fortcollins

Note a thread in the Zoom Player group, "Do Post DX9 Video Cards Provide Any Advantages for Viewing Images and Videos?" http://forum.inmatrix.com/index.php?showtopic=9393 where one responder suggests that for non-game, picture and video viewing, the benefits of higher level video cards may be marginal.

The NT Windows systems include additional commands, using the tilde symbol, in the batch file language for setting environment variables to parts of a file path string, such as the name and the file extension. See http://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid68_gci1294869,00.html?int=off&Offer=WCMcplb18 under "variable substitution." See also http://www.rgagnon.com/gp/gp-0008.html It would seem that to someone knowledgeable it would be easy to write a console mode program to provide identical functionality by taking these strings as arguments and parsing them and setting the corresponding environment variable from them. I looked in the shareware sites and came up with zip. I doubted that I had hit the right keywords. I am at a loss to know what to call this functionality. Does anyone know of any such programs?

Does anyone have any recommendations for text to speech programs? There seem to be a lot of them with no apparent winners. The speech quality of most leaves me unimpressed I am currently using Monologue '97. I got a copy for $5 at the computer show. It doesn't display the reading position in text you can't quickly adjust the playback speed. After hearing some more recent programs, however, I would rate the speech quality of this 13-year old program as "excellent." The program and developer, First Byte, seems to have disappeared without a trace. I found a good program speech qualitywise "sayz me" http://www.datafurnace.net.au/sayzme/ that too disappeared, not complete at version 0.51. Is there some reason why good quality speech to text programs seem to disappear?

I tried to send a message to the site administrator through the contact us form. I could never get through. Problem 1. The picture codes. It took me four attempts at the pictures with the codes to get one through. One I know I entered what it looked like but the page said it was wrong. Two of them I had no idea of what some of the letters were, that after opening the image in a image editor and zooming it. Problem 2. After I got through problem 1 I got a message back saying my email address was not a valid email server. It was a very valid email address at which I get messages daily.

I had to replace a hard drive and discovered that several hundred files on my backup had the archive attribute on. This undid my incremental back up to floppies system. [Note: I am now down 2 out of 3 "refurbished" Maxtor hard drives.] I tried using the DOS attrib command and could never get the /s subdirectories switch to work. I always got path not found. All I found with Google were more people with the same problem. I found a program attr at http://smithii.com/attr attribute enhancement that had some more options. I tried it, and the subdirectory function worked and cleared up all the archive bits. You have to read the program notes because the switchs on it follow a slightly different format. This program merits noting in tip listings.

The forum sticky topic at http://www.msfn.org/board/last-versions-so...se-t105936.html says the last Java run time environment version was 5 update 22 with a note that 1 6 0 7 actually works. http://www.mdgx.com/add says the same. Neither reference said anything about Java SE, the development program for producing Java applications. Inferentially, per Sun, Win 98 Java SE support also stopped with Version 6, cf. http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/system-configurations.html (Win 98 included) and http://java.sun.com/javase/6/webnotes/inst...igurations.html (Win 98 not included) Do any of the version 6 Java SE updates work on Win 98? Note: I tried Java SE 6 update 7. It didn't install. Note: According to the MDGx note, to install 6 update 7 you have to run the msi file from the temporary directory. I tried that, and all I got was another .msi file in the temp directory. Running the update 7 install normally seemed to work.

I wanted to try making some comparison snapshots of my registry before and after some installs and tried Norton Registry Tracker, which I had as part of the Norton Utility Package. I have tried to use it in the past, and it didn't work. Today I opened the program, and immediately it locked up my system with a message saying a snapshot was in progress. There was no disk activity and the system just sat there. Looking for postings, I found none reflecting problems with it. Has anyone got it to work? Anyone have any idea of how to get around the lock up on start up?

It would be helpful if you could upload it. The file seems to have otherwise disappeared.

Has anyone found any desktop ebook reader programs that work on Windows 98?s

What is a "native USB driver," as opposed to any other kind of USB driver?

Opera 10 continues to be an exercise in frustration with no end in sight. See post above # 13 above. First the problem was Opera 10 going to 100 % cpu utilization after 10-15 minutes of browsing. Turning the disk cache off bypassed the problem. I then tried 10.10 snapshots and discovered a problem with Opera every five or so minutes masking out keyboard and mouse interrupts for 30 seconds or so. I haven't yet seen the 100 % cpu problem. Today I tried 10.10 beta build 1833 and listened to an audio news program with the Quick Time plugin and discovered that Opera would stall and go silent every five or so minutes and then start again. Nonething else was running and cpu utilization was zero during the stall. The problem was something turning Opera off and not just masking external interrupts.

Opera 10 continues to be an exercise in frustation. See "Frustration Unlimited: Why can't Opera fix cache?" http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=295728 relating a sequence of bugs followed fixes with new bugs each worse than the one before.

Opera 10 turned into a nogo for me. I ran into the cache 100% copy utilization cache problem quickly. Doing some research, I found that same story with both Windows 7 and Linux. It doesn't seem to be a Win 98 problem. Somebody said it said a "non-XP" problem. They took out the links to the aspell spelling checker and you only have the interactive spell checker. The underlines are hard for me to see with a high resolution monitor. With the old one, I could do a final spelling check by clicking the spell check and quickly getting a spell check complete box. Now I have to go back screen by screen and look for underlines I might have mixed. The new one sucks. They also screwed up the color of a font, browser panels, something that has worked fine since Opera 3. While some people claim to have had zero problems with 10, the number of problems and user frustration level seems to have hit a new high in the forum at http://my.opera.com/community/forums/forum.dml?id=26 Many people there seem very frustrated, such as one post "Disgruntled Opera 10 user: some things never change, eh?" http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=291379 The forum closed the thread as "Non-constructive"

See the thread "What if we lose windows 95/98?" in Xplorer2 forum at http://netez.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=6639&...asc&start=0 Xplorer2 is a Windows Explorer functional replacement with a wide and enthusiastic following. http://zabkat.com/

This report is consistent with my experience with Opera. I often open many tabs con-currently in Opera and ran into random crashes. Also, Opera often doesn't respond to keyboard keying when playing flash video clips. It seemed like Flash was taking priority over keyboard interrupts. I tried flash blockers. They seemed to help the latter problem but not the random crashes. Out of frustration, I tried running Opera with no Flash plugin at all. I removed npswf32.dll from the Opera plugins directory. That seems have helped both problems. I always check opera:plugins to verify no swf plugin. I discovered that Opera once found another copy of the npswf32.dll on my system. That solution creates a small problem if you want to watch a Youtube video: It doesn't work. I wrote a Macro Express macro to toggle npswf32.dll in and out of the Opera plugin directory. If the file is there, the macro deletes it. If it is not there, the macro copies it there from a storage directory. If I actually need flash, I close Opera, run the macro, and restart Opera. This is not an ideal solution. When I find a video I want to see I have to remember it to open it again when I start Opera with flash. Flash problems have been a constant refrain at the Opera desktop site. <a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=270145">What is it with Opera and Flash player that is so difficult ?</a> Answers haven't come out on the Opera site. The GDI problem sounds like a significant part of the answer. Complainers have been mostly XP and Vista users. Win 98 users who aren't using Opera should get a copy and discover all its many bells and whistles. It continues to support 98. To keep that support going, it needs to hear from 98 users using it.

More on SOP Adobe screwups. As noted above, I got Adobe Flash 9 r47 working with Opera. Some days later I unsuccessfully tried playing a .swf video with Zoom Player. I quickly realized that I had not installed the IE active X Flash plugin, which Zoom Player uses for playing those files. I then proceeded to install it only to discover it would not install. The install would run, but when I opened IE, the Adobe test page said I didn't have the plugin installed. I looked on the net and found numerous posts complaining of r47 not installing with no solutions. I then decided to try release 45. Both the Netscape plugin and IE activeX plugin versions of that release have worked so far.

Capsbuster said: >Is there any very special reason to use the new Flash? Security is the only reason I have heard.

I downloaded Flash 9 release 47 as suggested by the poster referred to above. I uninstalled release 159 and installed release 47. Like 159 the 47 installation passed the Adobe test at http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/welcome/ I then tried viewing a video on youtube that had been crashing on me, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nODyj8H68TA The video played fine.

Following <a href="http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=130285">Flash Player 9.1.151.0</a> I installed 9.1.151.0. I tried looking at a youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nODyj8H68TA ,an interview with Ron Paul. I crashed: illegal operation, invalid instruction. I got similar invalid instruction crashes with Opera, Firefox, and IE. I discovered <a href="http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-290">[#FP-290] Invalid Instruction in FLASH9F.OCX on Intel PII-450</a> and <a href="http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=44&catid=184&threadid=1345138">Adobe - Adobe Flash Player</a> Apparently, well over a year ago some genius programmer at Adobe hard coded some non SSE instructions without checking to see if the cpu had SSE instructions. Adobe has fixed it in Flash Player 10 but not Flash Player 9. I intalled the Flash Player 159 tonight and got the same crashes. The problem remains unfixed in that release. Great folks, these people at Adobe. This bug has been around a while. I am surprised it hasn't show up. One poster said you have to go back to r47 for a working version. During that time I have used post r47 versions that worked, especially with advertisements. It seems like the problem is source file dependent. I had problems for a while with youtube and one motivation for trying 151 was to see if it fixed those problems. It didn't.

Does anyone have any recommendations on installing or not installing the 9.0.151.0 update of Flash Player?

I think xnview at www.xnview.com is great. Be sure to click on the US/British flag if you only speak English.

I don't have XP and am not sure that that indicator does. I use Tiny Personal Firewall 2.1.5. The system tray icon displays an arrow when network traffic moves through the firewall, green when accepted and red when not accepted. You can ascertain the amount of traffic from the arrow flash rate. In conjunction with a cpu indicator, it is very useful to know if nothing is happening and you should try something else or if the system is doing something and you should wait for a result. I used Process Explorer for a while but switched back to Norton System Doctor because PE didn't have, or I could not find, an sensor for physical memory utilization, which NSD does have. I keep three sensors on top at all times, cpu, physical memory, and virtual memory. I made them small enough not to overlap any application window areas. NSD doesn't have a tray indicator. Instead, I placed the sensors on the upper right of my screen over the minimize, maximize, and close button, which I don't use very often. If I want to close a window with my mouse, I use the control menu at the left hand of the title bar.

Seven months after promising in a thread an inquiry about a reported crash with to contact the developers about 98, Foxit spokesperson Christina finally replied. http://forums.foxitsoftware.com/showthread...ted=1#post26764 A later poster asked why didn't they simply just say no.

According to page 21 of the Foxit 2.2 manual http://foxit.vo.llnwd.net/o28/pub/foxit/ma...er22_Manual.pdf Foxit supports: > Windows 98 > Windows 2000 > Windows ME ... According to page 21 of the Foxit 2.3 manual http://mirrors.foxitsoftware.com/pub/foxit...er23_Manual.pdf Foxit supports > Windows 2000 > Windows ME ... The 2.3 manual dropped the line about 98. According to page 23 of the Foxit 3.0 manual http://mirrors.foxitsoftware.com/pub/foxit...er30_Manual.pdf Foxit supports > Windows 2000 ... They dropped the Win ME line in the 2.3 manual. My recollection of their web site is that it said 98 and ME until the last few days. The latest wayback machine page includes 98. http://web.archive.org/web/20080214114938/...df/rd_intro.php From posts I have seen and my own experience, 2.3 quickly uses memory, up to 180 MB virtual, and either crashes or quits displaying pages under 98. However, I have seen only 98 posts, not ME posts. 1. Has anyone got 2.3 to work on ME? 2. Has anyone seen the same symptoms under ME? 3. Is there any reason why 2.3 would work on ME but not 98? Foxit could be vulnerable for saying 2.3 supported ME if in fact it didn't. A fix for ME might also fix 98. Foxit downloads are at http://www.foxitsoftware.com/downloads/index.php

This follows <a href="http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=126998">Foxit PDF Reader Support for 98, Number of Foxit stories now at three: yes, no, and maybe</a> A recent Windows Secrets Newsletter got me concerned about pdf reader security and made me try to use Foxit 3.0. At http://windowssecrets.com/comp/081120 , "Don't be a victim of Sinowal, the super-Trojan" states: First of all, most of the Sinowal/Mebroot infections I've heard about got into the afflicted PCs via well-known and already-patched security holes in Adobe Reader, Flash Player, or Apple QuickTime." ... "Time and time again, however, Sinowal/Mebroot's creators have modified the program well enough to escape detection." This article is scary, as the article lead: "The sneaky "drive-by download" known as Sinowal has been, uh, credited with stealing more than 500,000 bank-account passwords, credit-card numbers, and other sensitive financial information" I don't use QuickTime and my Flash player is the latest 98 version. Needless to say, I don't use IE, Opera instead. However, Adobe pdf exploits leave me concerned because I read many pdf documents. I have used Foxit 2.1 and sometimes Adobe 5.1 when Foxit doesn't work. Occasionally using 5.1 presents am obvious problem. Foxit 2.1 leave me uncertain. The thought has occurred to me that .pdf exploits might work equally well on 98 as XP/Vista. How do I assure my pdf reading security?