Eck

It is possible to jimmy up a McAfee installation that uses the current DAT files and engine on 98SE. Not possible with the current software, but if you have access to McAfee Home Edition 7 you can update it manually with the product updates to 7.03 and playing with the newer engine files and DAT files. I learned how to do this by browsing around the McAfee forums. I tried it for fun and it works perfectly. Even used the version 4.02 firewall. Once you get the updates and engine running it's easy to update the DAT's with the latest one's. Gotta use the VShield's vxd file from the 4320 engine since the newer one's slow 98 to a crawl. Search around over there if you're interested. However it is so much easier to just use a current free product that the whole thing isn't worth the bother. It works fine but so do the free products that are supported and update themselves automatically.

Yeah! Of course. I wasn't being at all critical, and it's entirely possible that your project will be the better choice. Certainly it will be available, unlike the discontinued commercial software. I piped in because the fellow had just finished painstakingly finding files that had gotten deleted on his hard drive and got his system set up properly again with SecondChance installed. And it's his main system. I wanted to suggest to him that maybe he wouldn't want to be experimenting too much now that his system is back up. Especially since he has something similar to what this project does. Success! It'll help everyone to make 98 more recoverable from happenstances.

The problem isn't with not having Internet Explorer 6. In fact, if you've been updating 98SE you have Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 plus a slew of updates to it. The problem is that McAfee's new software doesn't support 9x period. For your 9x boxes, you'll need to use other solutions. Avast Home Edition or AVG Free are both great free Anti-Virus programs. ZoneAlarm offers version 6.1.744.001 (I think that's the number) as the last 9x compatible firewall from ZoneLabs. Just don't get anything from the new 6.5 series. Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware are good spyware detector's. And keep up with the updates from thread's on this forum or reading mdgx.com. Don't depend on Windows Update. Use package's like Gape's Unofficial Service Pack, MDGx's 98SE2ME, 98SE2XP, 98SEMP10, and your personally downloaded updates that are fixed versions of those that Windows Update is supposed to provide but doesn't. You'll be fine and secure for a long time on 98SE as long as you do some work. No, you shouldn't use it as it comes out of the box. Download the updates for 98SE, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, MDAC, the add-on's, etc, burn them to cdr's and install them. And run the 9x compatible security tool's. Links to these and all sorts of stuff are all over these forum's and on mdgx.com. A bit of work but once you do it you're up and running and secure. You could image the hard drive's if you don't want to go through the entire process again on the same hardware.

Hey, Dr. Mac! This project will be awesome for anyone without access to what we've got (and I sent you!), SecondChance. Apart from play'n around and knowledge, no point to you and me mess'n around with this. SecondChance is like XP SystemRestore, except better. Just piping in with a personal note to Dr. Mac here. In no way am I against this project. 98 users could sure use something like this. It's just that those with SecondChance already have it!

By the way, for Avast Anti-Virus you need to download the beta posted in the Avast forum. And when they finally release the new version you should not let it download and update it. You should manually download it and uninstall the beta before installing the final new version. Not talking about the virus definitions, but the program update. The beta version works perfectly. The only annoyance with Avast is the VRDB recovery database building that takes a long, long time to build. I don't use a screensaver so I set it to build while the computer is idle. Which only means I've gotta wait until it's finished before doing anything. I'm sure AVG will fix itself up as soon as they see what the problem is. They've been good about working out any kinks and working together with Microsoft on keeping it working. Somehow, all that resident stuff in Avast makes me believe it's doing more than AVG. Maybe it's just a fancier way of doing the same thing though. Heh, I had just installed the RC1 and had to download, burn, format, and install this new one. Might as well use the latest available. I don't understand folks praising the startup speed. Not sure what it's doing, but apart from the initial showing of the desktop it still keeps starting up stuff for several minutes before finally being fully up and running. I guess I could get cracking but I prefer to wait until hard drive "shuts up" before I start doing anything. And installing programs has a lot of wait time as well. To make sure it really is done I wait until the hard drive "shuts up." I suppose it's just finishing up restore points but it makes for long wait's. Don't like it. Why does an XP restore point take about a second to make, yet Vista churns away for several minutes? Really a nuisance. Would a super powered processor and 2 GB of memory eliminate all this waiting? Whatever, I'm not about to upgrade that stuff for a few years as most of my stuff is reletively new. I don't think an AthlonXP 3200+ and a gig of Ram should be slow!

I think 98SE's viability depends upon a user accepting slightly less functionality while using 98SE. This reduced functionality is minor right now but will increase as time goes on. An example is QuickTime software not showing newer video's that depend on codec's they're not bothering to make compatible on 9x. I've found the Epox EP-8KRAIPRO motherboard that newegg still has available to be quite adjustable. Unlike my old Asus A7V880, I can actually turn off the Sata controller so it will boot Vista on its own IDE drive while the Sata drive holds my dual-boot 98SE/XP partitions. Although I installed Vista while hiding the 9x/XP partitions with Partition Magic, Vista would not boot once I turned off my computer (even though it had restarted fine) unless I disabled the whole Sata channel in the Bios. Once I did that, Vista reconfigured it's devices (reinstalled the IDE chain and removed the Sata chain) and I can bootup to it fine. When I want to go back to Sata I hide the Vista partition and reenable the Sata one's with Partition Magic and reenabling Sata in the bios. I also didn't assign a drive letter to the Vista partition within XP so no interference with XP deleting Vista's restore points (although I first formatted it with XP). With the A7V880 the Sata chain has no off switch so I couldn't have set this up. Earlier, I had the thing set up the Microsoft way with the Vista boot loader handling things. It's no good for me as even using VistaBootPro to temporarily remove the Vista boot loader in order to format the 98SE partition resulted in a screwed up system. FIXBOOT would not restore NTLOADER, my XP administrator password for Recovery Console was somehow changed, and an XP repair install botched up my programs on XP. I decided to try to keep everything seperate like I used to. Unfortunately, Vista makes this a pain in the neck (needing to do changes with the Bios and Partition Magic's boot floppy). Boot Magic cannot handle this kind of setup. Anyway, back to 98SE's viability (just wanted to share). I think grabbing the most powerful motherboard and other hardware that still mostly supports 98 now is a good idea. I say mostly, because there are still 98's problems with ACPI and other things that crop up. On this board, I noticed that a normal install gave ACPI IRQ steering errors (even though everything seemed to be working). So I've taken to using the setup /p i switch to get standard pc instead. Now there are no errors in System Info, but even now PCI Bus shows that IRQ steering has errors and is disabled. Even so, IRQ holders show and run fine and all devices work perfectly. USB 2.0 included. And, although this doesn't happen with my ATI x850 Pro, my Nvidia Gigabyte 6600GT, whenever the 8198 driver is installed, will not allow shutdown. I've got to hit restart then wait for Windows to turn off and hold down the power button for the 4 seconds. If I use shutdown, then Windows leaves, but the system stays on with a "check display settings" showing on my monitor. So to turn the computer off while in 98 I need to use restart! No problem in XP or Vista. Maybe it's just an NVidia driver issue. I get full AGP 8X speed support and it's working fine. And, without the NVidia driver 98 shuts down fine. Thanks, I'll use the driver and click restart! I use the latest Hyperion's, but use the AGP folder from the 4.43v's for the AGP driver. I just update the Microsoft PCI to PCI driver to the one in the AGP folder I copy to my root folder. Just the standard one, not the AGP 2.0/3.0 support one. I do this before rebooting after installing the latest Hyperion's without the AGP driver. It's the last driver that offers AGP 8x support on 98. All newer ones turn off AGP and use PCI acceleration. Another neat thing about the Epox board (besides being able to turn off the Sata) is it supports Non-Maskable Interrupts, so my Audigy 2 ZS works in MS-DOS Mode with the loaded Creative Dos driver and the Audigy12.exe. Most modern boards won't allow this to work. I don't load this in Windows, but use the Exit to Dos.pif to do it. Actually I needed to use this to Restart in MS-DOS Mode anyway as the use current dos configuration gave me the same problem with it just flashing "check display settings." And when restarted it just loaded Windows. But I do it one time so it creates the Exit to Dos pif for me. I hate that my posts are so long! I hope some folks get something out of my experience though. I sure hope Symantec updates Partition Magic to be able to keep everything seperate with Vista. This work-around is cumbersome!

Hey again. Just wanted to let you know that it was the 2225 Kernel patch (used that since that was the version on the pc) that caused the Close Program box to have the, shall I call it, Windows 3.1 style End Task, Shut Down, and Cancel buttons. Not totally Win3.1, but the buttons didn't jut out like they normally do. They worked though. I put back my original Kernel32.dll version 2225 and the buttons returned to normal. Then I used the Copy 2GB patch MDGx links to that installs version 2226, and the buttons stayed normal. This was the only GUI button's that I noticed were effected by the version of the patch I used. (The latest on the first post of this thread.) Any idea why it had that effect? And why the installer version doesn't?

No Nero installed, no Roxio installed. Install Nero 7 Ultra Edition without the InCD crap. Reboot to "ERROR LOADING DEVICE IOS. Real Mode Memory Allocation Failed." Use the SecondChance boot floppy to go back to before the Nero install. Install Roxio Easy Cd and DVD Burning (Easy Cd and DVD Creator 6 Platinum). Reboot to the IOS Error. Use SecondChance to go back again. Install DeepBurnerPRO. No problems. I have Nero 7 on my XP partition so that's fine. By the way, DeepBurnerPRO is also great on Windows Vista RC1. And with DVDShrink, CloneCD and AnyDVD, DVD Decrypter, and IMGBURN, along with AudioGrabber I have much the same functions that Nero gives me. I made my Vista DVD with DeepBurnerPRO on 98SE and it installed Vista perfectly. I've used Nero since 5.0 so I know it's a great program. Just didn't play nice this time for some reason I'd love to figure out. Neither did the last 98SE compatible Roxio program. But the other programs all work fine (DeepBurnerPRO, and all the rest in the Vista list above.) Like I said, Nero's DriverCheck program disables stuff in IOSUBSYS but doesn't have any effect on the startup problem. I'm wondering whether just installing WMP 9 instead of installing WMP 7.1 without the Adaptec burner then updating to WMP 9 would result differently. I only install WMP 7.1 first so WMEncoder 7.1 will work properly. That needs WMP 7.1 installed first, otherwise (9 installed or none installed) it won't work properly once WMP 9 is installed.

Well, of course one would want the registry restored along with the rest of the files on the partition. Just the files is like a back up program. The kind that doesn't help much if you restore files but the registry doesn't have the right connections to them. Scanreg /restore is nice, but what we're talking about is nicer as just a registry back up can still leave things non-functional without all the files being the same as they were when the registry backup you're restoring was created. SystemRestore does restore the registry (as does SecondChance). So what we're looking for is a way to do the same type of thing. That is restoring the entire partition, including the registry, with the ability to disable the monitoring of individual folders, such as the TEMP, Temporary Internet Files, My Documents, Cookies, Favorites, etc. That way all the remaining folders are restored, but those are left alone.

Programs seem to run fine, but I don't think the performance can compete with XP. I think this might be due to the GoBack style logging of every single change to the files that SystemRestore can recover with the right click, file versions utility. XP's SystemRestore doesn't have this, so there's no GoBack style chugga, chugga of the hard drive going on. Vista has a slow bootup (unless you use standby, which I turn off), and moving files around or creating restore points always creates a wait time while I wait for the hard drive to "shut up." The very reason I stopped using GoBack long ago, and now Microsoft in their wisdom has built that crap into the operating system with no off switch that I can see. Sure, you can disable SystemRestore (which I'd rather not do) but that right click file recovery never shuts off. So it will always log every change.

It was really hard to find 2.07, at least an English version of it. I wound up downloading a Torrent of that super pack of old PowerQuest programs to get it. The 2.0 version was on sale by an Ebay seller so that's how I bought that. 2.07 is nicer because of the absence of the AutoExec TSR. Other than that I think it's the same thing. But it would be great to have something available for everyone. SecondChance can't be that since it is still copywrited software, now owned by Symantec. Kind of like old MS-DOS games. Can't buy most of them but still illegal to distribute.

He,he, I made my Vista RC1 DVD with DeepBurnerPRO on Windows 98SE and it worked perfectly. Interesting that Microsoft Windows is the third entry in the Vista boot loader, but clicking on it just gives an error message that the OS files couldn't be located. I must choose the Earlier Version of Windows selection, which brings up the XP boot loader where I then choose Microsoft Windows to boot up 98SE. This, with 98SE and XP on my SATA hard drive and Vista on a regular IDE hard drive by itself. 98SE and XP were installed first, then I added the IDE drive and had XP disc management partition and format it but did not let it give it a drive letter. I think this saves Vista's restore points from being deleted by XP when XP is booted up. I can access all 3 partitions from Vista, 98SE and XP from XP, and only 98SE from 98SE. Been having all kinds of fun the last few days doing all this!

Urge isn't spyware, rather a music store. Not sure whether you can choose to have no music store but pretty sure you can choose a different one. Urge is default since a deal with Microsoft for WMP11. MSN Music is the default in WMP10. In response to the PowerDVD problem, there are a few items to run as an administrator after which PowerDVD 7 will work properly with its internet functions. I struggled a bit with it. When installing, right click the installer and choose run as administrator. After installing, from the start menu item to register the program, right click and choose properties, then open folder to view target (formerly find target). Right click the highlighted file and choose properties, then click on the Compatibility tab. Click to check on the Run this program as an administrator, apply and ok. Do the same Compatibility run as administrator thing to PowerDVD.exe or any of the shortcuts to it. (But the registration file needs you to do it to the exe itself so that's why I told you to "Find Target" the thing.) Open Windows Firewall from the control panel and add PowerDVD to the programs that have permissions to be "unblocked." Now PowerDVD 7 will be able to be upgraded to Deluxe, register, download the skins, and show the advertisements in it's options tab. If you already activated it before doing all this you will need to activate and register again as it forgets everything you did to it while in non-administrative mode. This way UAC can stay enabled and PowerDVD can do all its stuff. I agree that it is still a work in progress (UAC). Moving files around from my user folders to the program files folders is nearly impossible, myself or with WinZip or WinRAR. I needed to disable UAC temporarilly to get some programs installed that don't come with installers. UAC wouldn't let me unzip them to the Program Files folder I made to house them, nor permit me to create shortcuts to them in the Start Menu. Disabling UAC enabled me to do it, then after reenabling UAC they all worked properly.

Yep, SecondChance is awesome! I never knew about this and for years alternated between the hard drive grinding to destruction GoBack (also real-mode memory grabbing), and just depending on scanreg /restore. Now I find that SecondChance is actually better than SystemRestore as it's configurable as to which folders to ignore, has an emergency recovery floppy, etc. It recently allowed me to experiment with which cd burning program would actually work in my current configuration. I had problems with Nero and Roxio and IOS bootup errors. SecondChance saved me from needing to start fresh. Even when I couldn't load Windows, it would restore to any points from the boot floppy. It also works within Windows of course, if Windows will start! I actually managed to find a sealed retail cd of it, but installed 2.7 instead. Funny that the updated version wouldn't accept the real cd key and I needed to use the "funny" one included on the PowerQuest SystemTools 2006 compilation. I guess that when people used to update from the program PowerQuest used to send them a different key for the update. 2.7 doesn't use Autoexec to load TSR's. Besides that it's probably essentially the same program. I just felt weird using a "funny" key when I actually bought the program! It absolutely is SystemRestore (but better) for 9x. I wonder why it was left behind when Symantec bought the rights? Much better than GoBack in my view. No worries about what's going on with other partitions as it doesn't do anything to the boot sector like GoBack does. And you can recover individual files just like GoBack. too. Recover files that changed after a restore, the whole shebang.

Hey, Just back from having some fun installing. Buffer underun protection is there. The 2 drive's are a Lite-on COMBO SOHC-5236K and a Lite-on DVDRW-SHW-1635S. Both have worked fine on 98SE, XP, and Vista Beta builds using Nero before. And they both work fine using DeepBurnerPRO now! So it's a Nero/Roxio driver that installs that is causing the IOS error at bootup. Having the Nero DriverCheck Tool rename the known problem drivers didn't solve the problem. Just not installing Nero or Roxio did. I'm sure my XP install I'm currently building on the other partition won't have any problems with Nero and I like NeroRecode and some of the advanced Nero features so that's what's getting installed there. It's nice to have a program for 98SE that works (DeepBurnerPRO). GetRight managed the download fine and the DVD I made with the Vista ISO using DeepBurnerPRO works fine (boots to the DVD, starts the install, etc). I just haven't continued the install yet as Vista's going on a hard drive I haven't installed yet. Microsoft's going to send me the DVD anyway, as I paid postage back when I signed up for the Customer Preview of Vista Beta 2. I'll just use this one if I'm ready before I get their's. The only error with GetRight was that warning about disk space, but just okaying that and continuing gave perfect results. It even resumed fine the one time that it had to. Now I'm glad I installed it as I was browing in Internet Explorer when one site gave one of those persistant popup's and Yahoo Toolbar's popup blocker crashing Internet Explorer. I managed to Close Program box end task on Internet Explorer. While that was going on the download (and everything except the Close Program box) had frozen. As soon as I started Internet Explorer up again, GetRight jumped back into action and resumed the download. It had been near the last third of the download so I would have been really annoyed if I was using Internet Explorer to download it and had to start over! My XP install is going fine since I purchased another XP Pro retail cd for this, second computer. Microsoft is a pain in the neck! OMG! I now have 2 retail XP Home's and 2 Retail XP Pro's. All for 2 computers. I tried every freakin' thing that used to work but their security has been really tightened. Sheesh! How many hundred's of dollars do they need from little me? I know I could have called and managed a manual activation but I wanted the thing to activate over the net easily with both machine's. Well, now, $$$ later they will. At least the upgrade was on sale for $134. That's what I paid for both my Pro Upgrade boxes. And, I am a bit of a miracle worker. My Audigy 2 ZS Platinum is working in MS-DOS Mode. Apparently I hit paydirt with this Epox 8KRAIPRO motherboard. Must have non-maskable interrupts, unlike most modern board's. Stuck the DOSDRV folder in there, added the Audigy 12 patch and the references to my ExittoDos.pif, and, like magic I've got a usable native MS-DOS for gaming. I use the cd driver from my Liteon cd and the mouse driver from an imouse program that came with my first HP pc. Can't believe it works! Got enough memory too. I'm a paid GetRight user so that's the one I'd prefer to use. Seems to check the space when it begins and something in my machine is telling it there isn't enough. At least that didn't stop it.

QuickTime 6.5.2 shows everything it always did. I install QuickTime 2.1.2.59, reboot, then install QuickTime 6.5.2 and uncheck the tray icon, check to use defaults on Mime and File Types, and check to use General Midi on the music tab (so it'll use my Soundfonts instead of the Quicktime Synth). So far no alternative's will play the newer format for video that QuickTime 7 and above have. But I've noticed recently that sites will now play at least the audio portions instead of simply refusing to play like they used to. Files using the older video format play normally. I only install the older 2.1.2.59 because I have games that need that to be installed. I do the same thing on XP, but install the latest QuickTime instead of 6.5.2 of course.

I agree about the resident virus scanner being somewhat of a risk while burning. When I'm burning DVD movies I disable the ethernet card and turn just about everything off as DVD-R's, although less costly than in the past, are not cheap (at least for the quality one's.) Until recently I was disabling the virus scanner for a lot of things but all the paranoia about security these days has affected me a bit and I've been leaving it running for simple multisession cdr's, browser plugin install's and the like. You know, I just had that thrashing when I was using AVG to make its emergency floppies. If I left a floppy in after it had finished copying the files I would get the thrashing. It would end immediately if I ejected the floppy. I guess AVG was busy scanning its own creation. So I think it was the virus scanner as the Vista download completed fine and I burned the ISO to a DVD+R. Just in case, I also burned the ISO file itself to another DVD+R. I couldn't get Nero or Roxio to install on this 98SE install without an IOS real mode memory allocation failure on Windows startup, so I bought DeepBurnerPro after the trial installed and burned fine. Don't quite trust it completely though, so I made that backup of the ISO. I don't see that it automatically sets the DVD to DVD-ROM booktype like Nero does. I doubt it does this in fact. The autorun and even double clicking setup.exe didn't open the Vista screen, but that may be because this is 98SE and it might not run within this OS. The properties say it is in UDF format, so I've got that much going for it. The readme's on the DVD open in Word fine and as far as I can tell all the Vista files and folders are there. I'll see if it can boot. EDIT - YES!! Okay, so I've got Vista RC1. Gotta install XP first though. That's going on the rest of this drive, then Vista gets its own hard drive (like I have on my other PC with the Pre-RC1 Vista. Question - I notice that the Close Program dialog box now has the bottom End Task, Shut Down, and Cancel buttons not fully jutting out like they should be. Could anything in the Kernel.dll patch have caused this? The buttons work, but they don't look as pretty! They seem to be the only buttons effected. The System Properties buttons all are fully GUI's and jut out like normal. Because I wasn't certain what caused this I ran Spybot S&S, Ad-Aware, and AVG. I cleaned out my temp files and did Disk Cleanup, ScanDisk, and Defrag. I just ran System File Checker and just the mouse files have changed since I just installed Intellipoint 4.12. Oh, and the Kernel.dll of course. The only other change was GetRight. Hmm. No, closing that didn't get the nice Close Program button's back. Any idea what that change might have been caused by, or a fix for it?

Heh. Nah, I don't even know if GetRight needs fixing. I'm just guessing about why that message about needing more space came up even after applying the Kernel.dll fix. Further info - As soon as this Vista download moved past 2GB my hard drive started thrashing. I'm assuming this is because Virtual Memory is now being used. I have a min and max limit on that of 1536 so I hope that won't be a problem. GetRight is happily continuing downloading away though. The hard drive is not excessively thrashing, just noticably doing more work. No Windows slowdown is occuring. Actually it's behaving a lot better than Windows XP does when NeroRecode is encoding at high quality. No idea why the hard drive suddenly started working besides that Virtual Memory idea. Got less than an hour left so we'll see. Could also just be AVGFree doing its background scanning. Not familiar with how GetRight does it exactly. It does put a GetRight extention on the end of the file while it's downloading then renames it to the original name when done. The file appears in the folder it's downloading to while it's downloading. For all I know it just renames the file when it's done. That double the disk space guess could be it.

I think MDGx made an installer for this, but the files are in Windows\System\iosubsys folder.

Hmmm, "Create empty files on the hard drive as soon as files are added" is a checked by default option in the GetRight advanced options section. There is another option not checked to do extra write caching to reduce disk activity. Then it says that as this will reduce actual writing there are more possiblilities of failures and it might increase the need for more frequent resumptions of downloads. I'm up to 1467MB with about 2 and 1/2 hours left. I should know soon about at least getting past the first 2GB stage. The second stage I'm worried about is when GetRight is finished and tries to complete the download. I'm wondering why GetRight thinks it doesn't have enough space when it starts the download. The message recommends that I try choosing another location, but lets me just click OK and the download proceeds. I just scandisk'd and defrag'd yesterday using the Windows Me versions from the 98SE2ME pack that's installed. That should help, anyway. Cleaned out the temp internet files and the temp folders too. We'll see soon. I hope the Kernel.dll 2225 version that I had wasn't some kind of patched version that has fixes that are not in this version. It's just the one that was there after using Gape's Service Pack, 98SE2ME, 98SE2XP, and 98SEMP10. I have no idea whether those pack's just update to the Microsoft standard 2225 version or they provide some bug fixes they add to the file. Windows booted up and is running fine so far though. I just used Word to print out the above post so Office still works too.

I just installed the 2225 version of the patch from the first post. Reason - I wanted to download Vista RC1. Apparently the Microsoft download does not install its download manager on 98SE so only the web browser download link works. Thinking better of trusting IE to download that big a file without some error occuring I installed GetRight. I have a license for that but don't always install it unless I need an exceptionaly large file like this one. GetRight reported that I won't have enough disk space for the file but continued to download it anyway. Thinking I could fix this with your Kernel.dll patch I checked which version I had and saved it and installed your 2225 in command prompt only mode. Now, GetRight is still reporting I won't have enough disk space when starting the download. Of course, I do have enough disk space. Does this likely mean that because I installed your patch I shouldn't have any problem when the download completes and GetRight starts moving stuff around when it renames the file? It likely uses Windows Explorer to move stuff between its Cache and where the file is finally saved to. Not sure, but I think it works that way. The Vista download is not more than the 4GB file limit of FAT32 so it shouldn't really be a problem. But it is over 2GB. I think that's why GetRight is reporting it's too big for my available disk space. So, is this just a cosmetic error now? Meaning that although programs used to dealing with the 2GB bug automatically expect there to be a problem with a bigger file so they offer that error message like GetRight showed me. However, since I installed your patched Kernel.dll there will be no problem actually dealing with the larger than 2GB file? What do you suggest? It's downloading and reports about 3 hours left so we'll see what happens.

The freezing of the My Documents folder, explorer slowdown, etc all occur on any versions from the one installed by IE6SP1 on up. So, yeah, the older versions of those 2 files help. But I don't know how you want to handle this, as the newer files are possibly more secure. You might want to include a seperate patch that does something like the Upgrade Pack does as I described a few post's ago. That way people could make their own decision as to whether they want the bug fix or keep the possibly added security and handle the slowdown, freezing bugs with work-around's like using file manager, a dos window, or whatever. I'd rather have a working Windows Explorer as I deal with the My Documents folder and delete files a lot. Actually, the first time I tried the older files was with that Upgrade Pack and was happy I could extract just that exe and use that as my bugfix without installing his pack. I had been frustrated by the bugs for a long time. It's nice to know when I open My Documents I won't risk having to wait 10 minutes for my computer to start keeping time and unfreeze again! That fix is nice as the newer versions are still in the system folder but the registry points to the older one's in the Windows folder. The newer files are still listed in the file versions for Internet Explorer in System Information so I think Internet Explorer actually uses those, but Windows Explorer uses the older one's. I seem to recall a batch file posted somewhere here that did this manually but I never tried it. That's probably what this exe file does. http://www.wupg98.co1.at/ That's the link to his download site if you want to extract it and see what he has in his bugfixen.exe.

As I stated in the Window Media Player 10 on 98 thread in the Service Pack forum, when using this newer WMP11 codec WMP9 needed to download the older, original codec to play mp3's. It also did not appear in Audio Compression Codecs listed in Multimedia Properties. I thing you may have set WMP to not download codecs automatically and that's why your mp3's didn't play. Something appears to be wrong with how the WMP11 version of the mp3 codec set's up. If you download the codec installer and use that, it will then appear in add/remove so you can uninstall it without removing the entire 98SEMP10 package. Then download and install the WMP10 version of the codec. This installs and registers itself properly. So, now my mp3's are playing properly without the player needing to download the older WMP9 codec. It's using the WMP10 one for playback and rip. I have noticed the MSN Music Plugin is now installed. I'm not sure if this was part of 98SEMP10 or MSN Messenger 7. I do know that WMP is now erroring every so often and needs to restart. I've been also reapplying the plugin in options so it runs. Maybe I shouldn't be bothering with that. Perhaps that thing only works properly on XP. I never use it for anything anyway. So I don't know whether it's some of these newer files making the player crash or rather that MSN plugin thing. I'll see if it works right without the plugin. Maybe it errors when trying to do something it can't do on 9x. Edit - Allright! No crashing when the MSN Music plugin is kept off. Everything works now. Still just using the WMP10 version mp3 codec but there's nothing wrong with that.

Yes, the WM9 runtime is needed but that should have been installed into the system when Spock installed WMP9. I think that's part of that install. Then he also needs the WMP10 codec update for the WMP9 player on Windows 9x. That's another Microsoft update. MDGx has the direct link on the Windows Media Updates page of his site. I just got done setting up 98SE here, and for the first time used the newer 9x to XP and WMP10 to 9x stuff. I still have to copy my mp3's from my cdr's so I'll see what plays in WMP when I do that. Mine are all rips from my commercial cd's using AudioGrabber with the Lame 3.96 and 3.96.1 encoder at 192 joint stereo. I'll probably be doing this tomorrow (takes about 2 1/2 hours to copy them over). I installed WMP7.1 without the Adaptec burn plugin, WM7 Bonus Pack, WM7Encoder, WMP 9, the WMP 9 codec's for the 6.4 player, 98SE2XP (once I had 98SE2ME already installed), the WMP10 to 9x thing, the WMP10 codecs for WMP 9 on 98SE, and the security updates. Let's see if they'll play.

What is it with me and "Error loading Device:IOS Real Mode Memory Allocation Failed?" I don't get it. Thank heaven for PowerQuest SecondChance or I'd have a wrecked Windows install again. Remember my similar problem with SBLive VXD drivers? Three different computers and I couldn't get any of the 98SE systems fully built because I'd eventually end up with that startup error. Now, with a fully finished setup (all updates, addons, fixes, etc) and firewall, virus scanner, browser plugins, everything, I was ready to install Nero. I've purchased retail boxes of Nero 6 and 7, as well as Roxio 6 and 8. Used Nero for many years now without any problems like this. Well I started with the latest Nero just released. At restart I got the IOS thing. So I put the SecondChance floppy in (bless that thing) and went back in time. I tried the WMP Roxio driver update for 9x WMP, but it said I don't have any version 4 driver installed. So I tried the Nero DriverCheck utility and it renamed some of those cd drivers in the IOSUBSYS folder. Installed Nero again and still got the error. Back in time with SecondChance. SecondChance undid what the Nero DriverCheck thing did to the cd drivers so I was starting clean again. This time I tried Roxio Easy Cd And DVD Burning (It's the last version of Easy Cd and DVD Creator 6 Platinum released cheaper in a box without the paper manual.) Same stupid IOS error. So I returned the system to before again and did some research. I looked at the CdBurnerXP PRO and DeepBurnerPro websites and decided to try DeepBurnerPro. I'll buy it as it handles DVDVideo UDF stuff. Just wanted to see what happened first. What do you know? No IOS error. I started a multisession cdr with the setup files for the 2 burner programs. (I hadn't downloaded anything else new and don't like to waste cdr's on stuff I already have burned.) The cdr burned perfectly. Windows starts up and runs fine. Now what in the world do Nero and Roxio do that causes RMM.PDR to fail when called by IOS at bootup? And why does a burning program that essentally provides the same services as those two expensive program's NOT cause the error? This is on the EPOX 8KRAIPRO board listed in my signature, with the Nvidia 81.98 9x driver for the 6600GT card. AVG Free, Spybot S&S, and Ad-Aware say a clean system. Last ZoneAlarm free for the firewall. Device Manager say's all is good and all hardware works fine. No problems in System Information. All updates I know of from MDGx site that I want installed (I leave out a few things like VPN, IE DRM, etc.) No registry destroyers have been run (um, cleaners). Just the temp folders and internet stuff cleaned up regularly and scandisk and disc defrag recently run. Why can't I use the big, expensive CD/DVD burning program's I bought? And why can I use this inexpensive alternative without a problem? What gives?