WaltMG

Thanks for the suggestions. Dependency walker showed about the last thing that was accessed before hanging was KMW_DLL. Kensington Mouseworks. I almost dismissed that as insignificant. But I went to add/remove programs and removed it (I still have the installer if it was really needed). That fixed things. Now Opera starts right up in Windows 2000 SP4. And the mouse still works perfectly well, as far as I can tell. So Kensington Mouseworks 6.11 is, at least on my system, somehow incompatible with KernelEx. I'll just mention the other things I noted. It said that apphelp.dll and userenv.dll were not found. I guess apphelp.dll is not actually needed. There's a userenv.dll in KernelEx, I got it recognized by adding KernelEx to the system path -- not sure if that's appropriate, but it didn't seem to hurt anything. I also see someone else wrote a userenv.dll, so I'm a little fuzzy as to whether that should or shouldn't be on the system somewhere. My GDI32.dll had file date 1998-01-22 but link date 2012-09-01. That seemed suspicious. It reported the same version as the original, too. I ended up extracting a clean one from the CAB file. So I may have backleveled a patch I've forgotten about. But it's working fine, so far as I can tell. I never had heard of dependency walker before. Thanks for telling me about it. For backup, I resorted to DFSee and closed my C drive to a USB stick. The big question is whether I'll be able to find the USB stick when it's needed. I didn't think I had installed the Windows installer 2.0, but when I tried to run the installer it said it was already on the system. Unicows.dll is 1.1.3790.0, per Windows Explorer. There's another unicows file, unicows.pdb, sitting next to it. I'm not sure what that's for or if it really came from Microsoft. Anyway, everything is working great right now. Mouseworks was apparently the major issue, and removing it has made my KernelEx work much, much better. Thanks. -- walt

KernelEx bug(?) System: Windows 98 Second Edition, 4.10.2222 A. Genuine Intel x86 Family 15 Model 2 Stepping 7, 765.0 MB RAM. KernelEx: 4.5.2 (core v4.5.120). Program: Any needing KernelEx, but example is Opera 12.02 installed with opera_1202_int_setup.msi. Description: Opera will run with compatibility mode default (KernelEx enabled) but with strangely partly unlabled cascading menus. The KernelEx Wiki says setting compatiblity mode 'Windows 2000 SP4' largely resolves this. But compatibility mode Windows 2000 has never worked for me; programs set this way open a window with a title bar but hang on a blank white screen. Trying to find the missing piece, I installed the various KernelEx recommended updates (VC98, MDAC, MSXML, VISUALC, MSIMG32.DLL, GDIPLUS.DLL/XP, DBGHELP.DLL/XP, WINHTTP.DLL/XP, MSVCRT70.DLL as MSVCRT.DLL. None of this changed anything. Additional: Opera 12.02 did not work at all without KernelEx. Disabling KernelEx in the compatibility tab proves that (the error is that Opera.exe expects a newer version of Windows and a spurious error that a device attached to the system is not functioning). But what is it that is preventing running it in Windows 2000 SP4 mode, as others have done? I also note that the EXE installers are not working for me; opera_1164_en_setup.exe and opera_1101_en_setup.exe just hang (not even opening a window). What am I missing? -- walt

Problem report, Firefox/win98se setup unpacks files and hangs: Operating system: Windows 98SE KernelEx: Core v4 5 14 (KernelEx-4.5-RC4.exe was the installer) Application: Tried Firefox setup 3.6.10.exe; Firefox setup 3.5.13.exe; and Firefox setup 3.0.18.exe. Problem: Setup begins to extract files, reaches 100%, but the installer never runs. The system becomes nonresponsive. Using Ctrl-Alt-Del reveals that setup, firefox setup, and the folder the install file is in are not responding. Terminate them and the system turns off active desktop, but with link to restore it. Specific compatibility mode on the installer is the default Windows XP SP2. I have avast antivirus but the problem happens even with on-access protection stopped. Any suggestions as to what I'm missing? I know lots of people are running Firefox 3.x successful on Win98SE with KernelEx, and would really like to try it myself. -- walt (PS; I hope it was OK to just reply to the main thread.)