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They call registry keys which contain the file locations ( see list above ). Consider them pointers to files on disk. How can the registry keys exist for a brand new file that I drop into C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MACROMED\FLASH\ ??? I didn't "install" the new version of flash. All I did was drop NPSWF32_11_6_602_168.DLL into the macromed\flash directory. So how can Mozilla FF/Netscape know that it exists? It can't be present anywhere in the registry, because I didn't install that version (didn't run the flash installer) and I didn't register it manually using regsvr32. And (I ask again) why do these flash DLL's exist as both NPSWF32.DLL *AND* NPSWF32_version_number.DLL ??? Why does Adobe create / distribute them using dual-names like that? Who else (what other company) has ever distributed / installed new versions of DLL files by including the version_number in the name of the file? You keep talking about the ocx files - I don't care about the ocx files because I don't care about IE6 or how flash works (or doesn't) with IE6.

Don't paste the same Flash file with different names in the same folder and don't use different versions at the same time! How does Mozilla FF/Netscape know to look for both types of files? How do they know to look for NPSWF32.DLL *AND* NPSWF32_version_number.DLL ??? Why would they look for both types (both names) for the flash DLL file? What tells them to do that? Why does the flash DLL exist with both types of names? What purpose does that serve?

Back during the time-frame July 2000 through Dec 2005, we had about a dozen win-98 machines (and about 6 other machines running NT4 and 2K) in a small organization sharing an ISDN connection to the internet. We had a net-block of 64 static IP addresses, and each of our PC's was assigned on of those addresses. No firewall running on any of the PC's (at least not the win-98 PC's) and no NAT router. All of the PC's ran some version of Norton Antivirus, and it caught most viral email attachments as incoming mail was spooled on our NT4 mail server. Over that time frame, none of the win-98 machines got infected by anything. Our 2 NT4 servers were discovered to be hosting someone's private FTP site (or at least they were trying, but our slow connection was a problem I suppose). Our Win-2k machines were periodically hit with network worms and other stuff. I would argue that those years (2000 - 2005) were the prime years for win-9x to be targets, and we had a completely open network topology that would have facilitated it, but in the end our win-98 machines sailed through those years cleanly. In the years since then, our PC's shared a DSL connection behind a nat-router, and although I maintained NAV 2002 on about 6 machines until about 2008, they continued to be devoid of malware, trojans, virii, etc. So for the past 5 or so years I've abandoned any AV protection on these win-98 machines. On the other hand, I'm quite aggressive at adding entries to my hosts file, which is based on the MVPS hosts file. I examine my router's out-going logs periodically to see what domains or hosts are being accessed, and any that don't look right are added to my hosts file. There is a lot of web-metrics, click-tracking, ad-serving and god-knows-what servers out there that are hooked into the web-surfing experience that have no place being there, and I'll be damned if I'm going to expose my PC's to that crap. Especially when it's those servers that are likely to be hacked and serve up malware. But it all comes down to this: Win-9x, either by design or dumb luck, is simply not vulnerable to even a fraction of the exploit vectors that have existed for the NT-based line of Windows. The website Secunia.org lists all the known security issues for many many hardware and software products. As of July 2006 (when win-98 went EOL) Secunia was listing 33 advisories for Windows 98. That's for the entire life-span of the product. They were listing well over 200 advisories for Win 2k/XP at the same time. And as of Dec 2012, they were listing 408 advisories for Win-XP pro (44 of which were un-patched). So that should put things into perspective.

On my computer, the only place where I have the file(s) NPSWF*.dll is: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MACROMED\FLASH\NPSWF32.dll C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins\NPSWF32.dll There are no such files anywhere else. Opera says (under plugins) Shockwave Flash 11.6.602.168, located at C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MACROMED\FLASH\NPSWF32.dll I realize that NPSWF32.DLL is also available (or also exists) as NPSWF32_11_6_602_168.DLL (why that is - I don't know). If I add NPSWF32_11_6_602_168.DLL to both of the above locations where NPSWF32.DLL already exists, nothing changes. Opera still places a > (play) symbol where flash content exists on web pages, forcing me to press the > symbol to "play" (render) the content. And nothing changes for FF2 - I still get that error message when I bring up the same web-pages with flash content. I seem to recall that I tried this same thing (replacing the flash DLL file) the last time I upgraded the flash version - and it didn't work, and I ended up running the installer, and that's how I got the current version (11.3.300.265) to work. Also - I don't know if you're supposed to see "Flash" show up on the FF2 add-on screen (Tools -> Add-ons) but I don't see Flash showing up there (I don't recall if I ever did). But a copy of the DLL does exist in the Mozilla Firefox\plugins\ directory. So if FF uses the flash plugin from that directory, then why would FF be messed up if I change the flash DLL file in the SYSTEM\MACROMED directory? Edit: So I removed NPSWF32_11_6_602_168.DLL from: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MACROMED\FLASH\NPSWF32.dll C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins\NPSWF32.dll And I restored NPSWF32.DLL version 11.3.300.265 to both those locations, and FF2 and Netscape 9 are happy and Flash works for them. I then added the file NPSWF32_11_6_602_168.DLL to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MACROMED\FLASH\NPSWF32.dll and FF2/Netscape 9 stop rendering flash content. They don't give any errors - they just don't render flash. Can anyone explain that?

I tried running several version of FF 3.x.y (don't recall what x.y was) a few years ago, and couldn't tolerate it because it was drawing thin white lines across any bitmapped images that were on the web-page I was viewing. These lines would appear when I scrolled the page such that the images were partially out of view and they were scrolled up or down into view. The white lines would appear at the cut-point where that portion of the image was out-of-view. I very likely might have had KernelEx version 3.6 installed at that time - don't know if that's a factor or not. Have also changed a few system DLL files since then...

So if I substitute either of these versions: 11,5,502,149 or 11,6,602,168 of the DLL in place of what I had, and if I try to bring up a web page with flash content using either FF2 or Netscape 9, I get this error message (pops up in it's own window): --------------- Title Bar: Illegal Operation in Plug-in The plug-in performed an illegal operation. You are strongly advised to restart Firefox. ( ) Don't show this message again during this session [OK] --------------- On Opera 12.02, flash appears to work - but instead of automatically rendering flash content on any given web-page, I get a big > symbol that I have to press to render the content. If I hover over the > I get this text on the bottom line of Opera: "Please click to download and activate plugin". For example, when I view this page: http://www.investing.com/currencies/aud-usd-advanced-chart Where the chart should be, I get a big > symbol that I have to click. Funny thing - I thought those graphs were done in java - but I guess they use flash. With the previous version of flash, the graphs just appear right away. On this page: http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/find-version-flash-player.html In section (1), when I press the > symbol, nothing happens (I don't see the ball rolling back and forth). In Section (2), when I press the > symbol, it tells me the flash version (11.6.602.168) and my OS (Windows 2000 32-bit) and the browser (Opera). Do I have to do something else in these browsers to properly register or install these new(er) versions of flash? There seems to be more needed than just replacing the DLL file. Oh, this PC has a socket-478 Intel P4, 2.5 ghz.

I have Flash version 11.3.300.268 working on this computer. I obtained NPSWF32.dll version 11.6.602.168 and simply replaced the older file with the newer one where it sits in the \SYSTEM\MACROMED\FLASH directory. This file-substitution did not work. I got some sort of error message in FF2 when trying to bring up the Adobe flash-version/test page. I thought that replacing the DLL file was all that was needed. No?

The " KernelEx Apps Compatibility List" thread lists version 10.0.2 as being compatible with Kex. Explain? When it comes to removing IE from a win-98 system, I was under the impression that there are some (many?) dll files that are associated with IE that are needed (or are useful) in terms of rendering web content. Especially scripting (like jscript). For example, the 5.7 scripting host update for win-98 requires IE 5.5 or 6. So my basic question is, if you go to the trouble of setting up a win-98 system and strip IE from it, do you lose something in terms of web functionality? One last question: If someone does not like or want to use Opera, and if they have a Win-98 system without IE, and if they have KernelEx, then what is the most recent, most advanced, most functional (working history, bookmarks, etc), most HTML5-compatible browser available to them?

What is the latest (or last) version of Firefox that can run more-or-less trouble-free on a win-98se system with KernelEx? Also, for any win-98 system that has had IE removed from it - does that have any impact on web-browsing (using other browsers) in terms of causing problems with proper rendering of web pages, handing scripts (jscript, etc) ?

After messing with the msi file with Orca, I managed to get Adobe Audition 1.5 to install without any errors. The first time I ran it, it asked what drive I wanted to use as the temp drive, but I didn't get any further with it after that point. When I try to launch it, I get a spash-screen for a fraction of a second. That's it - no error messages. Is there some way I can figure out what it doesn't like that even KernelEx can't help with? Was there some way to use KernelEx in a diagnostic mode? (for a program written in 2004, I'm surprised that it doesn't run under win-9x with Kex) PS: When I saved my edited msi file with orca, it seems to have stripped out the data1.cab file. The original file was 30 mb in size, and the edited file was 10 mb. What am I doing wrong such that the cab file gets lost in the saved file?

Just to clarify, I did use ultradefrag yesterday (I know I didn't mention it in my last post). I used it more today - I went back and forth between these methods: - native XP defrag - ultradefrag - jkdefrag - using Contig on individual files The root problem is not the fact that copying files from NTFS source to FAT32 destination can be "messed up" if the source file is fragged as it sits on the NTFS drive (it wasn't, btw) or that copying using the gui (copy - and - paste) can invoke a multi-threaded process that will results in a fragmented destination (it doesn't, because command-shell copy method gave exactly the same results). The root problem is that there seems to be something about a "well used" Win-98 volume that, over time, results in immovable files (seems to be very small files) that prevents large contiguous blocks of clusters from being created during defrag sessions. Of the methods I've tried so far, I was not impressed by ultradefrag (just based on how "hard" it worked at re-arranging the little blocks on the screen during it's defrag runs). Sometimes it didn't even do anything after I made changes the volume. Jkdefrag, on the other hand, always worked very hard at re-arranging the little blocks (reminded me of Norton Speed Disk). I remember that when Norton was done with a defrag job, the graphical layout of the drive was completely nice and tidy looking. No stray blocks or streaks of files strewn about the layout. Everything was compacted down and contiguous. I haven't tried norton yet. Something else I've been doing is going crazy with re-setting file and directory attributes - removing System, Hidden and Read-Only when ever I see them. Also deactivated XP's desire to store restore points in System Volume Information folder on this slaved FAT32 drive. I've been focusing on the "C" volume on this drive. It's 32 gb FAT32, with about 20-25% free space, about 7,000 folders and maybe 100k files. I haven't used win-98's native defrag because I don't like to defrag a drive that's in-use by the OS, and at that location I don't have a second win-98 system handy that I can commandeer for several hours to act as a master to defrag this drive as a slave.

So I can verify that even if I start with a defragged NTFS source drive (where I've placed the large, fragmented files) and a defragged FAT32 destination drive (that is showing no fragged files), when using the copy command from a command prompt to put a copy of the problem files on the FAT32 drive, the result is still that the files end up being fragmented. So I did that for a 500 mb file and it had a few dozen fragments. I ran XP's defrag several times, and got it down to 22 fragments. I used the sys internals single-file defrag program, and it got the file down to 10 fragments. I think the problem is that XP's defrag doesn't do a good job moving files around to create a single contiguous allocation for empty / unused clusters. I obtained a program called jkdefrag and I'm letting it run over-night on the drive. I've come across comments where people either know (or seem to think) that Win-98's native defrag did a better job on FAT32 drives vs XP's defrag. If I don't get good results with jkdefrag then I'll try Norton's defrag from NSW 2002. Edit: I also performed this command: Attrib d: -s -h -r The point was to remove anything that might cause a file or a directory on the FAT32 volume to appear as "unmovable". But since there is no "unmovable" attribute that I'm aware of, I'm guessing that maybe the hidden or system attribute might function as an "unmovable" property.

For one thing, I'm not going to reformat the FAT32 drive as part of the maintenance I'm doing. But here's something that I've not yet seen any explanation for. In the steps you give (above), if instead of steps 3 and 4, I substitute "perform defrag on FAT32 volume" - why wouldn't / doesn't that result in the problem files being contiguous (non fragmented)? If the problem is that a copy operation under XP (in the GUI shell) is multi-threaded, and results in file fragmentation when the destination is a FAT32 volume, then isin't that a HUGE performance disadvantage for NT-based operating systems? Why would they perform file-copy operations in a multi-threaded way anyways? There's only ONE hard drive, and a SINGLE lane of access to it - so what sense does it make to make the file-copy process multi-threaded, especially if it results in a fragmented file? Next thing I'm going to try is to use the command shell to copy these files (copy , not xcopy or xxcopy) and see if the files still end up being fragmented on the FAT32 volume.

On this system (win-98se), using FF 2.0.0.20, with no modification to the user-agent string, I am easily able to download the file "jre-6u39-windows-x64.exe" with no issues. When I change the user-agent to Firefox 12/Win 7 32-bit, I keep getting an error when trying to download the file: =========== Sorry! In order to download products from Oracle Technology Network you must agree to the OTN license terms. Be sure that... Your browser has "cookies" and JavaScript enabled. You clicked on "Accept License" for the product you wish to download. You attempt the download within 30 minutes of accepting the license. =========== I met all of the above 3 conditions, but it still get that error. I then changed my user-agent to Firefox 15.0a1 Windows 7 64-bit (verified by external web-site "whatsmyos.com") and still get the above error (yes, I re-load the web page after changing the user-agent). But then I go back to my default user-agent (Firefox 2, Windows 98) and have no problems downloading the file.

Well, after moving these files around, and de-fragging the destination drive lots of times in -between the moves, I am still stuck with some files that are fragmented. These are files that are anywhere from 400 mb to 1.7 gb in size. These are Netscape Navigator email and Outlook 2000 post-office (PST) files. So to summarize: - I slave a FAT32 drive to a system running XP-SP3, and use XP's native tools to check the FAT32 drive for errors, and perform a defrag on the 2 volumes on the FAT32 drive. - After defrag, I have about a dozen large files that are still fragmented, even after multiple defrag runs. - I move (cut-and-paste) these files to the XP's native hard drive (NTFS) and perform more defrag runs on the FAT32 volume. The FAT32 volume is now fully defragged (no fragged files) and according to the graphic indicator there are large areas of clear, open space on the volume. - I copy the large files from the NTFS drive back to the "clean" FAT32 drive (back to the folders where they came from), and run defrag / analyze on the FAT32 drive - and it shows those large files TO STILL BE FRAGMENTED! I perform more defrag runs, but those files still remain fragmented. I would have thought that copying files (even fragmented files) from a FAT32 volume to an NTFS volume would have resulted in a "clean" placement of the files on the NTFS file system (ie - the fragmentation would have disappeared) and so copying them back to their original source volume (FAT32) that had been "cleaned up" by a defrag run would have resulted in a "clean" placement of these files back to where they came from. Of the original dozen files that did not defragment initially, I am down to about 6 that will not defrag after moving them between the NTFS and FAT32 volumes. The worst of them is about 1.7 gb in size and has a few hundred fragments. And one more thing - running defrag on the NTFS volume (it contains a complete copy of the two 32gb FAT32 volumes in addition to an extra copy of the problem files) resulted in a completely de-fragged drive. None of these files are listed as fragmented as they sit on the NTFS drive. Edit: One more thing. I re-named one of the fragmented files as it sits on the FAT32 drive and copied another instance of that file from the NTFS drive to the same directory where this file exists on the FAT32 volume. So the two files are sitting side-by-side in the same directory on the FAT32 volume (but have different names). Do you think that this second copy will also be fragmented like it's brother? Answer: YES. Even after defrag, the two files have the same number of fragments. How do you explain that? Does the "memory" of the fragmented structure of the file still remain after the file has been moved to an NTFS volume and back to a FAT32 volume? I will next try the suggestion by jaclaz...

I have a win-98 system with an 80 gb hard drive, partitioned as C and D (about 32 gb each). So there some unpartitioned space on this drive. Each volume has about 5 gb free space. I connected the drive as a slave to a win-XP sp3 system, and told it to perform a drive-check on each of these volumes, correct any errors, and then performed a defrag on each volume. The D volume defragged without any files being fragmented. The C volume ended up having about a dozen files with fragments, some only a handful, others having a few hundred fragments. These are large files, from a few hundred mb to 1.2 gb in size. I repeated the defrag on the C volume several times, but it didn't change anything (those files were still fragmented). I then did a "cut and paste" of those files from the slave drive over to the "real" C drive (NTFS) and then defragged the C volume again, and it defragged completely (there were no fragmented files). I then copied the problem files back to the C volume (back to the directories where they were cut from) and did a defrag "analyze" - and these files were showing up as being fragmented. (?!) I would have thought that simply copying these files to an NTFS drive, and then back to the FAT32 drive would have removed any fragmentation issues in these files. So I again performed a defrag on the C volume, and in the end only 4 files were showing as still being fragmented, so I'm going to repeat this cut-and-paste process on those 4 files and see if I can finally get those files to defragment. But my primary question is why these files didn't defragment automatically by moving them to an NTFS file system, and then moving them back to a de-fragged FAT32 file system.

I use an old copy of Norton Ghost to clone hard drives. It seems to create an exact copy of any drive I give it (at least NTFS and FAT32). But the source drive must not have any file-allocation table problems or other logical problems or it will abort the copy. I boot Ghost from a floppy and it can clone a drive at the rate of about 1 gb per minute.

Yea, ok, I see that the stub is only 8kb. Is this the correct / actual version number for the winME version: 5.00.2218.1 (Lab06_N(PRAVINSDEV).000328-1149) Looks strange...

Ok, I did all that, ran the MSI, and version 6 update 38 appeared to install without errors. Restarted. Java is missing from control panel. Found javacpl.cpl in CAB file. Ran it, turned off "Next generation plugin" setting. Restarted. Using FF 2.0.0.20, went to javatester.org/version, and got these errors: "The new java plug-in requires a recent version of the firefox browser (firefox 3 or later)" Click Ok, then get this error: "The plug-in performed an illegal operation. You are strongly advised to restart firefox." JRE 6 update 30 previously was working fine on FF 2.0.0.20. Any ideas to get this new update 38 working? Edit: Ok, I forgot to rename the "plugin" directory. It works fine now.

I have Opera version 12.02 running on this win-98 system (with kernelex). It thinks it's running on win-2k. I don't use it very much. I use FF 2.0.0.20 as my primary browser. PROBLEMCHYLD wrote: > > The only oddity is that semi-transparent GUI elements look wrong, but it's not a big deal. > That because you don't have MSIMG32.DLL 5.0.2218.1 from WinME I have the original version of MSIMG32.DLL (5.00.1693.1) in my windows/system directory, but I have version 5.00.2218.1 (KernelEx special version) in my windows/KernelEx directory. Should the newer version be in my /system directory?

Within the past 2 days, I've performed some maintainence on a handful of PC's (some running XP, some running 7) where I've discovered that Firefox's JAVA plugin had been disabled - and NOT by the owner of the system. (I've not seen this on any win-98 systems). Is anyone else seeing this? Is Mozilla doing this - or Oracle? (or Microsoft?) And how?

Of course I already have Kex (there's no way to install any version of JAVA version 6 without it). I'm asking if anyone has something more recent than Java version 6 update 30 installed. If so, are there EASY, EXPLICIT instructions for it. The threads for the DIY kex extensions ARE NOT EASY TO FOLLOW - they are very disorganized. In the past, I've tried to install update 31 or 32 but it didin't seem to work. Are you saying that a custom DIY Kex extension *is necessary* to install a more recent JAVA update?

The last version of Java that I've managed to get working on this win-98 system is version 6 update 30 (which is a full year old at this point). The most recent is update 38. Has anyone here been able to get any of the more recent updates working under win-98? If so - how exactly did you do it?

There are new warnings out right now advising everyone to disable or uninstall their JAVA jre (for those running Windoze or OSX). All I can figure out right now is that JAVA version 7 is being fingered, and there is proof-of-concept code out there (somewhere) that I'd love to get my hands on just to see if JAVA 6 running on Win-98 is vulnerable to this exploit (I'm betting it's not). Is anyone here looking into this?

How does a DSL modem connect to AOL? PPPoE? DHCP? Regardless - why wouldn't it be more ergonomic and straightforward to just have your router perform the dsl login into AOL (just like you'd do for any other DSL ISP) ??? And regarding AOL e-mail -> do you need special software to access AOL's e-mail server, or can any standard SMTP e-mail client be used? (Is there really anything better than the old Netscape Communicator 4.8 for e-mail / usenet?)