Sl@y3D for my n@me

are you implying that freeavg is going downhill? Yes. Basically what CoffeeFiend said, plus the fact that with every release, it just seems to get slower. Not what I'm looking for in an antivirus. MSE is fast and already proven. I shall be moving my (very old) laptop to it ASAP, because AVG is just slowing it down. Already installed it on my parents laptop, my new laptop, and my desktop (RIP ). Enjoying it immensely.

Nope. You must run one or the other. Two antivirus apps on the same computer can cause significant problems. If you wish to install Microsoft Security Essentials, you must first uninstall AVG free. Judging from the way AVG seems to be heading lately, I'd probably recommend it.

What? We are in the middle of migrating to 64bit. Why on earth would we need to bump it up to 128bit? Are we going to lose so many years of application support just to give pretty numbers to our processors? I really don't see the need. Just imagine this scenario: Windows 95 was a 16/32bit hybrid OS. It was designed to be compatible with as many older apps designed for its 16bit predecessors as possible, and provide enhancements for apps designed for 95. This marked the start of the 32bit transition. Now imagine if Windows 98 ran on the 64bit Itanium processor (you know, the one that failed completely?) and had to emulate x86 support, while 16bit apps didn't work at all. Does that make sense at all? No. Not only would you lose significant hardware and software compability, you would not gain many advantages over Windows 95. Remember that RAM was in limited supply back then, nobody was anywhere near hitting the 4GB barrier, and processors would just not benefit from the extra bits, and would certainly never benefit from the emulation required. It would just cause a lot of annoyed developers, users, and see a lot of people switching to Macs. But oh well, it's only a silly report. And if AMD steal the show again with AMD128, I will also be a happy customer.

Not sure about the top issue, but the bottom issue I may have an idea about. The latest officially released NVIDIA drivers for 9x, 81.XX, did not have widescreen support. I'm guessing your widescreen monitor is stretching the image across the screen, creating artifacts (think of it like resizing an image in Paint, it loses detail). There are drivers with widescreen support available, and less buggy drivers at that. http://www.msfn.org/board/nvidia-drivers-82-69-t97140.html

For continued support (security fixes and the like) after July 13th 2010, you will require SP3. Also, there isn't too much reason not to install SP3, especially since you haven't had Windows for long and haven't had much chance to do anything with it (the most common reason not to upgrade to SP3 is that Windows can break with SP upgrades if you have messed with it too much). You are all set for Service Pack 3. It'll probably speed up your Windows install just a tiny bit, but it certainly won't cause any problems. Upgrade and enjoy.

I'm afraid you are rather alone in loving IE6. Without wanting to knock your choice of browser (it's up to you, entirely), I'd just like to point out some flaws with your points. With the fact that you're posting in the Windows XP forums while your OS says 98SE, I might as well point out IE6's problems on both platforms. First of all, while it may appear to load fast ("lightweight"), this is down to the fact that IE is integrated into your OS. It is used for Windows Explorer, and even the desktop in parts. Its components are used by a variety of applications, some of them may ship with Windows, and some of them may not. Effectively, it has already loaded. This isn't an IE criticism, just want to make you aware of the facts. But that point is relevant to this one. With many benchmarks, IE6 has been proven to be slower out of Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome, IE8, whatever other browser you have. Surprising, isn't it? You would expect that as browsers evolve, they would get slower and slower. Welcome to the new age of browsers, it's all about how fast you can load a page lately. Going into 98SE territory, IE6 drains resources like... well, a resource vampire, if you will. The more you use IE6 on 98SE, the more unstable it gets, until you have to reboot. Other browsers do not seem to have this problem as much, many 98 users report that they can browse all day and leave their computers on for weeks without rebooting by using a browser that isn't IE6. Now I'll give the web developers point of view. It's a pain in the a**. I'll explain why. When you make a web page, you make it to conform to a set of standards, like HTML 4.01, XHTML, CSS of whatever version, and so on. Internet Explorer 6 shipped in 2001, the end of the browser wars between Netscape and Microsoft. While IE6 was a nice improvement over IE5.5, it still implemented (or just didn't implement) parts of the various standards incorrectly. It was still buggy, security holes were and are still all over it. Still, back to the standards point, web developers today effectively have to make two sites, one for most browsers, and one for IE6 (well, more that they make hacks for IE6, which still takes them a lot of time). It is impractical for sites to continue doing this. The web is moving on, IE6 has held it back long enough, uh, please upgrade today! You can sort of see why people really do not like IE6. Now, to your question, no, it really isn't possible to patch IE6 to make it more compatible with web standards. The only way I can think of doing this is to replace some files with IE7/8 files. But then, you'd have it asking you for other IE7/8 files, and by the time you'd finished, you would either have messed up Windows, or installed IE7/8. Well, you're entitled to stay with the browser of your choice, don't get me wrong. It's just that many people would LOVE to see you using something else...

It's brand new because the old one was also on the way out, it was shutting down my PC after 15 minutes had elapsed. Although I do have the old one still. Thanks for the advice. I'll try to pick one of those meters up from somewhere, but now that I have a significantly higher amount of money to spend, I am sort of leaning towards just getting a new PSU that works well. At the risk of hijacking my own thread, could I ask for what qualities I should be looking for in a PSU if I should buy one? Or what PSUs in particular are decent?

Dying power supply would p*** me off very much, as the power supply is brand new. The thought crossed my mind though. That'll teach me to buy cheap power supplies... I'm a bit hesitant to touch my graphics card though. They're very fragile, aren't they? I don't think the problem is with the graphics card though, since I would have thought those would break a little more slowly (artifacts in game and the like). Oh well, I may have to turn this thread into "where can I get a decent, reasonably priced power supply?" if this is the problem.

Just today, my PC has suddenly decided to give up the ghost. In fact, I was using this PC earlier today, and shut it down just fine. Now it refuses to start at all. When I press the power button, I hear the hard drives spinning up, and the CD drive shows some activity and is fully responsive to the eject button. The HDD activity light shows up for about 30 or so seconds, maybe less, and then goes off. The power light does not go on and there is no activity on the screen. I can hear the graphics card fan still whirring. When I hit the reset button, it only makes the CD drive flash (this is what normally happens when I reboot) and the HDD activity light goes up for another 30 seconds. If I hold the power button for 5 seconds, the system reboots as above, and after that the reset and power buttons are completely unresponsive. Nothing seems to smell of burning. I've left the system in this state for around 15 minutes now and it's not doing anything. If there is any more information I can provide, let me know. Thanks.

The 77.72 drivers are more reliable than the latest official ones. Those drivers introduced a ton of lovely bugs for 98 users that were not present in 77.72.

I have to disagree with you. They look more like the animation you get when you are connecting to a wireless network, which comes straight from Longhorn. The XP icons have more of a cartoony style than these. Maybe I'm being picky, but I would find this just as alien as that wireless animation.

I like the icons, but I don't believe that they fit into xpize. They don't really look like any of the xp icons, they just look a bit more HD than the old ones.

I'd strongly recommend not using your 98 machine as a web server. A lot of 98s security came from the fact that it didn't open a lot of ports. You run the risk of any hacker being able to do pretty much anything to your PC. If you want to go ahead, you do so at your own risk. At the very least, make sure you have all the MS security updates installed, and for a bit more protection, install the unofficial ones lying around these forums. Although if it's just a LAN you're talking about (but it doesn't sound like you are) and nothing from the internet will access your PC, then yeah, go ahead I guess.

There wasn't a Server edition, that job was left to NT at the time. 98 was workstation, and workstation only. Although, you might be able to get Apache to run on it.

You must be new to the 9x forums. I must admit, I also enjoy reading these long discussions on various subjects on here. Well, except for the ones that turn into NT vs 9x wars. there's a lot of great content on these forums.

In practice, I average around 100kb/s. Combination of oversubscribed area and a bad router, since it tends to get worse in the night, speedtest drops as low as 5mbit (or lower) and downloads crawl.

This is wrong. We have agreed on standards for a reason. We have, and as I've just noted, they can be abused by web developers as they wish.

I wouldn't recommend going out and buying a copy of Vista. Your money could be more wisely spent. You'll not see any additional performance out of Vista, it will stay about the same. Plus, Windows 7 will be out in just over a month. I don't really think there are any DX10 games of interest either. If you already have a copy of Vista, I suppose you could upgrade to it. I'm not a Vista fan personally, but it won't do you any harm. Games will look and feel the same on xp and Vista.

I don't really think this argument is going anywhere. I don't actually know what the argument is about fully. Yes, you can write a web page in HTML only, or use CSS, either in large amounts or in small amounts. How both codes are used (and abused) is up to the web developers, whether the W3C like it or not.

Check his profile, it appears to be XP Professional. If this is the case, make sure you are running Service Pack 3. This can speed things up. I agree with the above statement. Celerons are best for more low-end activities rather than gaming. You'd be better with a new processor. A no brand PSU at 400w? To be honest, I think that might need replacing. I just don't trust that kind of hardware. It probably won't speed up your games, but chances are it'll be more efficient and increase the lifespan of your PC. That isn't too relevant though, so yeah.

I'd suggest trying the old 77.72 drivers instead. A lot of folks seem to report more success with those drivers. Alternatively, you might want to try the 82.69 drivers located at: http://www.msfn.org/board/nvidia-drivers-82-69-t97140.html On the other hand, the FX series is well known for its significant problems regarding performance. You might have to put up with it, if these drivers don't fix it.

Ah, the infamous FX series. What drivers are you using? Version, that is.

Are we talking about the ever ominous cloud now? You know, I'm contemplating getting my hands on my parents PC when they get their laptop. It's a potential candidate for full Windows 98 compatibility. Sometimes I miss the ease of use, launching apps near instantly, getting stuff done, the familiarity and the reliability. I also have a copy of Office 2000 lying around, which is more than perfect for all my typing needs. It would make a perfect work machine. Not to mention all the addons posted on these forums, particularly Tihiy's efforts to make 98 even more reliable. I don't know why I'd pick it over xp (I don't for most tasks), I just find it easier to work with for some reason. I love it! I also don't see the appeal of some kind of centralised computer, like a bunch of dumb terminals connected to Microsoft. How would you run your apps? What about portability, like using your dumb laptop in a place without a wireless network? Unless you enjoy 3G internet... If such a thing happens, it would need the full support of both Microsoft and Apple. If one did it, users would flock to the other, even in Microsoft's case, because they wouldn't have application compatibility to back them up. If they did co-operate, then yes, it would be forced upon all but the Linux community. But dumb terminals aren't going to sell well, so OEMs would back out. Where would that lead? Probably to a lot of NT5.x/6.x users, and probably a few 9x users, all running on custom built or older PCs. 9x would indeed be golden in this era, as it has no activation to worry about, tons of community support, etc etc. There's my little rant, enjoy.

Looks like a nasty case of brain damage to me. Start yourself up in life support mode and disable the left side of your brain. If you aren't crashing after that, we can safely assume the problem is epilepsy-related, especially if memory loss occurs. If not, try the other side of the brain. A healthy dose of Windows NT should cure it too.

My WG111T brings up the same error, if I download at high speeds with DownThemAll! or utorrent. The drivers for that are abominable, so I'm willing to bet it's down to drivers. This doesn't occur under Vista/7 with the same XP drivers though.