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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?)

I've never used photo-shop. What I do use is PhotoPaint - which is Corel's photo editing program. I'm a long-time user of Coreldraw version 9 (didn't know that version 11 can run on win-98). The OP doesn't seem to be asking about photo-editing (but many of the responses here are focusing on photo-editing). The OP is asking about a drawing program (which naturally CorelDraw is). Does Photoshop also function as a drawing program?

Why do you even need to run any software to access the internet - or your AOL e-mail? Is this dial-up or DSL? (I've never understood how AOL works, or why anyone would still be using them...)

Yea, we used the SOYO P4 I845PE ISA for 6 years (must have bought about 100 of them at least). And we've repaired at least 20 of them so far (bad capacitors). When they went out of production, we switched to the Adek P4BWA (very expensive - $320 each, not including the CPU or RAM). I have 4 or 5 of those left, but only for legacy upgrades (we have fully changed our products to USB so our hardware is no longer ISA-based as of 2 years ago). I think all the Soyo i845PE-ISA boards (both types - with and without on-board video) will eventually go bad because of bad capacitors. If you get more than 3 years of daily use out of those boards - you're lucky.

My win-98se system is using SI3112r.mpd (version 1.0.0.51) and I'm not seeing any sort of file-corruption problems on any of the SATA drives I connect (500 gb, 700 gb, 1.5 tb). The only problem I have is that free-space gets out of sync and I have to run scandisk once every 2 or 3 months.

Yes it will, and Asrock even lists Win-98 in the specs for that board. Asrock apparently restarted production of that board (revision 3) a few months ago, but I have to wonder why. You can't really buy new socket-775 CPU's any more (only used) and the ram is also non-existent (DDR-1). (but I have 5 new-in-retail-box socket 775 CPU's to use for new systems) Asrock should have added at least one ISA slot to this board - because some industrial motherboards with socket-775 and ISA cost more than $300 (I have bought 10 such boards for special use at $dayjob over the past 3 years). I would easily have spent $150 for this Asrock board if it had one ISA slot.

=========== NOTE: If you have several thousand 0kb OEM*.inf files, delete those files first. If after deleting these files, the issue still exists, then apply for this hotfix. Use the following steps to delete any files found: =========== If I have several thousand 0kb inf files, I'd be p***ed off. How would I get those files back? And what caused them to have zero size in the first place? And what if I *DON'T* have any zero-size inf files? Will installing this hotfix screw up my system?

=============== Unofficial Windows 98 SE Q301540 IFSMGR.VXD 4.10.2227 Fix IMPORTANT: Install this Fix ONLY IF you have ANY 0 (zero) Bytes *.INF files! =============== Can anyone elaborate on that "zero-byte" inf file installation criteria?

Wow. I didn't know that Micro$haft was still fighting these FAT / FAT32 patent wars. Did MS go after Garmin too? Aren't we at the point yet where these patents have expired? Has Apple licensed these patents? (their products can read FAT/Fat32 volumes - can't they?)

The GPS unit has "Model 4EN42 Z1230" printed on the back . Based on web searches it seems that those numbers can map to several (or many) different TomTom units - Start 20, Start 25, Via 220 to name a few. Mine in particular (according to the box it came in) is a Via 1400. My XP pc has about 16 services running when it starts. Two in particular that I DID NOT have running were "Universal Plug and Play device host" and "SSDP discovery service". At the time (last night) I was seeing the TomTom showing up as an "Other" device in device manager. I went to TomTom's website and went through a registration process where it downloaded some files and via http interface it interactively communicated with the GPS and uploaded some software updates. This morning I no longer see "Other" in the device list. I do see two entries in Device Manager under network adapters: TomTom Remote NDIS / USB 802.3 miniport driver. Even when I start the UPNP device host / SSDP discovery service, and unplug / replug the GPS into the USB port, I see nothing in terms of new storage volumes. I scan for hardware changes and see nothing new. The "Other" in device manager is still gone. So is the presence of the NDIS drivers now preventing XP from detecting the device as an attached storage volume?

I've got a TomTom GPS that's about a year old that I've rarely used. I've been playing around with it lately and I plugged it into the USB port of one of my PC's running XP-SP3. Windows didn't know what to do with the device - so in trying to install a driver, I looked at the list of possible devices. Is it me, or am I wrong in expecting that XP should have a "GPS receiver" in it's list of possible device types? So ok, XP doesn't seem to have a generic GPS receiver driver. I did a bit of googling and found this statement on TomTom's website: "TomTom devices use the standard drivers for USB mass storage devices which are pre-installed on Windows Vista." So my next question is -> what are these magical USB mass storage devices that apparently Vista has, but XP doesn't ? Is there any way I can give XP this so-called "standard driver for USB mass storage devices" so that it can at least see the GPS receiver as some sort of attached drive or volume?

According to microsoft, the file 256015usa8.exe contains a newer version of Ifsmgr.vxd. Specifically (for win-98se) version 4.10.2223, dated 03/02/2000. On my system, I have version 4.10.2225, with a file-date of Sept 19/2000. So there is a more recent version than the one you're looking for.