celtish

True but even water has its pitfalls. Tap water is generally full of chemicals and impurities and bottled water perhaps even more so. Water's good but buy a 'Brita' kettle which filters out most of the junk.Misery, misery .....

Yes, because food is a (albeit necessary) poison and especially so when consumed to excess and ill-effects do not usually become obvious until later life. The human body is just not engineered to cope with all the stuff we eat and drink.I know people who have been taken seriously ill with aspartamine. We often take aspartamine and other super-poisons on board unknowingly when eating out. Don't know about some of the other stuff you mention but I can't see citric acid as being especially harmful but fizzy soda must surely be! (Two liters??!)

Do you want to hear something interesting? I mean really interesting? Sometimes I relax by running defrag in full-screen mode so I can see all the little clusters being cleverly redisposed. And I've noticed that they often form patterns. A lot of the blank clusters seem to have formed themselves into distinct columns. This cannot be explained as randomness or coincidence. Insights into this world-shattering phenomenon would be appreciated!

It's just happened again, just a completely blank autoexec.bat! It's a sod because if I don't catch it when it happens the machine just flounders on the next reboot.@Marius '95, Andromeda43 - Thanks but '@Echo off, cls'? What do these mean and, pardon my tech-ignorance, what do I actually do?

Yes, yes, yes! Thanks greatly!

Installed it. There was an error message thrown up (should have made a note of it) but the installer carried on regardless. Machine performance seems to have improved some and the refresh setting has suddenly changed from 60Hz - the minimum - to the maximum of 100Hz. Is this down to the new display driver?The install error is now corrected. Please download the driver again [14.5 MB]:http://www.mdgx.com/files/NV8269.EXE Installed it but this time I made a note of the error message, it said After the next reboot I got a message implicating kernel32. Another thing I have noticed is that the nVidia desktop manager no longer appears in the systray?

I've searched for those files but don't seem to have them

Yes, you can activsate it through 'my controls' No, I wouldn't switch from Win98SE to WinME and do without the DOS. DOS has saved my bacon too many times!

Not just yet but Xeno86 is working on it here and hopefully Win98SE will eventuallybe able to do anything you thrown at it

I commend your intention to go for Win98SE and it well supported by 'unofficial' updates on this forum. But you should undestand that there is no such thing as a perfect operating system! There are bad or careless - and sometimes deliberate bad - writes because programmers are only human. Good luck!

Agreed.

Sometimes I feel as though I'm wading through treacle. When I click on an icon (folder or file) I recently find that it often takes ages to open. There's often an incredible delay or hiatus. I run defrag, AVG, ZoneAlarm, and SpyBot regularly. I suspect that at least part of the problem may be graphics? My settings are [DISPLAY ADAPTER AND MONITOR] NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8X/AGP/SSE/3DNOW! v.1.4.0 AOC Spectrum 7V 1280 x 1024 32 x 24 cm 47143 November 2001 Any comments or insights, anyone?

Who the heck is he!

Installed it. There was an error message thrown up (should have made a note of it) but the installer carried on regardless. Machine performance seems to have improved some and the refresh setting has suddenly changed from 60Hz - the minimum - to the maximum of 100Hz. Is this down to the new display driver?

@jcarle - can't really say it has made a difference

Ouch, thats a shame. Orange gives a wireless/wired router free with some monthly phone contracts and free 2mb broadband, £5 extra per month for 8 meg. All national/local calls anytime from a landline are are also free of charge. Might be worth a call. All the best I'm not happy with Orange right now so I'll pass on that one! Thanks!

I installed it on my Firefox. Seems okay but I wouldn't go overboard about it!

Here are some of them ... (Advice about updates or errors is appreciated) AVG Free edition This anti-virus product has been continuously refined since it was first released in 1991 and now offers very impressive protection capabilities. It's relatively small, light on resources, has regular automatic updates and handles email scanning. There is a free and a pro version, the only difference being that the free version has a few non-critical features disabled and has no direct technical support. Mozilla Firefox Internet Explorer is a good browser but it has become such a target for malicious exploits that it is now a major security risk. OpenOffice.org Open Source project for the successor to StarOffice (a productivity suite ; includes word processor, spreadsheet, presentations, and more) IrfanView Includes scanner management and TWAIN acquisition, sophisticated image editing, format conversion, audio-video file playing and more. Freeware by Irfan Skiljan. CAVEAT: On the latest version, uncheck the two boxes installing an eBay toolbar and browser toolbar buttons - unless, of course, you want them! Spybot - Search and Destroy PepsiMK Software's freeware can detect and remove spyware of different kinds from your computer. K-Lite Mega Codec Pack K-Lite Codec Pack is a big freeware collection of codecs and related tools. Designed as a user-friendly solution for playing all your audio and movie files. This is the latest version compatible with Win98SE. Java Runtime Environment Java freeware allows you to run applications called 'applets' that are written in the Java programming language allowing you to play online games, chat with people around the world, calculate your mortgage interest, and view images in 3D. Many cross-platform applications also require this to run.

Auto checker/installer for Flash and Shockwave here http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/welcome/ No problemo

CCleaner v.1.40.520 is now available from http://download.piriform.com/ccsetup140.exe

In IE settings Auto Config is not ticked but Auto Detect Settings is. I'm on Orange Broadband - billed as 8MB but in practice around 5MB!@oscardog - Don't use a router.Are you sure, that white box thing orange calls livebox is your router, if it is the same as my orange adslDon't have a white box. All I have is the green SpeedTouch modem Orange (then Freeserve) made me pay through the nose for!

I'm about to go back to 1.7x. I'm also test-running GigaGet which is quite similar to FlashGet.

Welcome, Mohamed! Be happy!

Been using FlashGet from since it was shareware not freeware but IMHO the more recent versions have all been downhill. Don't remember settings and the toolbar's crxx - why do they have to use abbreviations! My present versions 1.8.2.1004 and it's no better. Someone here said the 1.7 versions were still available ? from where? I'd like to get hold of the version before they introduced the fxxxx up toolbar they introduced - anyone HELP????

@jcarle - Sorry, it's ADSL ... I shall try unticking the Auto Detect as you suggest Shall let you know how it goes