DougB

USP 3.36 seem to install a ntdll.dll from XP, please see what happens when you manually downgrade to 4.90.3000 ! Yes, the U98SESP v3.36 changes list does state that NTDLL.dll v5.1.2600.6055 (WinXP SP3) is included, yet i have re-installed this version of the USP a few times and the NTDLL.dll in Windows\System\ remains at v4.90.3000 (WinME). (Perhaps this is a bug in the USP, or maybe the DLL is installed only as part of one of the auxiliary programs.) So it *is* v4.90.3000 on my system. - Doug B. The ntdll.dll v5.1.2600.6055 is installed on C:\ when you select support for the NTFS, else it is the version 4.90.3000. Ok, thanks, makes sense (i figured it was one of the two). I have not installed the NTFS support. - Doug B.

USP 3.36 seem to install a ntdll.dll from XP, please see what happens when you manually downgrade to 4.90.3000 ! Yes, the U98SESP v3.36 changes list does state that NTDLL.dll v5.1.2600.6055 (WinXP SP3) is included, yet i have re-installed this version of the USP a few times and the NTDLL.dll in Windows\System\ remains at v4.90.3000 (WinME). (Perhaps this is a bug in the USP, or maybe the DLL is installed only as part of one of the auxiliary programs.) So it *is* v4.90.3000 on my system. - Doug B.

I can confirm that the KStub822/MPRExe crash (on bootup) remains. (W98SE + USP3.36 + 98SE2ME + RP7 + ...) 1) Uninstalled v4.5.2 before installing v4.5.3.1 -- uninstall automatically deletes the entire Windows\KernelEx\ folder. Windows rebooted ok. 2) Installed v4.5.3.1 -- rebooted, KEx-dependent apps worked. 3) Added the original unaltered KStub822 .dll and .ini files to the KernelEx folder and "kstub822" to the "Contents=" line in Core.ini -- on reboot, got the MPRExe error, Win9x apps work ok, KEx apps non-functioning. 4) Deleted "kstub822" from Core.ini -- on reboot, no error, KEx apps work ok. - Doug B.

@Drugwash - I took a chance on a working non-virtual system (W98SE+USP3.36+98SE2ME+RP7+...) and installed KernelEx 4.5.3.1 -- installation went ok with no noticeable problems, and my apps seem to be working ok as well. Minor issue: Verify.exe still reports version as "4.5.120" in the lower-right corner. (Hard coded?) New ke*.dll files are 4.5.12.3. @jumper - VLC Media Player not-UPXed files work ok with the GCC fix! - Doug B.

Thanks for the Merry KeXmas surprise! If it's any help, I too get the MPREXE error on bootup -- using Win98SE (but with 98SE-to-ME installed as well) -- so i had to disable KStub. This is with a recently-reinstalled KernelEx 4.5.2 and KStub v8.22, so they're generic (i hadn't messed around with any .ini files, except of course to add/remove "kstub822" in the "Contents=" line of Core.ini). Kudos to jumper (and others in the future) for resurrecting this! - Doug B.

Issues with the new MediaInfo GUI, v0.7.71, 2014-Nov-10. Installation completes ok. But when the program, MediaInfo.exe, is run, this error message is generated: A required .DLL file, WINDOWSCODECS.DLL, was not found. After copying WindowsCodecs.dll file from XP SP3 into the MediaInfo folder, these new error messages are generated: A device attached to the system is not functioning. and: The WINDOWSCODECS.DLL file is linked to missing export OLE32.DLL:HICON_UserSize. These problems do not occur with the previous v0.7.70 GUI version. The MediaInfo CLI v7.7.71 works ok in a DOS box. I re-installed v0.7.70 GUI and copied the v0.7.71 MediaInfo.dll from the CLI, which seems to be working ok under the older GUI executable. - Doug B.

Yup, got this line in my Core.ini file: contents=Kstub822,std,kexbases,kexbasen,K452stub Ok then... if i have this correct conceptually, KernelEx reads the contents= line left to right, so KStub822 gets read first, then the regular KEx stuff, and K452Stub.ini last. So i only *need* to add the aforementioned line to one of the .ini files. And it wouldn't matter which one (?) because it's being *added* to KEx, not overriding/modifying something already in KEx. So it would be redundant to add the line to both KExt .ini files. It sure would be helpful if someone could write up a KExt faq or beginners guide. I've tried to read thru the KExt thread, but it makes my head spin, so i just follow the couple of "how-to" posts and then paint by numbers.... @Mikl - No, i haven't done anything with MPlayer's EDL option. In fact, i never even knew about it until you mentioned it! So i just looked it up, and it's a pretty-cool feature. I have MPlayer.exe set up on my system as a (no-frills player) target of a right-click Send-To. I use MPlayerWW (nice skined GUI) as my default left-click video-file player, and VLC is my default DVD player. (Altho sometimes i like to use Full Screen Player for DVDs, just because the interface is kind of fun!) - Doug B.

Thanks for the tip, Mikl -- it works! One question though (KExt is pretty far over my head). Looking through the Windows\KernelEx\ folder, i found a [Kernel32.dll] section in two files: K452STUB.INI and KSTUB822.INI. I added the "GetCurrentConsoleFont=z2" line to both. But do i need to do that, or would it be better to just add it to one of the files or the other? BTW, i checked out some M4V/MP4 video files, and they played ok (no synch problems) on my system with the latest builds of both the sherpya and redxii MPlayer.exe. - Doug B.

@MrMaguire: I *think* that Revolutions Pack 9 automatically replaces the system fonts with Tahoma -- there's a check box in the RP9 config program under the "Misc" tab that says: [ ] Don't replace default shell font with Tahoma. Also, under Windows' "Display Properties > Appearance" tab, there is a "Save As..." button which works for me in saving font changes. (But i'm also using RP9, so i'm not sure if it's a side effect of that.) Worth a try anyway. And i highly recommend Revolutions Pack! - Doug B. P.S. I'm *not* running on a virtual PC.

More blues for MPlayer.exe versions that run under KernelEx. Redxii's "MPlayer For Windows" starting with version svn-r37205 and sherpya's "MPlayer For Win32" starting with version svn-r37220 give this error message: The MPLAYER.EXE file is linked to missing export KERNEL32.DLL:GetCurrentConsoleFont. The last redxii MPlayer.exe that works under KernelEx (with the UPX fix) is svn-r37203: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mplayerwin/files/MPlayer-MEncoder/r37203/ The last sherpya MPlayer.exe that works under KernelEx (with the UPX fix) is svn-r37199: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mplayer-win32/files/MPlayer%20and%20MEncoder/r37199%2Bg5e95551/ - Doug B.

I (and other folks here) have experienced conflicts between ACPI and video drivers on Win98. (I don't know about with WinME -- did they manage to fix that issue?) So it might be worth a try to re-install the O/S with ACPI disabled: setup /p i This might, however, produce some standby issues on some systems, but at least you get your video drivers in. (Fair tradeoff, at least to my mind.) This has always worked for me (and has worked for others on this list as well) when video drivers crashed during installation. So now i just routinely use this switch when installing my Win98SE. (And if it is an ACPI/video-driver conflict, i don't think the video manufacturer matters -- i've experienced the conflict with NVidia cards as well as with Intel m/b-chipset video.) - Doug B.

> Also, ACPI is a bit buggy even on 98SE, at least IME (my ThinkPad T23 had issues with the display > on 98SE under ACPI, but it worked fine on APM) Yes, agreed (on both counts)! I routinely disable ACPI when installing Win98SE by using: setup /p i However, i've found that it might cause some standby issues on some systems. But to me, the benefits outweigh the loss. I also agree about U98SESP 3.x, 98SE2ME, DX 9.0c, and IE 6.0 SP1, even though i later remove it with IEradicator (or 98Lite if you want the possibility to restore it): http://www.litepc.com/ieradicator.html Also, remember to install the latest m/b chipset drivers for a system -- important! - Doug B. Edit: I also suggest KernelEx and Revolutions Pack. My preferred browser, however, is Pale Moon v3.6.32, a slightly-later optimized-for-Windows fork of FireFox v3.6.28.

I can do it pretty successfully (occasionally a bit pokey) with: - Pale Moon v3.6.32 / Firefox v3.6.28 - Flash Player v11.1.102.63 DLL installer - Flash Player NPSWF32.DLL v11.6.602.180 manually copied to Flash directory Additionally, the NoScript extension (works with both PM and FF) helps to speed up my browsing in general: http://noscript.net/ and you can turn it's various features on/off automatically or manually when needed. I also like the Tweak Network extension: http://www.bitstorm.org/extensions/tweak/ Of course, KernelEx is necessary as well. - Doug B.

You can add to the list: * Sherpya's "MPlayer on Windows" generic MPlayer.exe build: http://oss.netfarm.it/mplayer-win32.php Current version (at time of this posting): r37182+g09725c1 * Redxii's "MPlayer-for-Windows" MPlayer.exe build: http://code.google.com/p/mplayer-for-windows/ Current version (at time of this posting): svn-37183 For those who may not be familiar, MPlayer.exe is a command-line (!) media player with its own built-in codecs for common formats (but you can also download a separate MPlayer-specific pack of rarer codecs). It has the reputation of being able to play almost anything (and that's been my experience as well). The user interface is primitive (keyboard/mouse/joystick control while the media is playing), but a number of GUIs are available as separate projects that load the MPlayer.exe file to do the playing (but i'm not commenting on those here). I've found the MPlayer.exe file useful by itself in the following ways: - As the target of a (right-click) "Send-To". - As the default (left-click) player. - Drag-and-drop file to a desktop shortcut. Many options are available via text configuration files. (Hint: For the above uses, add: "really-quiet=yes" line in the CONFIG file.) - Doug B.

Maybe "Delete Doctor" by Kevin Solway could help: http://www.theabsolute.net/sware/#deletedr DELETE DOCTOR v1.1 Delete files that are difficult to delete, such as some files left by viruses and trojans, or files with corrupted file names. This program can also delete files like the "index.dat" files, which store Internet history, by scheduling them for deletion upon system restart. Select a file to delete from the built-in file browser or drag a file to the application's icon or window from Window's Explorer. (Executable for Win95/98/ME/2000/NT/XP/Vista - Freeware) - Doug B.

> Thx TmEE And thx CharlesF for the update to the skin collection. (And for all the work collecting them together in the first place.) - Doug B.

I would like to know how to do this too, but for a different reason. Just to clarify, i would like to: + Remove the bitmap from IO.SYS v7.1. - Not bypass it (with LOGO=0). - Not replace it with a different LOGO.SYS or embedded bitmap. IIRC, there was an MS IO.SYS floating around somewhere where this was done, but it was an older buggy version (not RLoew's fixed IO.SYS). The reason i would like to do this is to reduce the size of IO.SYS to allow more (or larger) files on bootup diskettes. As it is, i've been using IBM PC-DOS v7.1 for this, and while it does allow access to FAT32 partitions, i'm a little nervous about using that particilar build of the system files. MS-DOS v7.1 IO.SYS: 222,670 bytes PC-DOS v7.1 IBMBIO.SYS: 44,656 bytes IBMDOS.SYS: 42,566 bytes - Doug B.

@CamTron: > on the topic of Flash, does Opera 10.10 or Firefox 3.0 support it? That would > be insane, watching YouTube videos on Windows 9x. I watch YouTube videos *all the time* on my W98SE+DX9+KEx system! At YouTube itself or embedded. Pale Moon v3.6.32 or Firefox v3.6.28, Flash DLL v11.6.602.180 (but i had to install an earlier 11.x version and copy over the newer NPSWF32.DLL). And download video to local file with FF extension UnPlug v2.056 (latest). As far as i recall, that's the last Flash version that works. Does anyone know if there's a newer Flash version that is compatible? - Doug B.

@dencorso: I UPXed each of the individual .EXE and .DLL files in both the program (top) folder and all the subfolders in the plugins folder. Tedious to do without some kind of "global"-type command that repeats an executable (UPX.EXE in this case) in current and subfolders. (There are 24 subfolders under plugins in VLC 2.1.3!) @jumper: Yes, in my (and loblo's) experience, the plugin folder DLLs do need to be UPXed. For me, when i only compressed the .EXEs and .DLLs in the program (top) folder, it made it past it's own DLLs, but then it choked on a system DLL: VLC caused an invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DLL I initially tried compressing files in the program folder one at a time and then running VLC.EXE. After UPXing only VLC.EXE, i got: VLC caused an invalid page fault in module LIBVLCCORE.DLL Then after UPXing LIBVLCCORE.DLL, i got: VLC caused an invalid page fault in module LIBVLC.DLL Then after UPXing LIBVLC.DLL, i got: VLC caused an invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DLL at which point i hung it up, until loblo said to UPX the files in the plugins folder. Which worked all the way. - Doug B.

Ok, i did a new UPX compression right after a fresh bootup of Windows and found that loblo was correct -- all the DLL and EXE files did compress ok. I also tried compressing them 5 different ways (each on fresh copies of the VLC binaries, of course). All produced working VLCs (in limited testing -- playing a few video files of differing formats and a DVD), Here are the command-line switches that i tried: UPX UPX -1 UPX --best UPX --lzma UPX --lzma --best Out of curiosity, i compared size of the plugins folder for each. As expected, -1 produced the largest files, no-switch was next largest. But surprisingly (to me anyway), the LZMA-compressed binaries were (in total) smaller than --best (almost 2.2mb less). However, between them, the best individual-file compression method varied between DLLs -- for some --best was better, for others --lzma was better. Finally, just for larfs, i did a combination of --lzma --best, but that only diminished total file size by about 270k over --lzma alone. I think what might have happened regarding my previous post is that i ran un-compressed VLC first (which crashed), then tried compressing the binaries, but some DLLs might have still been in memory, so their files wouldn't compress. Just a guess. Whatever, the good news is that this method works! Now... let's figure out why? - Doug B.

@loblo: > Thanks but let's rather call it the UPX fix Of course. I was just trying to be a little light -- i was happy! > and it would be nice if somebody could figure out why it works Agreed. > as there is certainly nothing "magic" about it. Again, i was just having fun (note the quotes). Something unexplained might appear as "magic"... until it is understood. @Mikl: > But did you also received an 'error' message from UPX on some of the dll's ?? Yes, i did get some error messages from UPX. The messages flew by pretty quickly (i did it from the command line, and didn't bother to redirect output to a file), but i did notice that it said that some of the files were non-compressable. In that case, UPX just leaves them alone -- it doesn't change them. If your VLC is working, then it seems like you're good to go! - Doug B.

Well, i'll be a... CONFIRMED! VLC v2.1.3 loads (and plays) using the UPX workaround. And i *did* have to compress the plugins to get it to fly. (Which would have been a tedious task were it not for 4-DOS's GLOBAL (internal) command -- it runs a given command in the current directory/folder and all subdirectories/subfolders.) But again, all i needed to use were the UPX defaults -- no switches. (Well, ok... i admit i did use the --best switch.) Hats off to loblo for discovering this "magical" solution! Maybe we should call it the "Loblo Compression Fix" (LCF)?" - Doug B. P.S. Here's the UPX (Ultimate Packer for eXecutables) homepage: http://upx.sourceforge.net/

@loblo: Hey, thanks for the tip! I think i might need some clarification too. > try compressing them and the bundled dlls with UPX with the > strip or copy overlay option enabled. According to the UPX documentation, --overlay=copy *is* the default. The documentation also says that --overlay=strip is "DANGEROUS" (their capitalization). It says: "Be warned, this may make the compressed program crash or otherwise unusable." Anyway, i tried your suggestion using the latest Windows UPX (v3.91 CLI) on these programs: 1) latest generic MPlayer.exe (svn36986) from Sherpya: http://oss.netfarm.it/mplayer-win32.php 2) the same from RedXii: http://code.google.com/p/mplayer-for-windows/ 3) latest VLC Media Player (v2.1.3): http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/ Lo and behold... it worked for both of the MPlayer builds! Interestingly, i only used the UPX defaults (no command-line switches). But UPX compression didn't work for VLC. After UPXing, it did make it past it's own DLLs (which crashed in the original versions), but then it choked on a system DLL: VLC caused an invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DLL Then i re-tried it (on fresh copies of VLC binaries of course), using the command switches shown in your screen capture... same result. I also tried it with the previously-mentioned --overlay=strip switch, but it just crashed immediately. So maybe we're part way there.... This is an intriguing workaround. - Doug B.

Flasche: > Sure you could use kernelEx, but not everyone likes it, or uses it. I agree with this observation... but for me (and many others), Win9x would not be nearly as viable a computing option without KernelEx. tmontney: > I've been creating a tweaking utility for XP and above (registry tweaks and such). ... > Even if it's outside my scope, I'm happy to learn. Speaking of WinXP and KernelEx, this may be a tall order... but KernelEx has been in pretty-big need of updating. (I am aware of KExt). Another individual attempted to resurrect it recently, but it seems that it failed, and he doesn't seem to be around anymore. (I believe he tried to re-implement it in a different way, however.) So if you have a knowledge of WinXP APIs and have a love of Win9x... this could be your calling? - Doug B.

My preference changes over time, as players/codecs become more/less functional under Win9x and KeX. Currently, my faves include their own codecs, so i don't have to deal with the headaches of codecs/packs that only partially work/install or else are old, have to be setup. etc. So in order... 1) MPlayerWW (ongoing): http://www.mplayer-ww.com/eng/ Also called "MPlayer Lite" (I have no clue why), this is developer William Wang's GUI interface around integral MPlayer core (it does *not* use a separate MPlayer.exe). Loads quickly, lots o' skins available, plays everything i've thrown at it. It does, however, have a few visual glitches in some options/preferences windows. This is my default player. 2) VLC Media Player (v2.1.2): http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/2.1.2/ Also very capable, many skins available, but slow loading, and the latest version (2.1.3) breaks Win9x/Kex compatibility, so i'm thinking that future versions will also not be usable (in other words, it won't be fixed for our purposes). 3) GOM Player (v2.1.43.5119): http://www.filehippo.com/download_gom_player/history Generally capable, but chokes occasionally on some formats/files. Quirky to set up for first-time DVD use (made me download some extra codecs and manually set preferences). Also, latest versions are no longer compatible with Win9x/Kex. Other players are, for me, a system-codec krapshoot (including Media Player Classic, Media Player Classic Home Cinema, Zoom Player, Kool Playa, Windows Media Player 6.x and 9.x). Also, other MPlayer GUIs have not worked well for me (and the latest MPlayer.exe compilations crash Win9X/Kex). Curious to hear what others' experiences are.... - Doug B.