azagahl

>Have you contacted the QDMA author? Yes, about a year ago. Not very fruitful unfortunately I'll try again. At least QDMA.SYS works some of the time now; though with only the /L option working, it actually slows things down. Edit: QHIMEM.SYS also appears useless. It eats up more memory than HIMEM.SYS, and attempting to use it with UMBPCI.SYS causes an instant crash loading IFSHLP.SYS. Without HIMEM.SYS, UMBPCI.SYS at least waits to your first LOADHIGH/DEVICEHIGH attempt before crashing. So, basically, NONE of the "Q" programs work as advertised. I can use CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT full of VIDE-CDD, video utilities (e.g. ZENO), NANSI, CTMOUSE, XMSDSK, RECALL, SHSUCD..., SMARTCDX, SBEINIT, TCPIP drivers, DRVSPACE, and it works just fine and loads 98 SE.

I am glad these work for you. I just had a bad experience with XDMA (it corrupted my harddisk during a SCANDISK). It's more dangerous than ESDI_506.PDR IMHO. I think XDMA could sometimes issue some warnings at initialization time; it seems QDMA does even fewer checks.

Here is a tip: Steer clear of this software: UMBPCI, QDMA, and QCDROM. These don't work at all on my system. UMBPCI claims to support my chipset, but regardless of the options, crashes instantly at the first LOADHIGH or DEVICEHIGH command. QDMA fails to write to the disk. Ok, QDMA works for me without any options (the ones that are supported to speed up your system). But it actually slows down hard disk access! I've been watching QDMA software for a while (throughout its various incarnations - XDMA and UDMA) and even talked with the programmer for a while. No use at all!

Does anyone happen to have the GRAVUTIL.EXE utility and ENGLISH.RES file from 1998? This is an old DOS program. Thanks.

> well, personally, for many many many many many reasons (as discussed, at length, in these & other forums), I emphatically prefer sticking with IE5.5sp2 I use IE6SP1 with BROWSEUI.DLL and BROWSELC.DLL from 5.5 with ME updates to avoid the bug with super slow file deletion in Windows Explorer. I don't know why some people think IE5.5 is better; you should decide for yourself which to install.

Don't use RAMDISK. Use XMSDSK from furd19_i.zip instead; it supports up to 2 GB. It's great for a TEMP directory or even swap file, if you have tons of memory.

>Now im wondering is this deliberate did ms sabatage 9x in order to get people 2 upgrade to xp? MS produces millions of bugs, they hardly need to intentionally sabotage their OS. 98 still remains one of the safest OS's to be running. DOS is safer yet.

Of course the SP should contain IE updates. Including IE 6 SP1. What is the big deal with using IE 6? It is easy enough to fix the file deletion lag problem.

> CSIDL IIRC, SHGetSpecialFolderPath fails on 98 when trying to find Program Files. That's why I was using the registry key. Actually your second link confirms this, CSIDL_PROGRAM_FILES requires version 5.0 Shell32.dll, which IE 5.0 won't update on a Win 98 system.

I believe the location of the Program Files directory is stored in the registry key "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ProgramFilesDir". Does this method fail sometimes? Perhaps in a hacked 98 installation? If so, are there alternative means of figuring this out? Thanks!

With only 1 GB you could just use all of the memory in 98 SE. Make sure you use the Unofficial 98 SE Service Pack 2.1a. If you want to devote some to a ram disk and place swap file there (a good idea if you have more than 1 GB), then use XMSDSK, also known as furd19i.zip.

"It is much quicker" Not really, AR7 appears to be faster because it slows down booting by loading most of itself at boot time.

You should install BOTH 1.1 and 2.0. 2.0 is not backward compatible with 1.1, but exists along side it. Also, there is a service pack for 1.1.

Getting Ultima 8 to run with SB Live! is difficult. Actually, getting it to run at all is a major accomplishment. BTW, travisowens: one of my favorite games, Tyrian2000, won't run under XP and, in terms of performance, blows chunks under DosBox. Only Win 98 will work

For FAT32 file systems, a free and easy imaging tool is SavePart http://www.partition-saving.com/ I've used this a lot and never had any problems.

What's the best PC for 98 SE? I've tried an Athlon 64 3400+ with MSI K8T Fis2R mobo, 1 GB RAM, and NVIDIA 5900 Ultra 256 MB. Result: 1. VIA drivers support >137 GB hard drives. (Good thing) 2. Various DOS programs just don't work, like UDMA (UDMA driver), and UMBPCI (upper memory block drivers). All the workaround hacks don't help here. 3. Occasional blue screens, for no clear reason, even with 98SE2ME. Doesn't happen in XP and never happened with my earlier Athlon PC. Because of the glitches I'm thinking Via is not the way to go, and 64-bit is not helpful here. I want a faster PC and want it to work great with 98 SE. Any recommendations? Also, I never tried SATA. Is it trustworthy with 98 SE? What about PCI eXpress?

New games like the ones I mentioned above are most likely written If you want to bash an OS, then at least post facts rather than random guesses you "most likely" pulled out of your a**. Fact: I've never run across a game that works on XP but won't work on smoothly 98 SE. The reverse is not true. Tyrian 2000 and Ultima VII are good examples.

Do you think the Via Sata Controller driver handles things properly Probably. Check your "Hard Disk Controller" device in Device Manager. If it's still using ESDI_506.PDR, you are at risk.

I highly recommend that you should check your ram modules with a program such that MemTest MemTest never helped me; IMHO Prime95 is much better at revealing RAM errors. Especially if you choose Advanced settings (Password 9876) and then Priority 9, followed by Torture Test.

or use ntfs Unfortunately, it is more difficult to perform data recovery on a corrupt ntfs partition. Data recovery is easier under FAT32. Well it's moot for a few reasons - I have reinstalled Win98SE, WILL NOT use this SP ever again, and well, it's been a long 2 days. Don't bury your head in the sand like an ostrich. I recommend that you research the 137 GB problem before you trash your HD again.

> Have you any experience with combining this driver and Windows 98 SE? Yes. The UDMA / XDMA drivers (any version) do not work on my PC. The programmer and I communicated for a while but no solution was found.

> This really looks like 137GB+ disk problem. Yep, it really does sound like your FAT is messed up because you wrote past 137 GB barrier. This bug exists in a lot of OS's like XP pre-SP1. I recommend booting from a different drive and using Drive Rescue to search for and salvage as many files as you can: http://www.woundedmoon.org/win32/driverescue19d.html You have to have a special program like Intel application accelerator or VIA IDE Miniport driver installed in Windows 98 SE to avoid the 137 GB bug. Or use DOS only. Or delete the evil ESDI506.PDR hard disk controller driver. Or get a smaller disk.

Are there any free DOS emulators that you can download that are for Windows 2000/XP? Yes, I've tried a few. Unfortunately they are all non-functional or unbearably slow. If you want to run a DOS app/game, Windows 9x is often the only real choice. I recommend 98 SE with USP2.1a and 98SE2ME. Windows 2000 has been rock stable since SP2. I don't agree. 2000 locks up easily on me when alt-tabbing from full-screen apps. The OS may not crash but the PC is still rendered unusable. Windows XP doesn't take up too many either by today's hardware standards If you could help me figure out why svchost.exe takes up 100+ MB on my PC I'd appreciate it. Stopping services doesn't seem to help.

>> a machine running win98 should be able to accept 1.5 gigs of ram... >> or possibly 2 gigs > >That may sound good on paper but is an inaccurate assumption in todays world, >and the current day truth is that W9x is just not designed to handle more than 1 >GB of ram. I know Win 98 SE works well with my 1 GB of RAM. However, it should also be possible to exploit 3 GB of RAM on Win 98 SE. Simply use freeware XMSDSK (xmsdsk.zip / furd19i.zip) to create a RAM drive up to 2 GB. Then, place Win 98 SE's swap partition on this RAM drive.

> This isn't anything "new" Not true. The DirectX 9.0c December 2005 redistributable installs d3dx9_24 through d3dx9_27.dll, as well as the new d3dx9_28.dll. Therefore the Dx9.0c Dec 2005 redistributable supports any Dx9.0c apps linked against any Dx9.0c SDK up to, and including, Dx 9.0c Dec 2005 SDK. This feature hasn't been true of the Feb 2005, Apr 2005, Jun 2005, Aug 2005, or Oct 2005 SDK releases, which included only one of the d3dx9_24 through 27.dll's. In general, none of these redistributables were compatible with Dx9.0c apps linked against other Dx 9.0c SDK's in the above list. For example, if you install Oct 2005 redistribuitable you might not be able to run Dx 9.0c app linked against Feb 2005 SDK. If you install each of the above 5 Dx9.0c redistributables, you will only have 4 of the d3dx9_2?.dll's, and you still won't have d3dx9_28.dll. Only Dx 9.0c Dec 2005 redistributable is truly backward-compatible.