cannie

Even with its limits, Windows 98 SE keeps being a solution for many of us old users who don't have any new needs. Microsoft keeps helping us by maintaining its old web pages, even when there are no updates. It is great on the part of Microsoft: several hardware providers have withdrawn their drivers download pages to force users to throw away their existing machines. But there are others who keep supplying not only the old drivers but even new compatible ones. Somewhere I've read that people may even contract the maintenance of Windows 98 SE with Microsoft if they have money enough to pay for an expensive and special contract. I'm sure there is people who may afford it and in fact does it, because the computer is something very personal and, even when Windows 98 SE is oldfashioned and poor in dealing with hardware resources, if you have used it for many years, you know it by heart and you don't have special needs it is great for you to keep using it instead of learning any new tricks. Well, I think that for as long as there is a demand for something there will be also an offer, even when Windows 98 SE users in this moment are less than 1% of total. In fact until now you can find almost anything one way or another, even when in many cases prices are higher than that of not compatible spare parts.

Both IE and Firefox, and also Opera and Maxthon 2.1 work perfect. Thank you!

You're welcome. I've found a better site - with (UK) prices. http://pctradestore.com/code/ui/main/produ...&subcatid=0 3rd from the bottom: " 3.5" Internal IDE to IDE Mobile Hard drive Rack Caddy with 2 Fans and Key Lock". As you can see these can be sourced quite cheaply now, as USB-caddies have become more fashionable. My only negative criticism of these devices is that they are often fitted with cheap Chinese fans, and as the lubricant dries out they start to vibrate. I've tried re-lubing the fans but eventually settled for disconnecting them completely, and removing the HDD tray top instead to prevent heat build-up. Good luck. Thank you very much SAE140! Greetings.

Hi SAE 140! I didn't understand you. This could be a good solution, I'll try to find the parts. Thank you!

@'SAE140' Could you not use a Hard Drive Caddy ? I have two caddies and two external HD, but they connect using USB2, and what I would like to know is the way to keep out of the box the main drive, if ever exists a way to do it. In fact I've never seen it until now. Concerning viruses, I never had such a virus invasion. In fact I've never been affected by any virus at all for years. In any case, I have a .rar file of C:\Windows on a CD and when anything goes wrong I boot D:\Windows, format C: and rebuild the whole C:\Windows from scratch in less than 2 minutes. All other folders (Program Files and My Documents) are in other drives, so I never loose any information at all.

IMO one of the worst enemies of any computer user is that illness called "updatitis". You don't need to fix anything which works correctly. You need to search a solution when you get into a real problem. So there's no need to patch anything but in the case that it goes wrong. Taking this into account, the possibility of being infected by any virus nowadays is almost so small in Windows 98 as in Linux, because users are only about 1% of the total and it doesn't pay to create viruses for them. On the opposite side, I've had a repeated experience of the message "kernelnt.dll not found", due to XP viruses which tried to infect Windows 98. In these cases the OS acted as an antivirus. This is one of the main reasons why I keep using Windows 98 instead of XP, which I also have installed on doubleboot.

The only problem in this is that you must open the box to unplug/plug every new HD. I wonder if there is any procedure to keep the master HD out of the box while using it, so that the change may be done easily, or if it is possible to use any existing device to switch from outside the connection of two main HD into the motherboard, as it happens in many other fields, i.e. in Sat-tv to switch between external parabole antennas.

Just the oposite happens against 98 users, as seen in many threads in this same forum. Incredible but certain: 98 users are the enemy for many people. It seems you must say WOW! or shut up. Why? Are they Ms shareholders?

I've checked out the W3C stats every month against the precedent since october 2007 and this is the first time that the permanent Vista-Mac upwards tendency is reversed, and also the first time that happens the opposite for the permanent downwards tendency of all other OS. ¿ ?

You may see it here, comparing the numbers given for October against the ones for September: http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php? Even the use of Windows 98 has increased during the last month. The descent has been in Vista and Mac. ¿ ?

No sarcasms, please. 9x people have the right to enjoy it. What damage are they doing to you or to mankind? Many of them know perfectly well not only 9x but all present OS, and use 9x for double booting, to run older programs, or simply to play with it because of its simplicity. Please live and let live.

Have you ever thought that in most of the official updates and upgrades the commercial interests of MS are logically the first, being your real needs the last? They fill your computer with a lot of programs whose main end is to keep you in their hands. Here we only try to help each other the best that we can. Until now I have not found an exception. I have found solutions in this forum which MS would never have delivered to me.

I didn't know it Maybe we could learn many things by looking back when talking about Windows 98. Thank you very much Dude111.

Windows 98 and its precedents 9x were designed only for individual users or to work in common: It was never a network OS, because in these years NT was the OS specially designed for networks. The internet was not an essential part of the OS, but one more of the apps that you might run. For that very reason it is transparent, simple, small and easy to manage. In that time it meant something like now Linux, when compared with Windows NT. If you used it every day having a small computing knowledge, in a short time you learnt the purpose of almost every program and every driver. This way you got caught by it: I remember the passion and the illusion I had trying new ways for doing things, i.e. cloning the OS into several drives to boot indistinctively any of them, and even creating my own personalized programs and drivers. Most things were learned by experience and common sense, taking into account that there are no secret files, no hidden parts and no backdoors at all. Now I keep using it every day almost for all purposes, and it is my best friend to keep healthy and restore from scratch XP from a .rar file without reinstalling, using double boot.

Since long ago, to keep my regisytry clean of unuseful keys I run at start the following "Clean.reg": REGEDIT4 [-HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MenuOrder] [-HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices] [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Advanced INF Setup] [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Last Update] [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\Check Drive\LastSurfaceAnalysis] [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\Check Drive\LastCheck] [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\LastCheck] [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\LastOptimize] [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\checkbadapps] [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\CheckBadApps400] [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\AppPatches] [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\CLASSES\AppID\{4EEDE5C9-2CAD-11D2-9AD4-080009ED1D06}] [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\CLASSES\TypeLib\{4EEDE5C8-2CAD-11D2-9AD4-080009ED1D06}\1.0\0\win32] [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\CLASSES\CLSID\{4EEDE5D8-2CAD-11D2-9AD4-080009ED1D06}\LocalServer32] [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\CLASSES\CLSID\{4EEDE5D6-2CAD-11D2-9AD4-080009ED1D06}\LocalServer32] To make it work at every start you must copy/paste into a text file, call it Clean.reg and put it into the C:\Windows folder, and afterwards copy/paste into a text file and click on the following install.reg: REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] "Clean"="regedit /s C:\\Windows\\Clean.reg" As I said before, it is very convenient to keep always saved system.dat, user.dat, system ini and win.ini in a folder of your own before any changes in the registry, so that you may restore them using DOS in case of need. After an extensive clean it is very convenient to compress the registry. I use Registry Compressor Pro. I prefer the older versions made when Windows 98 was the most extended single user OS. HTH

IMO Opera is the fastest and Firefox 2 the best. In any case, even when using the same HTML rendering engine, Maxthon 1.6 is useful instead of the old IE6. Taking into account that we are using Windows 98 the probability of viruses is considerably reduced. I've got twice the message "kernelnt.dll not found" and an unactive virus hanged into the Windows folder: the old OS had worked as an antivirus. This is one of the main reasons why I doubleboot. HTH

Any more ideas anyone ?

More about registry cleaning: This Easy Cleaner is also excellent for this and other purposes: http://www.download.com/ToniArts-EasyClean...4-10529179.html Touching Registry is very dangerous! Don't change anything unless you know totally well what you are doing. Better leave this task to these programs or other like Registry Repair, Ole Clean or Registry Mechanic (all are easy to find in the internet). For additional security you may save system.dat, user.dat, system ini and win.ini in a folder of your own, so that you may restore them to C:\Windows in case of need using DOS and xcopy. This is more secure than trusting in the regedit system provided by Microsoft, because the OS never touchs your recovery files, you renew them only when you are sure that the system is working OK, and you use a transparent way to restore from scratch your essential registry files: a 100% secure copy and a 100% clear program to restore them. HTH

Try this freeware Registry Repair: http://www.glarysoft.com/rr.html?tag=download

I've learnt a lot. Well, taking into account your experiences I'll keep using FAT32 whenever possible, and if I really need NTFS at any moment now I know how to do it in a safe way. Thank you very much, Multibooter and herbalist!

In this case you only have to open the explorer, go to C:\Windows >Start Menu and delete all duplicated links.

You may use EasyCleaner, freeware, to examine and delete the incorrect startup entries: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download414.html HTH

For doublebooting in a single HD I always used until now FAT32. What if you use NTFS on the main partition for XP only, leaving FAT32 for the Win98 logical units of the extended partition on the same HD? Any of you has done it before? It would be good to know it to avoid loosing time and effort if the results are bad. Thanks.

Have you tried switching the active main partition consecutively from one disk to the other using PARTITION MANAGER?

Well, the upgrade from Windows 98 SE to XP has been in fact a goldriver for many asian and not asian people...