mikefitzvw

I'd just like to offer a thank-you, as a decently-skilled 18-year-old Windows 98 and Me user, though I have no programming experience whatsoever. You did a fantastic job. Have you ever considered maybe offering the project to a university class or something, where they'd have the resources to develop it far beyond what one person could do? I'm not majoring in computer science (civil engineering, actually) but that'd be a cool project. It could be hard to keep it going in the right direction I suppose, but it's worth a thought. The only thing that concerns me is this IPv6 stuff. If internet ceases to work with 9x, then it might not be worth the effort anymore.

Hello everyone, I have an Inspiron 8100 that was given to me by my aunt. I am having issues with battery charging that I think are related to the BIOS. It is a new battery (not new-old-stock) and was working fine for a month, but just stopped charging properly. Originally the system had an older BIOS and the new battery wouldn't charge. I upgraded to A15 (the latest BIOS) and it began to charge fine (slowly, but it definitely worked). Everything was fine until last night when I unplugged it for a few minutes under Windows 7 Home Premium trial (I run XP on an 80GB drive but was fooling around with a spare 20GB HDD and Win7 - yes it DOES work, very well in fact). When I unplugged it, it went from 100% battery life to 7% and went to hibernate in about 15 minutes. Because this is a new battery that very recently worked for about 2 hours, I'm wondering if the BIOS somehow got confused. I thought it might be Windows 7, but under XP it is still doing the same thing. I think it might be fully charged, but XP automatically hibernates when it reaches about "4%" to prevent data loss. To troubleshoot, I want to try using an older BIOS. My problem is 1) how to downgrade the BIOS in the first place - I do have the floppy drive and spare disks if they're needed 2) do you think there will be any problems with more recent hardware if I downgrade, either back to the old BIOS (whatever it was) or whatever I can find. It currently has an 80GB HDD and 512MB RAM. One of the BIOS's on Dell's site said that it fixed issues with 256MB ram (didn't say whether MORE was bad, or just 256 specifically). I also just installed a PCMCIA card to get 2 USB 2.0 ports The charger was recalled, and I had it replaced 2 weeks ago for free (Dell still has some integrity apparently). I have tried putting the battery into each bay, seeing what the charge was in the BIOS (the problem manifests even within the BIOS, it will go from 100 to 7% when unplugged). Thank you all for any help. I'd rather not buy a new battery if I don't have to (especially if, perhaps, the laptop is killing the batteries prematurely for whatever reason) -Michael

Hope I'm not bothering anyone by asking another related question on my older post. For now, the XPS hasn't been touched and the laptop has XP reinstalled (I ordered a replacement CD from Microsoft, because the system was beginning to respond weirdly). Now, I have this leftover 20GB ATA drive from this laptop. Does anyone know why the Windows 7 installation, which worked fine when I did a try-out on my 80GB Western Digital ATA drive, will not recognize the 20GB Hitachi ATA drive at all? The installer doesn't see the presence of any mass-storage drives. I haven't bought Windows 7 (still using trial disc from other system), but I wanted to try it out again with this free drive, especially to see how readyboost works, because the RAM maxes out at 512. Why on earth won't it recognize the drive? It can't be a controller issue, because it recognizes the 80GB drive. 20GB is the minimum spec required for HDDs. I don't see why it wouldn't show up. Any ideas?

Thank you all for your insights. I just installed Windows 7 x64 and the computer runs flawlessly. It is absolutely amazing! I need 512MB more memory to get it up to 2GB, but at 1.5GB it still doesn't use more than around 1GB (I swear the minimum specifications are stated waaaaay too high). I updated the BIOS, replaced the P4 540 CPU with a P4 630 (64-bit), upgraded to an nVidia GeForce 210 512MB (hate ATI with a passion), and put in a 500GB SATA HDD. Ironically, the system rating is higher than my custom built desktop that I use most of the time (built last December) and this computer is 6 YEARS OLD!!!!! Though in my defense, the other computer has integrated graphics that drag the rating down. Aside from Dell doing weird stuff to prevent the motherboard being outright replaced (power button connectors), this is a great system. Peripherals work just fine (though finding a 64-bit printer driver for a Dell AIO-922 was...interesting) and the computer runs extremely fast. I highly recommend Windows 7 on any computer that can be upgraded to 64-bit.

OK, now here's one for you all. I haven't touched the PIII desktop yet, but I have a PIII laptop (a Dell Inspiron 8100) with 512MB RAM maxed out, an 80 (75GB) HDD, and an 866MHz processor. I'm considering keeping this for college. It runs XP, it may need a new backlight in the future (not too pricey, is replaceable separate from the screen for $20), and I have NO intention to play any games on it. I tried installing Windows 7 (but not activating, because it was a leftover disc from my modern desktop) and it ran just fine. All the way up to 1024x768 resolution too, with no drivers installed. Should I: Buy Windows 7 and 2 batteries (not purchased yet) and, assuming display eventually dies, spend up to $340 on this large, comfortable, adequately fast 14" laptop for the next 4 years OR Buy a tiny netbook with an uncomfortable keyboard and tiny 11" screen for $340 (but it's new) OR Keep XP 'cause the world's gonna end in 2012 but XP support won't end until 2014 so it's all good Thanks again for any advice (thoughts on the Dell Desktop still welcome)

So you say the IDE controller isn't supported? What if I tried an add-on card or something? Can the computer boot off of that? I've just never tried it. Also, the reason I don't like Ubuntu is because, compared to 98, it's way slower (not that 7 won't be, if I ever get it to work) and it struggles to play CDs/flash audio/video. Now I know that seems like a high task for such an old machine, but on Windows 98 using kernelEX (a program some other people in the Win9x forum showed me) I was able to download the latest Flash and watch youtube videos, although the sound would always die after 3 minutes. It was astounding. Plus, Windows Media Player 7.1 always played audio/CDs very nicely, which for some reason Ubuntu doesn't want to do. I'll see if I can remedy that. But thanks for your help.

Hello all, OK, so I have this 12-year-old Dell Dimension XPS R450 that dual-boots Win98 and Ubuntu 9.10 (the CPU was upgraded to a PIII 700MHZ, and the BIOS was updated to the most latest one, from 2000). I also have a newer Dell (well, it WAS a dell until I replaced everything within the case) that runs Windows 7 64-bit. Using one (and then later a second) spare HDD, I tried to see if the 32-bit Windows 7 disc would install on the old machine (without internet, so it wouldn't have a clue). It was able to install just fine, but when I rebooted I got a "a disk read error has occurred press Ctr-Alt-Del to restart" message, or something very very close to that. I tried a different HDD, I tried re-installing, I tried installing on the new machine and transferring the HDD to the old machine, and I tried changing settings in the BIOS (which I put back to default, except the boot order which I put the DVD drive first so I can boot from discs). Does anyone know how to prevent this? If Windows 7 works I will buy it for this machine, but otherwise I'll just have to stick with Ubuntu, even though it's worse than Win98 (but current). The system has 512MB RAM and a 32MB graphics card if that makes any difference. It's insanely powerful for 1998.

Thank you CoffeeFiend so much for your help. Ironically, the day after I posted this I did actually find a P4 6xx at my local recycling center (it's a storage shed with big boxes where people just throw away perfectly good hardware, and I needed to go there anyway to drop off a stereo that died). So I figure the cost is simply my time and some CPU paste. As for the age, sorry for the misconception, I meant 10-15 years total (and I have a Dell XPS R450 from Christmas 1998 that currently dual-boots Win98 and Ubuntu 9.10, so it won't be impossible, although that computer just browses the internet, types homework, and plays DVDs, I would never game with it). If only Dell wouldn't make proprietary power button connectors (and now) BTX cases. Otherwise I'd gut it and re-use the case, power supply, CD, and floppy drive. I'll see how it goes.

Hi all, My mom bought a Dell Dimension 8400 in 2004, and I'd like to get her upgraded to Windows 7 before I go off to college. I figure a 64-bit Windows 7 install on this PC would be ideal so I don't have to work harder and harder to keep it running by finding drivers and software that support older systems (if any of you still remember Windows 98, it is still usable today but you spend half your time online figuring out what works and what doesn't). Anyway, I want to set her up for a good long time. The motherboard power button connector is proprietary (of course) so I'd like to leave the motherboard alone, but it has an Intel P4 Socket 775 5x0 CPU. I understand the 6x0 CPUs were 64-bit and some were installed in 8400s. My question therefore is: If I remove the 5x0 processor and replace it with a 6x0 processor, should this work, and will the entire system be 64-bit capable, or do other components of the motherboard restrict me to 32-bit? I haven't come across anything, I can always replace the video card and modem (I might just pull that out). I figure I might also have to replace the heatsink, because another Dell I dissected had it glued to the CPU (has anybody had issues with damaging the motherboard due to this deceitful practice?). Thank you all for any help, it would be so nice to get 10 or 15 years out of this nice system

Hey is anyone having trouble with images and toolbar rendering in Firefox 3.5 with KernelEX installed? Firefox doesn't want to display images (I am sure images are enabled and set to display) and often parts of the toolbar (the refresh button, the home button, the little logo to the left of the URL, the back/fwd buttons, or the thin gray area separating the tabs from the bar above them) turn a smoke/dark gray color. Everything else works fine. I cannot see the picture for Google on its main page, google images displays nothing, facebook shows no pictures, and I couldn't find the "Add Reply" button on this site (after 10 minutes, I used Opera to show me where it was so I could move my mouse until the hand showed up. This started happening a few months ago after an update, and the most recent one (3.5.6) didn't change anything. I did try a clean install a month ago with no luck. Experience with IE showed me images don't display if there is insufficient memory or a slow connection (very annoying, because it IE liked to just "give up" after awhile) but I have 640MB ram and ethernet. This puzzles me. Any ideas?

Sir you are a genius! I owe you a Coke.

eesseell, could you please explain in very explicit, step by step directions exactly what you did to get Flash 10 to install? (or anyone else that understands)? Thank you very much. As to making specific implementations of KernelEX aimed at specific programs, that is a fantastic idea. Perhaps specific versions for crucial programs (browser, antivirus, flash, and the like) and a general catchall like the one we have now. I would be glad to test a few (I'm not techie enough to make one myself though I'm afraid).

Ugh I am about to give up. I uninstalled the flash 9 install, re-wrote the xp.reg and unxp.reg files, re-downloaded flash 10, tried it all again and it failed. Am I supposed to restart after doing xp.reg or something? Somehow flash 10 knows this is Windows 98 no matter what I do. It would almost be easier for somebody to take the files from flash 10 and remake it without the system checks. Any other ideas? Would reinstalling 98 again help? Is 98FE too old for flash 10 (even though Firefox 3.5 works just fine)?

Well, I got closer. I re-made the xp.reg and unxp.reg files, but it still didn't quite work. Firefox would claim that Adobe DLM getPlus Add-on is not made for this system (which it's not of course). I then changed the compatibility mode of Firefox to Windows XP SP2, where it would take me to the flash site, install DLM, and then flash would still fail to install. Firefox decided tonight to upgrade itself to 3.5.4 after which point I uninstalled the DLM add-on and any Flash plug-ins, and tried again. Now I got to the flash site, tried to download Flash, and it would install DLM, tell me to restart Firefox, and then it would actually go to the same site as before and install DLM again (in a sort of endless-loop). When I did all of this I had Firefox be the installer, because the saved desktop install application refused to be deceived into thinking this was XP. In short, I must be doing something wrong. Whenever presented with the opportunity I have set the install application to XP SP2 as well as Firefox, along with using the correct xp.reg file. Thanks for both your insights so far. Any other ideas?

Hi, I'm new to this forum so I hope this ends up in the right place. I installed KernelEX on a 98FE Dell computer and was able to run Firefox 3.5, but cannot for the life of me get Flash 10 to install. I did try changing the registry like the 2nd post said, and changing the compatibility mode. You see, the first time I tried changing the registry I typed this: REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\5.1] instead of: REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion] "CurrentVersion"="5.1" I am able to download Flash 10 fine (I'm not directed to the Flash 9 site, so KernelEX worked) but whenever I try to install it says that I'm attempting to install on an old version of Windows (duh Adobe!). This computer is more than capable of running Flash 10, let alone XP (It's an XPS Dell) so I am stuck. Did my mistaken registry change screw up everything? If so what do I do? I see no use getting rid of a perfectly nice computer. Also, by any chance is there a way to upgrade to 98SE? "Upgrade" discs are for 95 and below, and I can't find any "update" CDs.