joanne342

Hiya Thanks for those last two replies. That's useful information. The reason I'm using SP3 is that it's on the version of the install disk i have. I only use win2k for the internet and I only got it because my mobile broadband said the oldest OS it would work with is 2k so I made a dual boot system. I was very happy using 98 before that. I don't use automatic updates because 3 Mobile Broadband can be flaky at times so if I try to top up the couple of days before my data allowance is due to run out and it doesn't let me do it, then I do the top up after the data allowance has run out and it's charging me £1 a MB (either that or walk to the library and do it) I just don't want automatic updates doing a great big download at the time =) I reformatted and reinstalled windows quite recently so I don't have all the updates on 2k at the moment, but I spend most of my time using 98 anyway.

Thanks again. I've downloaded BHDD31, Ranish Partition Manager and JKDefrag and I'm about to do a backup and install BHDD31.

Thanks dencorso. That's the clearest thing i've read about it. And thanks for pointing me to those links. I've saved all those threads off and i'm in the process of reading them although, as jaclaz predicted, a lot of the details are flying over my head right now.

Thanks for your help

Hello I have a dual boot system with Win98SE and Win2K (SP3). My main hard drive is 60GB, in two partitions, with 40GB for 98, and 20GB for 2K. I also added a 500GB data drive which I got to work by flashing my BIOS (it's a Jetway 830CH motherboard from 2001), enabling LBA, then formatting the data drive within Windows 98 by right clicking on it in the "My Computer" folder. I got Win2K to see the data drive using the EnableBigLba tool from http://www.48bitlba.com/tools.htm. It's connected to the motherboard via IDE. I have been unable to partition it because FDISK wouldn't recognise the drive's capacity correctly and Partition Magic 8 simply refused to work (I forget the exact error message). So it's in one big 500GB partition right now which I'm concerned about because I've heard of data corruption when drives gets fuller than 137GB. Having been through the steps I've been through is that a valid concern? Is there anything else I need to do? Is it vital I make smaller partitions? Maybe with Gdisk? Would it be wiser to connect it via an ATA PCI card rather than the IDE connector on the motherboard? Also I know 98's scandisk and defrag won't work on partitions bigger than 137GB. Do 2K's CHKDSK and defrag have the same limitation? It's a data drive so it doesn't really get fragmented a lot, but it would be nice to have the option to defrag it. And if 2K's defrag is a no, what third party one would you recommend? Many thanks for any advice, Joanne

Thanks so much! I can't believe it's working. The second approach didn't work so I tried the first approach which didn't work either so i opened regedit and navigated to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Explorer and found that, weirdly, there was no value called ShellState there at all, so I created it and typed in that hex string you said and it's working!

The full title was supposed to say "Open dialogue "Arrange Icons" - changing the default order in 98SE" It got curtailed

Hello I'm new to this board. I've had Windows 98 for about ten years or something. I've used 2K, XP and Vista extensively and still prefer 98 to all of them. Anyway, this has happened to me twice but 98 crashed on me because I was trying to put a three minute track through Zero-X BeatCreator. After that, every open dialogue box in every program defaulted to arranging the icons by date. I can right click and arrange alphabetically but the default is by date. At first it annoyed me but then I got to prefer it. I had to reinstall windows and the open dialogue default went back to alphabetical but then a bad BeatCreator crash made the same thing happen again. I've reinstalled windows several times since, over the years, but the open dialogue default thing has never happened again so is there any way to change the default? I've asked on other forums but they always tell me things like how to arrange icons in a folder and how to change the default of that and it doesn't answer the question. Somebody asked the same question here: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/315192.html and probably put it clearer than me and he never got an answer that worked either. I too followed those very clear instructions and it didn't work. So many thanks for an help with this! Thanks Joanne