Nomen

With the computer booted into DOS (98 dos), if I set up a ramdrive and somehow manage to assign it as the "A" drive, and if I copied the sata drivers to it, would I then be able to run the XP install (from the copy of the CD already on the drive) and by pressing f6 would it "see" the ramdrive (and hence see the driver files) ?

Creating a few XP installations on couple of brand new-in-box motherboards (new as in 4 years ago) before (I guess?) they turn off the activation server. I did the phone activation tonight - MS still has it working. I installed XP on a FAT32 volume. Motherboard does not have floppy connector. I was trying to figure out how to get the SATA drivers into XP during install. Entire XP cd image is already on the drive and so are all the drivers. In the end I set the motherboard to IDE mode to get the install done. After all drivers were installed I tried changing back to SATA mode (aka ahci?) but XP kacks during the spash screen. Same with safe mode. Since we're talking fat32, is there anything I can do to shut down XP, mess with some files while running in DOS, then boot back up in SATA mode and XP doesn't kack? Alternatively, can I just drop some driver files into /i386 folder (or what-ever folder) where I have the copy of the XP cd and XP will just find them during install? You can do that when installing win-98 yes? How about XP?

I don't know much about MQTT, but I'm fooling around with some ESP8266 modules and I guess I need to set up a broker and the only thing I have running 24/7 are a couple of NT4 servers and a 2K server. There's something called a mosquito broker but I don't know if it runs on anything older than XP.

Got a new (refurbished) Dell laptop for the office. It came with win-10 preinstalled. We tried to install Office 2007 on it using one of our tech-net licenses, but apparently either the licenses no longer work, or MS isin't performing online licensing / activation for office 2007 any more. We are sticking with 2007 because it's the last version compatible with exchange running on our win-2k server. But even though the activation didn't seem to work , the product itself seems to be functioning on the laptop so I'm wondering what's going on...

I just visited youtube using ie10 and after dismissing a screen that told me my browser was depreciated, I got the usual youtube front-end video selection screen and I did a search for a jazz group and I'm now playing / listening to a video in the background as I type this using FF. This is on a win7-32bit OS.

When the system has booted into XP using the original 240 gb drive as the boot drive, the new 500 gb drive is totally absent in disk management. I even quickly downloaded and installed WD data life-guard for windows and ran it, and it does not find or present the new drive to me. And to reply to jaclaz, my first few attempts to boot the system with the new 500 gb drive were with that drive as the only drive connected to the system.

This may not be an XP-related problem, but because the computer being used is running XP I'm posting this here. A few years ago I cloned what I think was an 80 gb drive to a 240 gb SSD drive. The 80 gb drive was partitioned as 24 gb FAT (C drive) and the remainder as NTFS (D drive). The C drive had XP-pro, sp3. The motherboard in question is Gigabyte, exact model escapes me at the moment, it is AMD (AM2 or AM3 CPU), 6 SATA ports, 2 IDE ports. Relatively modern motherboard (maybe 5 years old?). This belongs to a relative of mine, not local to where I am. I was recently visiting, brought a new 500 gb WD Blue SSD. Used Norton Ghost 2003 to clone the 240 GB SSD to the new drive. Ghost resized the C partition to 44 or 48 gb (ie - doubled the size). The original C drive (FAT32) was using 16kb cluster size. Offhand I don't know if that was maintained or not in the new cloned drive. Anyways, after the clone (which was performed really fast, at 3200 mb/min) I placed the new drive in position in place of the old drive, then tried to boot the system into XP. The XP splash screen appears, with the moving / sliding indicator which moves back and forth a few times, then a barely visible blue or black-screen error message is flashed before the system crashes and reboots. Upon restart, I get the usual screen (windows didn't start, how do you want to start this time, safe mode, normal, etc). No matter what I try, I get the same crash and restart. The safe mode startup scrolls a list of files being loaded, and always craps out at the same file (which right now I can't recall what that was). Presumably the crash happens when XP switches into 32-bit mode during bootup and stops accessing the drive using INT13 bios routines? Here's the wierd part. If I boot the original drive, and connect this new drive to a different SATA port, the system boots fine into XP, but in disk management the new drive is completely absent. Detect new hardware does nothing. In the bios, when I select boot device, the bios sees both drives just fine. If I swap the SATA ports the drives are connected to, and I still boot the old drive, XP still can't see the new drive. If I boot DOS with a floppy, I can see both drives (at least the FAT32 partition) on both drives. Bios is set the SATA ports as native (not IDE). I have the new drive with me, so what I plan to do next is connect the drive to another XP machine that I have with SATA ports and see if the drive is visible / accessible on another machine (with different motherboard). I can also connect it to a win-98 machine with SATA controller, and (as last resort) can connect it to win-7 machine. So based on what I've seen so far, it seems that there is a hardware incompatibility between the new drive and SATA controller that renders the drive invisible under XP. Now whether this incompatibility is caused by how the drive has been formatted (ie the ghost clone and the FAT32/NTFS combination of the original source drive) or if it is something at lower hardware level, I don't know. Anyone got any ideas or comments?

I looked at the ghost.ini that's on the bootable Ghost floppy and there's a setting for the -fro option and changed it to yes and the clone worked just fine. I should have found out about that years ago. The default setting for Ghost requires that the source drive be in perfect shape, and I've been tripped up by that more than once.

After downloading and reading the Ghost 2003 user guide (200 pages!) I see there many command-line arguments, and I think I will be using this one: -fro Forces Norton Ghost to continue cloning even if the source contains bad clusters. I would have thought that all options that are configurable at the command prompt would be available in the GUI, but I guess not. I think I'll also do a SMART check on the drive while slaved in XP and see what that says. Edit: Yes I think that when I've tried to use disk-checking tools in NT they seem to do nothing. This drive has been slaved to XP systems many times over the years for various reasons (like defrag). The original install dates back to 1998 or 1999 when it was a different (smaller) drive. edit: For what it's worth, I found this tid-bit on Symantec's site: "Ghost 2003 will not support correctly cloning anything above XP. You need GSS 2.0 (ghost 11.0) to clone Vista and GSS 2.5 to clone Vista and 7. It will also not support cloning any drive above 2TB I believe."

This is not really an XP question as much as it is a general NTFS question, but I figure I'd post it here. I was trying to Ghost an 80 gb hard drive today, a drive that I try to clone at least once a year, one of several. This is to create a backup. The drive is from an NT4 server, and the file system is NTFS. Normally the clone operation goes smoothly, but this time I kept getting a read error on the source drive at the same set of 4 sectors. Ghost doesn't say what files are located there, and it stops the clone and exits after telling me about the problem. I've slaved the drive to a running XP system and have had XP do a file-system check and a surface scan of all 3 partitions on the drive, and it finds nothing wrong. So I was going to find out what files are using those sectors and copy them off the drive and then delete them. Thinking that the sectors will become un-allocated and Ghost won't try to access them. I've found similar questions on stack exchange and superuser.com and one way to find out is to use a utility called nfi.exe - Windows NT File System (NTFS) File Sector Information Utility which is part of Microsoft OEM Support Tools Phase 3 SR2. So I ran it and found the sectors were used by a file in an RP (restore point?) folder in System Volume Information. At first I couldn't do much there until I added "all users" full control and then I could mess with those files. I copied the particular RP folder off the drive and then tried to nuke as much inside the System Volume Information folder that I could (because NT4 doesn't use it - right?). Strange thing though - I run nfi.exe after deleting the file (the entire RP folder) and it still reports those sectors being used by the file in question even though the file is gone in explorer and a file-search for the file turns up nothing. Anyways, short story is that after doing that, Ghost still balks about a read error at the same sectors, so I'm not too impressed at this point and I want to do something to those sectors to make Ghost happy but I don't know what. Any ideas?

So where is this Edge for Win-7? Have they released it yet? I have zero familiarity with Edge. Are there add-ons for it? Site, content blocking? I have some FF addons - like right-click "remove this object" that I don't know if they exist on newer versions of FF. And I need to have a browser with Java, and a browser that is compatible with various IP webcams and security cameras. I think there are some browsers where you can't enter an alternate port-number on the end of a URL, and I need to be able to do that. And an easy way to view source. Being based on chromium, does that mean it has all sorts of hooks back to google? I will not touch chrome for that reason.

> For extensions, install this extension; it'll give you access to the archive of the classic extensions. I tried installing it. It says it's not compatible with FF 39.

https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General-Read-Only/E6420-Lists-Both-Intel-GPU-and-nVidia-GPU-in-the-Device-Manager/td-p/5162478 ============= Google "NVIDIA Optimus". Basically, the system defaults to the Intel GPU in order to save battery life when there is no graphic-intensive work going on that would be enhanced by having the NVIDIA GPU active. In many systems it's also the only GPU physically wired to the display outputs. When the performance demand increases, e.g .when playing a game, then the NVIDIA GPU is activated and acts as a render-only device, doing the heavy lifting and then passing completed frames to the Intel GPU for output to the displays themselves. In general, this system works well (and it continues to get better with newer drivers), but there are times when the automatic mechanism does not select the desired GPU. In those cases, as ejn63 said, you can use the NVIDIA Control Panel to force a particular GPU to be used when a certain application is executed. You may also notice that if you right-click an application shortcut (at least on the desktop, not sure about the Start menu), you'll see an option that says "Run with graphics processor" and then allows you to select the Intel or NVIDIA GPU. That is a handy way to choose a specific GPU on a faster, per-execution basis as compared to storing a persistent profile in NVIDIA Control Panel. ============= I used to ask here, in the win-98 forum, if any video card higher than a 6200 would have better ability to decode or stream movie files on a win-98 system. I don't recall getting any concrete answers as to whether or not higher video cards (6800, 7xxx, etc) had any inherent hardware enhancements to do video-stream decoding, or if the hardware enhancements of those cards was only for video-game rendering. In this current situation, the Nvidia control panel does not offer the Nvidia GPU as the default choice for apps such as VLC, MP-Classic or Windows media player, so again I'm assuming that the Nvidia GPU has NOTHING built-in to enhance the decoding of video files (mp4, h264, h265, etc). Under the screen resolution advanced options, it shows only Intel HD 3000 graphics adapter. There is no Nvidia choice. This is consistent with the information posted above. Right now, resource monitor says I have 2763 mb in use, 221 available, 4096 installed. 1111 mb hardware reserved. I closed a IE10 (with 2 tabs open), a pdf viewer, VLC, Thunderbird, and now I have 2310 mb in use, 677 available. FF with 32 tabs is using 780 mb. Seamonkey (1 tab) is using 377 mb. dwm.exe is using 112 mb. These numbers are the "working set" column.

There are no GPU settings in screen resolution section. The only settings for graphics processor are found by running Nvidia control panel, and they seem to pertain to "3D settings" and are set based on the application. For all browsers I can set the GPU to be Integrated Graphics or Nvidia high-performance GPU. How that helps the browser performance, I don't know. For all media players (VLC, MP Classic, Windows Media player) the ability to select Nvidia GPU is removed. So if the Nvidia GPU has high performance video stream decoding, I can't see how I can put it to use. If, on the other hand, the Nvidia GPU is mostly for game playing, then that is of no use to me.

> Could you try GPU-Z to see the GPUs temperature. This is a Dell Latitude 6420 with I7 cpu. It has Intel HD Graphics 3000 and Nvidia NVS 4200M (I'm not exactly sure what it means to have 2 GPU systems or how I know when either one is in use). CPUZ says the nvidia gpu is 45C, the intel is 53C (same as the cpu). Both IE10 an FF39 are playing youtube video's just fine tonight (I just checked) but I've rebooted and restarted IE10 / FF since my post. I guess you can't leave browsers open for days on end on win-7/32 systems with 4 gb ram without some having some resource / stability issues cropping up. Does having win-7/64 with 8 gb ram work any better?

Want to post a list of your installed updates? wmic qfe list full /format:texttablewsys > "C:\hotfix.txt" (or some other suitable folder) Even if you don't post it, out of curiosity, do you have kb 958559 installed? You might want to look at this: ================== Posted September 20, 2018 (Weird "Item Not Found" Error) On 9/18/2018 at 7:41 AM, Radish said: Also found this. You need to read the whole thread. The fix mentioned there isn't discovered till Page 2: https://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/81527-need-help-unable-rename-move-folders.html The long and the short of what is being suggested there is that update KB980408 is the culprit. They do though propose a fix, see "HellGates" post.

I rarely browse youtube directly (I usually play youtube video's embedded on/from other websites) but I've been browsing youtube tonight and (unless it's my laptop) I can hear the audio just fine but I'm not seeing any video. The overlays and buttons for ads (like skip-ad) are there but I'm getting just a black screen. This is IE10. I see all the other content on the page (like comments and the list to the right of up-next videos with cover-image). FF 39 was worse in terms of seeing much on the site. Same with the current version of sea monkey. Do I need to reboot my laptop, or is known behavior? (I'm typing this on FF39 with IE10 playing in the background and msfn seems fine). I refuse to install / run Chrome if that's what you're thinking...

Take ownership of the folder, and try again? Indexing service? Is this the root folder of a drive? C drive maybe? (doesn't Win-7 have a hang up about what it allows you to create or do in the C root?)

I'm thinking of getting a NAS box. Anyone have any first-hand experience with file-access between a NAS and Win-98? Does it work? No problem with any NAS? Or maybe just some?

Yea I forgot to mention Java. I also found that youtube video playback on the 45.9 version horrible. Some kind of weird, spastic stuttering effect was going on. I reinstalled my 39.0 version and everything came back, including the addons, so I'm happy again. For some sites that don't seem to work (and I don't want to mess with my noscript settings to see if I can fix it) I do run Seamonkey (2.49.4). One thing I don't like about seamonkey is (a) the lack of a dedicated search box beside the address bar, (2) can't add or remove tabs as easily as in FF. I didn't mention I have 32-bit Win-7, and I'm thinking that (and anyone with first-hand experience please confirm or deny this) that to increase performance and stability of a browser with a couple-dozen tabs open that 8gb (or more) ram makes a difference and hence that's one advantage of win7-64 over win7-32 (with 4 gb). I'd need a compelling reason to basically throw away the DIMMS in my Lattitude if I went up to 8 gb if I wanted to put win7-64 on this thing.

My version 39.0 FF got stuck in starting in safe mode, and the only option was for me to continue starting it in safe mode or "refreshing" it - which means nuking all my addons (so it says). I didn't want to do that, but I found no instructions as to how to force it to start normally. I looked through the FF version history and decided to download the 45.9.0 ESR package, and I ran it, and it now starts fine, and my short-list of add-ons is intact and seemingly functional. My addons: about:addons-memory 2016 noscript nuke anything enhanced remove it permanently session manager stylish user agent switcher But I find this 45.9.0 version horrible. It doesn't render the content of some pages - it leaves big black sections that I can make to appear if I drag the FF window off-screen and bring back on-screen. So is there any consensus as to the "best" version that maintains good compatibility with old addons yet gives acceptable screen -rendering performance?

DMABufferSize in 386 section of system.ini was already set to 64 kb. In device manager under disk controllers I see that I have a problem with the Secondary Ultra ATA controller. It say the device is either not present, not working properly, or have all the drivers installed. This is the 4'th (and last) item listed under hard disk controllers. I have only 1 IDE drive in the system, and nothing is connected to the second IDE port - I assume that's what the secondary ATA controller is for? The first item is Intel 82801DB Ultra ATA storage controller - 24CB, the second item is Primary Ultra ATA controller, the third item is Realtek USB disk controller. Those 3 items are showing ok. The realtek driver is for a drive-bay multi-card reader. I go to the secondary controller properties and select Update Driver. It finds 2 INF candidates - one is the original win-98 mshdc.inf and the other is intelata.inf (dated 10-15-2002). I select that one. It then asks for iata98.cat. I have two - 7/6/2001 (1 kb) and 10/30/2000 (8kb). I guess I should have one dated 2002? I select the 2000 one. It's happy with that, and finishes the install. Wants me to restart. I restart - and I don't have the problem any more (see first post). I go to device manage, and see that there is no issue with the Secondary Ultra ATA controller, but now there is an issue with the realtek USB controller (either not present, not working properly, or does not have all drivers installed). I look at driver details, and it says it's using intelata.mpd (october 2002) and ios.vxd. I have a 9/13/2000 version of intelata.mpd. I boot into dos and swap the files - but windows doesn't start with the '2000 version. I swap it back. With the realtek controller showing a problem, I can't access the multi-card reader. If I fix this Realtek USB controller issue (by reinstalling driver) it works, but I'm back to having an issue with the Secondary UltraATA controller. The realtek now shows it's using rtport.pdr instead of intelata.mpd. So at this point, the problem I described in the first post is gone, the multi-card reader is working, device manager says there is a problem with Secondary UltraATA controller (which doesn't bother me). Oh, one other thing - and I think I noticed this before I did any of this. Bring up file explorer, right click on any drive. I get a "this program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" message. Details say invalid page fault in Kernel32.dll. If I dismiss the error, the message goes away, explorer does NOT close, and the right-click context menu appears as if nothing happened.

Maybe this is an old / legacy thing or maybe I'm the only one who sees this. I've got a fair amount of icons on my win98se desktop. Every time I open explorer (my computer) and select a drive, the contents of the drive will be displayed, and I might start scrolling down to a folder of interest, but in 1 or 2 seconds the screen does some sort of refresh where the explorer view is set back to the top of where I was scrolling and all the icons on the screen go through a wave of being re-drawn. After that, I can scroll down again and select the folder I want, and continue to explore other folders, and I don't see this screen refresh again. It only happens the first time I open explorer and start browsing a drive. Is there any way to stop this behavior?

VLC 3.0.4 says (in the codec tab) the video resolution is 2304 x 1296, buffer dimensions 2304 x 1312, Planar 4:2:0 YUV, Mpeg-H Part2/HEVC (H.265). The file is 5 mb (5.156 mb) and 25 seconds. The video is black and white (was taken at night in IR mode). VLC will "play" the video (time cursor will move along the bottom) but only the first frame will show on the screen. This is on Latitude e6420 laptop (core i7) windows 7 (32-bit). This same video file will play fine on a dumb win-7 (64-bit) desktop PC with some socket-775 CPU and onboard graphics (intel I think) with same version of VLC. I was just wondering if it would play on a win-98 system because I think it needs VLC 3 minimum.

I think starting with VLC version 3 you can play HEVC H.265 files. Don't know about Mediaplayer Classic. In any case, can Win-98 play these files, using any method or program? Even though I installed the latest VLC yesterday on a i7 Dell Latitude (win-7 32 bit) with nvidia accerator, it won't play one of those files - it just shows the first frame as a still image. The file is only 5 mb - it's a 25 second clip from a 4k IP camera.