files in W95 through W98ME are limited to 64K. On W2K onward (not sure about NT4), they are not. I don't know anything specific about INI files, but see no reason why these would have a different limit. As regards the Notepad limitation, this may or may not be related (anyway, it always asks to use Wordpad for files exceeding 64K). Joe.

Ummm ... Why are we talking about Version 12 of the 'mtppk'? I thought the topic here was "Last Versions of Software for Windows 98SE" So the relevant version is 11, and also 10, for the 'wmdmcmd.exe' and 'readme_wmdmcmd.txt' bits (however, a later 'wmdmcmd.exe' is available in ''p4sdevicekit.exe'). Joe.