Fredledingue

----------- Could you post some of these websites addresses so that I can try? _________________________

Thanks for all the answers everybody! As I can read, some of you manage to keep a decent or semi-decent experience with interractive internet. I'll try them one day. Personaly I didn't have searched for solution that much because I'm not a fan of YouTube and such but sometimes I'm sad when it fails. Note my TV provider gave me a device which on top of on-demand programs, allows you to watch YouTubes! After all what belongs to TV belongs to TV. YouToubes, contrary to downloadable formats (I mean intended to be downloaded) is not what I would define as internet content. Everything that is streamlined is more akind to radio or tv than to internet. I also disable javascript as often as possible but sometimes you need it. Google Map doesn't want to work for me. Neither on Maxthon nor on K-Meleon. It doesn't show the requested map (it displays the US -LOL-) This is the only thing I realy would like to have working on my PC. Facebook still works moreless. But I'll bet money we will have troubles with it too pretty soon. ____________________________________

W98 users may face more and more annoyances while surfing the internet, especialy media-rich and news websites. Let's define which are these annoyances, which one are specific to the w98 system and which ones are not w98 specific but bound to happen on old machines no matter which system is operating it (for that category it would be interresting to compare with XP or 7 on the same machine). Then list solutions with or without KernelEx. Annoyances 1/ Flash Player updates required, YouTube videos not playing for some reasons... (I noticed that recently Yahoo! doesn't allow videos to be played on my system. It didn't even recognized that I had flash player installed...) 2/ Java update required (potential threat) 3/ Javascript bloat: Extremely slow, not responding, crashing the browser, etc (often seen on News website but also on this very forum) This can also appear on other OS on machine with too few resources. It's difficult to compare a W98 running on a 1.5 Ghz processor with w7 on a dual-core 2x3.4 Ghz. But Javascript can stumble on difficult things to do on w98. 4/ Javascript errors, unexpecpected reaction, failure to operate properly (Got the case with RyanAir's website, Facebook) 5/ Incompatible CSS properties. This may hide or misplace content. 6/ Bad reaction to your UserAgent identification (the way the server on theother side see your browser). This comes from mistakes done by web designers, with the script working on the server. Many sites will send you a warning that your browser is outdated if you use IE or IE-based derivate. Curiousely they will never tell you that if you use a dead version of FireFox or even a pre-FireFox flavor. That's still nothing. But sometimes the website won't even display, as the server doesn't know what to do with such unexpected machine, or trying to help, will try to do something else with even more bloat. (I suspect Google to freeze up for one or two minutes when it sees Maxthon 2 with IE6.1, whereas it doesn't on K-Meleon/FF) Solution 1/ Not using IE anymore or Maxthon 2. Use Anything else instead (FF, K-Meleon, Opera) which is compatible with your system. 2/ Install KernelEx and try more updated versions of Flash and Java. What do you think? ____________________________

mrsk565, you talked about .bat files, which can be launched with all sorts of options stored in their .pif shortcut. I don't know why they restricted that to bat files and didn't extend that to all executables. That would be great. Bat files take so little resources that's irrelevant now. That was for time when computers worked with less than 16 Mb of ram...

Yes. First of all don't think of installing anything other but w98SE, so that you can get all the upddates. There are service packs for w98FE but it's old and doesn't come close since w98se itself is already a major improvement. "- For updates: I am totally covered if I just install "U98SESP3 - Unofficial Windows 98SE Service Pack Updates", right?" Totaly covered would be an overstatement, but much better off than wihtout any update. The U98SESP3 brings almost if not all the technical improvements available for w98se. Also make sure to know how to Installing W98 on Large Hard Disk Drives, over 137 Gb and More than 1Gb of Ram More on it here and here "- For IE6 updates: Once IE6SP1 is installed, I just install "MDIE6CU 3.4" to be fully patched right? (I intend to use Opera later)." Patched to the extent that you use IE6. There are issues with more and more websites with the w98se+IE6 setup. Most websites will display normaly and fast. But heavily scripted, interractive websites may be slow, unresponsive or not working. For such website use an alternative: Opera, FF, K-meleon etc. For "normal" websites disable Javascript as often as you can. Unless your datas are realy sensitive, like lot of money depends on it, you don't need any antivirus, encryption or firewall at all. Most of us live without that bloat happily. But some of us will be glad to tell you what they use for data protection. About KernelEX see first if you realy need it. Not everybody need it but many find it useful. °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Finaly some replies! Keep it on guys! And merry Xmass to all!

For you, a revolutionary release of a new version of w98, 13 years later, is a moot subjec??? Shhh....

An exe file which purpose is to deeply modify your operating system qualifies for "medium risk" indeed. Thought Norton shouldn't delete it. Disable Norton the time you do the update. ________________

There are rumors that Microsoft Corporation has lost the source code of Windows. Yes I was refering to the 100 years for artistic works, the longest copyright period, thought someone mentioned 120 years here. I differs from one country to another. Everyone agrees that Microsoft should rewrite windows because improving the XP/vista/7 family is a desperate cause. All they can do is to increase the number of Gb it needs to be installed.

Yahoo Mail Classic works fine on W98SE and IE 6.1 (actualy I use Maxthon). It also works with javascript disabled. http://us.mc1100.mail.yahoo.com/mc/welcome? Just try it. But you must opt for Y!Mail classic on their website. _________________________

This unofficial service pack for w98se already contains all official microsoft updates, so you don't need to download anything from them. On top of that it contains unofficial updates which are newer than the official ones. I'm not even sure that you still can download w98 related material from microsoft. If you can, it means they forgot to delete it from their server. -------------------------

U98SESP's homepage! http://www.htasoft.com/u98sesp/ ______________

Unfortunately M$ has done everything to forget about w98 and make you forget about it. They eradicated w98 in all ways possible, down to erasing its name from the popular memory. For them the history of Windows starts with windows 2000. Running w98 is an abomination for them and many poeple. they may not understand well why you still want it. But in our mind, the more Windows evoluates, the more you will want w98. In 87 years, w98 source code will be public domain. Then there will be hope to update it... LOL.

Me too. Why having multi-tab apps if you still need taskbar grouping. On W7 I always mix multi-tab and taskbar groups, it's horrible. Yet I can understand the need for a more advanced, may togglable, grouping/hiding of numerous windows. We should not wish for emulating irritating function of W7/Vista/XP, we must find something better. That's why we use w9x, after all, isn't it? ---------

Would it be possible to create a special Service Pack containing updates working thanks to Kernelex and not available or not stable without it? In other words could KernelEx allow more updates to function on w9x? Here is the list of known KernelEx-only updates everybody seems to agree with: MSPAINT.EXE 5.1.2600.5918 MSXML3.DLL 8.100.1052.0 QUARTZ.DLL 6.5.1.914 NOTEPAD.EXE 5.1.2600.5512 VC_R_9X.EXE WORDPAD.EXE 5.00.2195.7155 USBVIEW.EXE 2.0.1.0 ___________________

Problemchyld, check you mail (PM)

Direct Download Link to U98sesp3.exe http://www.htasoft.com/U98sesp3.exe Problemchild, I' very glad you took over this project!

Try ffdshow. Not sure if it will helps but it costs nothing to try. At a last resort, decrypt it with a DVD decrypter, and play it from the HD...

I must say that even Vista is not suitable to the average user, and that it also takes technical knowledge to keep it efficient. Poeple who are not computer savvy end up with a very slow system full of bloat within one year or so. One hardware hickup and they don't know what to do. Vista is of no help, but saying "Contact your vendor". Typing "msconfig" in the run box is the same on Vista and w9x.

Yes but OE is the same as IE' date=' same symptoms, same baduser behavior.If you are careful you can use OE safely, at least as safely as the web. It's not dificult to make OE safe: 1/ configure it to read messages as text (disable html) 2/ don't open messages (let alone attachements) from unkown poeple. True, but how often does that happens on a w9x PC with enough ram, a decent processor (1ghz at least) and the essential system updates? The risk remains but not very often. And I don't agree: the disc scan after a bad reboot is not mandatory, and doesn't happens everytime. Most of the time I skip it without problem. More often my computer reboot in safe mode instead of scandisk. It must depends on the error encountered.