Fredledingue

I use FFDShow for decoding, DivX5.21 (or any other codecs from the drop down list) for encoding. No problem.

DivX: DXN (Divx Networks) changed its attitude with the introduction of DivX6. DXN is not anymore the bunch of geeks revolutionizing the world of digital video. DXN is now a fully commercial bloatware company. DivX6 is only one of their product. And because they don't want to lose money fixing issues on w98 platform they dropped support for it. Wierd since a codec normaly, doesn't need any XP module. Gone-there Done-that, MDGx had described on his website how to install DivX6 on w98, but it required a paid license and a (separate) XP computer. I don't know if this information is still on MDGx website. Anyway it's a proof DivX6 can run on w98 but DXN co. doesn't want to. DivX6 (encoder/decoder) is not realy freeware anymore. It's not addware like DivX5-Pro was (thought the addware nuisance is very easy to circumvent) but the free trial expire after 6 months. Last time I checked (one and half year ago), a 6 month free trial is renewed at each update, make it virtualy free, but I'm not sure if it's still like that. I think the free trial has been reduced radicaly. I just want to say that if you don't want to be stuck in a free trial period, you may want to consider the old DivX5.2x-Pro. Is DivX5.2x worse or less good than DivX6? It's not sure. From what I have read it's 10~20% faster but no very big difference in quality. The quality of video encoding has reached a plateau. Two years ago, we were reading about even more revolutionizing codecs to come. Yet, they are still not widely used, incredibly slow and not that better. The only thing I recommand is not to use DivX5 Vanila for encoding. For decoding FFDShow is perfect. It offers many options which can turn mplayer2 into an ultra advanced player. It's even better than the original DivX codecs thought they also improved. If you have issues with recent FFDShow, I use the 3 years old 0.4.6 version. Check if it's still there on sourcefoge. XviD: Yes, XviD is THE alternative to DivX, free, open source, even better quality according to Xvid fans (if you know how to tweak the 276 setting options), a choice of several builds... what more would you want to dream for? Well, DVD-DivX player compatibility! Theoricaly DivX capable DVD players should play XviD and they proudly mention that on the box. In practice they don't play XviD very well if at all. You cannot insert a cd with XviD movie into your DVD player and be 100% sure that you will be watching it 30 seconds later. It may work and it may not work. That hopefully will be improved as hardware performance for these devices increase. Let's hope. WMV-9: MDGx has a link to it on his website. I don't agree that mplayer2 is working seamlessly with wmv. Some wmv files took ages to open if they opened at all. Other players, like FastStone player, handle wmv better. HTH

I just bought a second 512 Mb DDR bar yesterday so i have now 2x512 Mb. I wanted to buy a 1Gb bar, but they didn't have in store for my 4 years old computer. +it would have been twice more expensive. If you plan to add memory to an old machine, hurry up because they told me that the new ones are not compatible with few years old MoBo's. Also they told me that my MoBo, thought theoricaly limited to 2Gb, could not see more than 1 Gb. But I don't the accurate value of this information. What sellers say has always to be taken with a grain of salt. TBS, the PC recognized the 1Gb immediately. Now I have mounted a 128 Mb ramdrive on it, so it shows 896 Mb of ram, of which 660 remains free as I type. 8) Cool. I just want to know if I can move the swap file on 128Mb only and how to do that. And also how to move all the "temp" folders to the ramdrive. I'v set it via autoexec.bat but it seems a lot of program still use the old c:\WINDOWS\TEMP...

It works, but it doesn't accept "white spaces" in the path (thought it accept long names if no white space!). So use: Set Fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set f = Fso.GetFile(MyPath) oWsh.Run f.ShortPath That way you are sure there will be no white space in the path You can lauch files or exe alike.

It's only a matter of time XP become completely obsolete. XP is at the same point today, as w98 was in 2002. Let's see how the ready-to-use drivers imbedded in xp distros will perform in 2010. Given the difficulty to bypass the distor's driver automatic install and install the manufacturer drivers, we are in for some good jokes. Then software will start using Vista component which don't exists on XP. History will repeat itself. The only thing that can save XP is that Vista is a resource hog. XP will always perform better than Vista. Then poeple will start to understand that newer is not better and eventualy look for even older OSes like w98.

What I mean is disabling any change in system and program files while you are, for exmaple, on the internet. I don't think the virus makers need to know the partition tables. Howver protecting the software can be made at this level thought I don't think it should go as far as to hide the partition table.

2.9 Christmass Release Nothing very special for xmass but I thought it would be cool to release it today: -Fixed more errors in checksystem*.vbs, especialy in filepaths. (again) Makes no mistake: it still can make mistakes. On my Webpage Merry xmass!

v0.6 Christmass Release Nothing very special for xmass but I thought it would be cool to release it today: -Fixed more errors in checksystem*.vbs, especialy in filepaths. (again) _______ Patchwork, Thanks for these links and advices. I'm going to talk with my lawyers about that. I mean with my lawyers in charge of copyrights and royalties. (Just kidding...!)

"Nudies" are not exactely porn.

Francesco, you don't seem to understand that it's useless to install XP on new or older machines. Because the less ram and speed, the less XP is useful and the more ram and speed, the more w98 is stable. Upgrading your system to make it XP capable just make it useless to install XP.

First of all I would like to thank NL-Stitch for his hard work and his sharing contribution here. This project sounds much better than what I initialy thought. Now we have 3 levels of upgrade solution pack: uSP2.1 : basic system updates mostly PowerPack : uSP2.1 + cosmetic ones + media or semi-system component updates Jackhammer : uSP2.1 + PowerPack + Usefull Apps Jackhammer offer to the noob an all-in one OS with not only the tweaks and updates but also most of the softwares he may need. All this without searching ages or asking endless questions. For example it can be great for the noob who use XP because w98 doesn't have a zip compressor. Or the one who doesn't know what to do with a video that refuse to play and think it's because w98 is too old. However the real geeks (like most of us here) prefer to find these software themsleves and select the udates one by one and won't use half of the Jackhammer package content. It depends who use it and what's the purpose. Bloat: I don't agree it's bloated. In fact if everything is optional, what you install won't be bloat since you choosed to install it. But a few things are redundant. Why including TweakUI if it's already in uSP2.1? Then why including uSP2.1 which is already in PowerPack for example? OTOH, if we add apps like image editors, we could include many other apps. Audacity comes to my mind. Then instead of including all the softwares in the pack, why not creating an html/hta interface with links and descriptions of lot more softwares available for free. What If I don't want Firefox, but like Maxthon? Not only that would reduce the download burden, but users will always get the last updates. Then offering the user to burn a second CD with the softwares downloaded through the interface for further quick re-install if needed. That would mean a cd with the essential stuffs, then a second self-made cd with the customized stuffs and the updates.

There must be a way to totaly denying writing on some sectors of the HD. Once you can do that, and find on which sectors crucial files are, you are safe.

The PowerPack is about 120Mb two. That makes 120+120=240Mb What Jackhammer has that the Power Pack doesn't and takes 1.16Gb?

MDGx has DirectX 9.0c on his website if my memory serves me well. It might also be found in the "last update" thread in the "Unofficial Win98 SE Service Pack" section. As he says: HTH

One thing I can think of is (instead of administrtorship) having a "reboot in administrative mode" and "reboot in user mode" options. "User Mode" Totaly forbidding adding or modifying files in (part of) system and program folders and writing in (part of) the registery until you restart in "administrative mode". --- 2.Long file Names/LFN ? I don't understand, I have no problem with LFN? Do you? Maybe Unicode file name...

Ok, I will try to add something original to this "annoying topic" (which almost everybody participate in anyway). Why using w98? Because computer hardware progress has reached sort of a plateau. Vista has been conceived with the idea that processor speed and other device capacity double every 6 months. Yet Vista still waste several percents of the largest HD and a few machines can't realy run the aero stuff. And that's not going to change anytime soon. Not until they commercialize DNA-based processor or the even crazier quantic-state based ones. The time when you can load up Vista and have the same speed and no significant resource waste as compared with w98 is not yet there. And the internet connection required for the activation is not yet a given worldwide. Fact is that XP is going to be the alternative for "low end" computers. XP is going to be the "poor guy" OS. It soon won't be the "smart guy" install anymore. That means that w98++ will have a new friend and not be the laughing stock of the internet anymore. But XP will be abandonned as an alternative, just like 2000 was because there are merely earlier versions of Vista while w98 will keep its adepts. Then we have the Linux alternative. In the old days, poeple switched to Linux because there was only the official M$ w98. But today Linux is still Linux. It means no direct windows software support. Today poeple can choose as alternative between Linux and w98. Many will choose w98 IMO.

This year I have spent way too much time fixing Installed File Checker. I'm very angry about this because everytime I think I fixed "the last error" I find a new one. But I'm also developing the existing projects. The problem is that while the use for these scripts seems obvious to me, I have no idea if it's even remotely as useful for others... Because when I see what others has to offer, it's useless for me. Or my first reflex is to modify the code to improve it. I noticed that "Fix filename", one of the most useful piece of script I'v ever written, had a terrible bug in the online version for one year but as I have no feedback at all, I can't say if someone used it and how they enjoyed it doing nothing at all LOL.

On my PC they reside in Windows\System only. In Windows\System32 , I have a subfolder "Drivers" with other sys files but not these ones. HTH

I don't agree. Upgrading hardware is always good, also for w98.

Even by 2057 we will still use to goo' ol' .doc format.Mark my Word! If they want to go the way Real player went or get the same anti-trust lawsuits Apple had with its iPod-only format... why not? That will be only the 783th media format created. Why do you think it will be popular or even used? While CD/DVD are not a problem, Blue-Ray Dics or other future multi Giga dics may be a problem.Yet, that remains to be verified. As someone else said "the internet is OS agnostic". As long as your browser respect the www protocol, the webdesigner is guilty if the website doesn't display properly.

Most of computer users older than 30 have already purchased w98. Sure. Try to plug in a pre-XP era Creative Webcam in an XP computer. Good luck. The problem is that on XP I can only change the things I don't want to change (why removing XP themes and skin, seriousely) but I can't change what realy annoys me.

Optional, I would say.

I also love Notepad++ and use it everyday, but... it's not a "notepad" replacement. It has too many menu and sub menus to be a notepad. Some poeple think that notpad is to write code and the more developer function there are the best is the "notepad". No a notepad is a note handler. It's for text. Not for editing programs. IMO the most important is that notepad launch fast and offer a maximum space for visibility and have easy, one-click commands.

The web is not dependant to OSes. However there are some script capable of detecting your OS and telling you that based upon this information, your system is not up to date to browse their website. Of course that's BS but they just don't want to read complains from poeple who made no update in the last 6 years. So if you have w2000, they are sure that at least, your IE is from that year and not earlier. The wrose thing is that websites are increasingly dependant on scripts and on useless scripts which only makes thing slower and buggier. So to avoid system crashes, they don't correct or simplify the scripts, they just tell w98 users to keep away. The main difference with softwares, is that online scripts and even online applications are perfectly compatible with any computer able to handle javascript and less importantly vbscript. Normaly no website is supposed to include applets which are calling to XP specific ActiveX components...except to hack your system. Yet I'm still waiting for the website that won't open on my fully updated w98 machine. Y!MailBeta wasn't supposed to run on my w98 but I use it it on a daily basis.

Geez, this guy has made more srcipts than me!