Eck

That's exactly what I do! Except for the 16 bit version. I don't have a game that uses it. I install the 2.1.2.59 32bit Quicktime, adjust the control panel to "optimize by bitmap" and 22050 audio, reboot, then install Quicktime 6.5.2 on 9x or Quicktime 7.0.4 on XP. I tell Quicktime to not load the system tray icon and the use default file formats and MIME, and to use General Midi, reboot, done. But, that Picard Dossier thing requires the older 32 bit Quicktime 2.0.8 (or .3, I forget). It's the one that comes on the Borg cd. I used to install it, as well as the other two, so the Picard Dossier would work (doesn't unless that version is installed), but now do not because I was tired of needing to do stuff like fixing the file association so that the newer Quicktime Picture Viewer is used instead of the 2.0.8, the newer player instead of 2.1.2.59, and fix the JPEG (all by itself instead of with the group it belongs in). As well as fixing the thumbnails. It never gets back to exactly where it belongs. 2.1.2.59 does not do all this stuff, only the older version. And once the latest Quicktime is installed over 2.1.2.59 all is well, with the latest taking over the proper associations. But if 2.0.8 is there, it's still messed up. That older version does the same crap to XP as well. And then I have to manually type in where that shim thing is (see, I already forgot) that opens Windows Picture and Fax Viewer in the File Type Associations properties. It's just a pain in the neck. Once you've seen that Picard thing a few times, it's really enough. I have much the same in the Star Trek Encyclopedia 3.0. Also, I actually enjoy some of the bloat the official versions come with. I turn off what I don't want. But sometimes I want to be presented with some nice links to see stuff. (Not the RealPlay huge page, I tell that to start with the player only.) The page Quicktime opens is interesting at times. I just wish all the stuff would work with 6.5.2 on 9x, but I suppose that's not happening. Apple has moved on.

Yes, I understand but IE does have its occasional uses. I've always read about these options but never took the plunge! Also, I've just toured about (been watching Buffy lately so have a little Giles going I suppose) and I noticed that although the movie trailers on the Quicktime website won't play, most of the links on music sites and even those from the Apple site do. And, after having watched a few of these when I had Quicktime 7 on XP, and now with Quicktime 6.5.2, these things just play better on Quicktime 6.5.2. Eh, I think I'll manage okay for now. If I like trailers that much I can just go to a theatre and see one movie and I'll get all the trailers I can stand. Adding to the not compatible with 9x subject, how about those new Creative X-Fi soundcards? Judging by the Creative forums, many buyers are finding they're not compatible with anything! (He, he.) Better not keep talking like that though or Creative will downgrade me again from "Trusted Contributer" to "Frequent Contributer." For some reason they recently upgraded me back to trusted. Well, I do try to help some folks there.

I don't use it a heck of a lot either, but do consider the older version for the older games and the latest version for the occasional website visit as essential in my setup of a computer. This is just so when I want to see something I don't need to endure installing a plugin. The links will just play. That's the idea, anyway. Apple has just made this a bit tougher if I'm using 9x. I have no idea whether there are XP necessary files in Quicktime 7, but since it's designed specifically for XP/2000 I assume there are some. Searching around I haven't come across anyone saying they've installed Quicktime 7 on 98SE, and I'm pretty sure that if it could have been done then the Quicktime Alternative folks would have made their latest versions 9x compatible, but they haven't. If they can't do it, I'm fairly certain I can't.

Which drivers do you mean? The cd images posted by badboy on the Creative forum's? For XP you don't need that, as the Creative download sections have the Unipack full setup downloadable, and then you just add the PlayCenter 3.02.52 and 3.02.70 to what you install. The other updates you can't use since you don't have an original version (minidisc, remote center, etc). But for 9x, they just offer a driver for those who lost their install cd and that driver is not the updated (bug fixed) version. It is the older, crappy sounding and bug ridden WDM driver from the Liveware 3.0 cd offered with the 5.1 cards. You don't want to install that. So badboy's iso would be one way. Another way is calling Creative who will sell you the modern cd with all the modern updated applications and drivers (252's, like the Uni-Pack) for 9x, XP, 2000. The same one that comes with the last versions of the SBLive 5.1 Creative released for retail (with the SB0224 cards in them). I bought one once which is one version older than the Uni-Pack, with the 244 drivers. They just charge like $5.00 for it, not too bad. I hope that's not still what they're selling, as it is not the 252's but rather sort of the first (like, beta) version of the unified Audigy 1, SBLive drivers. I think you could experiment with manually updating that to the extracted Uni-Pack for XP download in device manager or (preferably, if it would work) using the CTZAPP exe program from the driver folder of that download. I think that as long as the cd ran it's setup you would then have all the necessary 9x files installed already so the Uni-Pack driver would have what it needs to work on 98SE. I think you need some cd with the newer set on it for getting those drivers to work on 98SE. Creative claims on their website that the original Liveware 3.0 (the 5.1 version on the cd that comes with the card) is still the best for 98SE. Today, I disagree with their assessment. I found that driver will cause Windows to eventurally give an IOS error on startup and the system will no longer boot. I tried with an SBLive Platinum 5.1 on 4 different installs on 2 computers. Eventually, as I updated Windows, that boot up IOS Real Mode memory allocation failure would make Windows inaccessable. So, no cool vxd driver with the old SB16 emulation on 98SE anymore. But, the 252 WDM's are better since they work flawlessly and include the cool Advanced parametric EQ settings for music! But yes, you do need a cd with at least the 244's on it. Edit - Or, you can somehow get me your address and I could burn a cdr of the whole package and mail it to you. I don't know how we could do that though.

Hey, that's not your fault if ATI put the wrong year there! My old brain didn't even think to look at that. The whole driver and ATI Control Panel package, and the ATI MMC 9.13 (as long as you have the cd for their DVD installer detection and install all the required downloads) work great on 98SE! I don't know if the DVD decoder will download to 98 though. The installer downloads, of course, but I don't know if the DVD setup file the installer downloads will download to 98. I had mine burned to a cdr from when I downloaded it on XP and just choose to install from a previously downloaded file and type in where it is (or, when the browse button works, you can browse to it.)

You know, I've mean't to bring this up but always seem to forget. Has anyone noticed the same problem? When using 98SE2ME the hardware driver detection and install process suffers from long delays. I just experienced this again when updating my ATI driver to the just released Catalyst 6.2 for 9x so it reminded me. I generally have all my drivers installed before using 98SE2ME so that's why I seem to forget to bring it up. What I'm talking about is that the system actually freezes between each step. I just need to wait, like forever, for things to resume. And even the steps themselves happen extremely slowly. It's happened every single time there is a driver install on any system that I have put 98SE2ME on. This time, with the Catalysts, the ATI setup program actually froze Windows after completing everything except for the final message that tells you to reboot the system. You know, the InstallShield (or, whatever they use) screen that asks you whether you want to restart now. This didn't come up as the system froze I believe just before it would have, so I needed to reset the computer. I say it was just prior to this because everything the ATI program installs was there and fully functional after I started up again, including the add/remove references in Windows control panel (generally the last thing installed by these sorts of programs). Do you think it would work to not replace the 98 hardware driver manager files with 98SE2ME? The ME files don't really work smoothly. I guess they work, but a freezing Windows I would think would potentially muck up these driver installs in some cases. Even though they've worked for me, I can see where they might mess up if Windows in constanly freezing and unfreezing. Or, is this not possible because these files have other files that are dependent upon them?

Sorry! When I said XP I mean't 2000/XP. Whatever operating system's that Quicktime 7 is compatible with. This is bad for 9x users, who can only install Quicktime 6.5.2 and earlier. I checked some info on Quicktime Alternative. Even their newest versions are only for the NT based operating systems. No 9x since they are based on Quicktime 7. You have to use the older Quicktime 6.5.2 based Quicktime Alternative on 9x systems. And I also noticed there is a web plugin for Quicktime Alternative that enables the embedded web stuff to work. Of course, this just means they will work if the files are compatible with your version of Quicktime, just like the official Quicktime. So there's no advantage for me to use the Alternative rather than the official Quicktime. So far I haven't encountered this sort of thing with any of the other software I use. Inevitably, this stuff is going to happen though. I do have 2 retail boxes of XP Home so if things get super annoying in the future I can always DOWNGRADE again to XP!

That would be a great fix if it was fully effective. I don't think it's just the mov file format though. It's internet sites either using that new codec only available on Quicktime 7 or somehow shutting down the links when they don't detect Quicktime 7. Apple REALLY wants everyone updated to 7, and they don't care if the minicule percentage of users on Windows 9x get shut out. I don't think the just the Quicktime codec and MPClassic will enable these files to play. Am I thinking incorrectly? (Wouldn't be the first time.) Is Quicktime Alternative now up to date with the newer file formats introduced in Quicktime 7? I'd imagine those folks are working on it, but I've never used it. This makes me unsure how using that with, say, MediaPlayerClassic would interact with embedded Quicktime content on the internet. Never having used 3rd party unofficial codec packages, I'm inexperienced with how it all works. For Quicktime I've always installed the 2.1.2.59 player so my old games would be happy and whatever the latest official Quicktime release is so the web functions would work. I don't think the older player is even used by the old games. The file associations remain with the new player. The game just detects the old player on the system and so it doesn't error out. I have one old Star Trek Picard Chronicles encyclopeic type thing that only runs if Quicktime 2.0.8 (I think that's the one) is installed. Since that version changes the file associations too much I've taken to do without seeing Captain Picard's Borg experience. Saw it, been there. I'd rather not have to play so much with the file type settings to get them near where they belong. It moves JPEG out to a seperate type. And I need to apply a fix to restore thumbnails since 2.0.8 breaks them. I can do without that. So, I've established that Apple is strange the way they design for the Windows versions of Quicktime. But my point of putting this here was to say that here's one example of total 98 abandonment. It seems they want you to throw out your old games and operating systems and buy new stuff. BUT I LIKE MY OLD STUFF! From my experience with 98SE now, I'd say it's running my hardware better than XP can. Things are noticably zippier!

Okay, thanks. That's what I thought. Just wanted to be sure. Earlier I had posted that I saw no sign of the ESDI driver, but I just noticed it there in the IDE Primary so I thought I'd mention it. Since it's not managing any hard drive, it's not going to be causing any problems.

On a 98SE no longer supported mode, has anyone noticed what Apple is doing with Quicktime? They're encouraging webmasters to encode in formats that Quicktime 6.5.2 can't use (since Apple won't update it to allow it.) And, even on video's that will play fine on 6.5.2, the player will stop playing the video (which had been playing fine, and proceed to go to the playing site's video page where you can click a link that tells you to install XP if you want to play these video's. (A system requirements page.) So they'll play fine but Apple doesn't want to let the 6.5.2 player do it! Last time it happened, I was at a site that offered WMP as a choice so I just finished the video that way. Jeez! I was halfway throught the video in the Quicktime browser embed when it stopped and hijacked me back to the page of the website's Quicktime video's. And when I just clicked the link again it opened the embed for a second then immediately hijacked me back. So, like I said I just watched it in WMP9. But that's not possible on sites that are only Quicktime. And has anyone noticed that 6.5.2 plays and sounds better than 7.0.4? The thing's still buggy. Even Microsoft issued an codecs update with WMP 10 codecs for the 9 player. What's with Apple? I can see them making the new player only for XP, but why not let their most recent older version still play stuff? I'm not talking about that new format but all the stuff it's completely able of playing.

And, using Firefox as default for browsing couldn't hurt. Although, if folks follow your advice and turn off all that stuff I suppose IE is just a safe. Personally, I'd rather have the functionality and don't mind the ad's on web pages. It's the popups and being diverted to other sites that are the annoying things. But using Firefox with the popup blocker enabled generally protects against that. And since I don't wander around all that much I rarely encounter websites that do evil stuff! I install the Yahoo Toolbar for the occasional IE use, like when a site uses ActiveX for stuff. Hardly ever really. And the Yahoo thing has its popup blocker. When using XP I don't even install that. XP's IE has its own. I recently was using a very old computer so I didn't install Firefox since IE plays better with limited resources. I hadn't used IE for years for general browsing. Ya know what? I really didn't miss Firefox. Internet Explorer is pretty good! No wonder the browser usage percent, although growing for Firefox, is so heavily IE. After all, it's built in and unless folks have problems most will just use what their computer comes with. I've read that HP will be including Firefox on new computers and offer a choice of browsers as part of its OOBE. That's cool.

I don't know if it's so locked up. My ZoneAlarm always shows ton's of stuff it has blocked from the outside world. It would be nice if I felt 98SE was so secure. Then I wouldn't need to fuss with Virus Scanning, firewalls, Spybot S&S, etc. But I'm thinking there must be some stuff on your system you didn't ask for if you never block anything and never scan for spyware. Unless, and I don't know much about it, but I've read some folks apply some blocking themselves with Router's and using the hosts file. I'm directly connected with a cable modem. I think I still need my firewall's virus scanners, spybot checkers, popup blockers, etc. I don't normally go to potentially dangerous websites, but occasionally find myself wandering. It's nice to know I have some protection installed. He, he! So by going back to 98SE I've upgraded my security further, eh? Cool!

Oh, and the ESDI_506.PDR is an active driver on my IDE channel's. However the only stuff on those channels are my DVD-ROM and CD-RW drives. So the ESDI_506.PDR doesn't seem to be involved in managing my hard drive. Right?

All still going fine with the 250 GB SATA. About McAfee, when I noticed the slow Windows 98SE startup loading and slow Explorer while McAfee was active I checked the McAfee forums. Apparently, many users have reported slow down on 9x systems (and recently, some complaints even on XP!) with the 4400 engine. The helpful long time users on the forums say that downgrading to a previous engine (which only works with the VirusScan 7) was the only way to fix this for now. They are working on a new engine but no one has posted publically yet as to what problems the new engine might solve. So, when using XP (where I haven't noticed any slowdown problems, even though the moderator's do say that this has effected some users), I use the latest McAfee. But on my 98SE I'm using AVG Free. Sorry to get off on a few different things here, but they came up when describing my experience with using the 250GB drive and others commented too. So that's why I'm discussing McAfee rather than the 137GB limit! I'm also looking forward to the 137GB limit being solved in a way that works seamlessly with Windows 9x and its other drivers.

How about that? I've never clicked on them so I didn't know. Plenty of games here without that, but maybe I'll check 'em out someday.

Ah! Ati's new Catalyst 6.2 for 9x systems now recognizes the card and installs automatically. Still gotta play with the Via AGP stuff though.

I'm assuming that Windows Update might be left there, but never updated. I've read that some folks have managed to get to the old Windows 95 Windows Update site. They didn't say if it worked. Really no problem. Just download them all from mdgx.com. Either get his kit which has his descriptions of the updates in text file format or just print out the pages you need. Just organize them well in folders and sub-folders and burn them to a cdr. It'll take time, but you only do it once! Keep an eye on the thread here regarding new updates. There will be a time when the system will not be completely secure, but no system really is anyway. If an attacker figures out an unpatched entry you're suseptable to having an attack succeed. This would be true even on the latest operating system. Just keep your firewall's, virus scanners, spyware apps, etc updated and the system patched as much as is possible and in most cases nothing bad will get ya. They stopped making fixes long ago (after all, we are on "extended support.") We just get security updates now anyway. Those WILL stop in June. So, once in a while we might get attacked and lose everything. Just make sure you're all backed up and this shouldn't be the end of the world if it happens.

Just a suggestion. mdgx.com has all the updates in order of oldest being last, newest at the top. He has descriptions and links to all of them too. I downloaded each of them to it's own folder within parent folders of 98SE Fixes, 98SE Add-ons, IE Fixes, MDGx DX, MDGx WMP. Works for me. I used that for a time, but now have gone back to the Unofficial Service Pack and 98SE2ME. I just usually fill in with what I want from all the MDGx downloads. It's ton's faster that way. Installing one by one is a pain in the...

Aw, it's not that bad once you get used to updating a driver here and there in device manager, only when necessary. Good news on the ATI front. They released the Catalyst 6.2's for 9x/Me! And the installer now runs the setup and installs the driver automatically. I don't want to tell you the problems I had after uninstalling the 5.9's and using DriverCleaner. Hmm, well I want to tell you but I don't want to type it out again. Copy and paste time. Hey, now I even get Smartdrive! ATI released the Catalyst 6.2 for 9x/Me and, with some trouble after uninstalling the 5.9's using DriverCleaner, I updated to them. The Cat installer now recognizes the card and sets up the driver itself, and I therefore get Smartgart again. The setup crashed (froze my mouse and Windows) after apparently taking care of everything. Although I needed to reset the computer to restart, everything was installed including the stuff in add/remove so I think all I missed was the final screen with the prompt to restart the computer. That may have been caused by my uninstalling DAO after removing MMC. Sometimes that removes things related to install programs. No problem since I reinstalled all the MMC, DAO, etc stuff and everything works. I did have Windows problems regarding the display after uninstalling the older Cat's. I did the usual things. Add/Remove programs. Uninstall ATI MMC, Parental Decoder, DVD Decoder, DAO. Restart. Uninstall ATI Control Panel, ATI Driver. Change the AutoExec Path statement removing the ATI reference. When I checked the device manager before rebooting, I noticed that unlike all the previous times I've uninstalled ATI, this time the Radeon was still listed. So I updated the driver to the Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA) and the Standard PCI Graphics Adapter for the secondary display. I then ran the Catalyst standalone uninstaller and rebooted to Safe Mode. I noticed there that I had forgotten the WDM stuff so I booted to normal mode and removed the Network Microsoft TV/Video Connection but needed to go back to Safe Mode to remove the now Ghost ATI WDM stuff. Once removed and rebooted again to Safe Mode I ran DriverCleaner and used the cleaners for what I had uninstalled. The Display Adapters had looked fine in device manager in Safe Mode, but back in Windows I got an error message regarding the display card not working properly. The Display Adapters in Device Manager were gone. I tried applying the 16 Color, 8 Bit setting and rebooting but got the same result. I tried using the New Hardware Wizard and installed the Standard PCI Graphics stuff again, but although they would now show up, I couldn't install any monitors and kept getting that error message at startup. Well, I said a prayer and ran the ATI WDM and Catalyst 6.2 setup's. Eureka! That fixed everything. And since I put the DAO and MMC stuff back I suppose the system has all its parts again. The only difference besides getting Smartgart is that the System.ini file boot section now shows the Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA) as my display=. That had been my experience with all my previous ATI cards, so I think that's okay. The only time that display= listed the Radeon was when I had installed the beta Catalyst 5.9's manually. And, maybe that had something to do with Windows not accepting the Standard PCI thing as my working display adapter while updating. Anyway, it all works! End copy and paste. Now you see why I didn't want to type that again. The average user would have possibly given up at many of my setbacks, but the average user probably isn't still using Windows 98SE! It reminds me of folks complaining on the Vogon's Dosbox forum about Dosbox being complicated at times. The administrators usually reply that if you didn't have the patience to figure out how to get your games working in MS-DOS then you shouldn't be bothering with Dosbox. If you can overcome setbacks in 98SE, you learn stuff and get rewarded with a more responsive, faster system than XP. And krick, Maybe the Via AGP will work for you without using the older driver. On 3 Via chipset systems they haven't for me, but at least you know that if you see the AGP not being used right you can fix it. If you need to go back though, you need to rerun the Via Hyperion installer for the ones you have installed first and tell it to uninstall the AGP driver. On reboot, Windows will install the Microsoft PCI to PCI thing. Then you run the older 4.43v's and just install the AGP driver. Then check to see on reboot whether device manager has it installed. If not, you can update manually as the 4-in-1's did install the driver files into the Windows folder.

I meant that the card will run at PCI speeds, with no AGP reads or writes. The information in the ATI tab in Windows display control panel will report the current AGP speed as being zero. The DirectX diag will report AGP Textures as not supported or unavailable. Now, if I instead install the AGP driver from the 4.43v Via 4-in-1's then my AGP is reported as 8x and dxdiag has AGP Textures as enabled. On Windows XP, this doesn't apply as the built in to XPSP2 Via AGP driver has no problem. Interestingly, I also have an Asus Radeon A9550 AGP card and with this card XP does not install its AGP driver during setup and I must use the one installed by the Via Hyperion Pro. AND, the one automatically installed is the AGP driver with 2.0 and 3.0 support. This driver does not enable AGP in XP or 98SE. Even in XP, when using this driver I get the AGP speed at zero and no texture support. Smartgart will not allow setting the AGP reads or writes to on. However, when I manually update the driver in device manager to the normal Via AGP driver (the one that doesn't mention AGP 2.0, 3.0 support) then I get back my AGP 8x speed and texturing. All settings can then be enabled, with the exception of fast writes as I have that turned off in the bios. I'm currently running 98SE on my Asus A7V880 board with the ATI Radeon x850. I must first run the 4-in-1 4.43v installer, only installing the AGP driver, then install the Hyperion Pro 5.04a set without the AGP driver. I need the later Via set because the inf for the rest of the devices in the 4.43v doesn't recognize my board so it doesn't update the Windows default drivers. Then, I need to manually update the Microsoft PCI to PCI thing to the Via AGP driver because Windows automatically installs its own Pci to Pci driver instead of the Via AGP one. But I must choose the Via AGP that doesn't mention the 2.0, 3.0 support in order for the AGP to work correctly. These procedures are necessary for me on 3 motherboards and either on my built by ATI cards (the x850PRO and the 9600XT) or my ASUS Radeon. And, I also need to manually install the x850 beta driver in the Catalyst package for Windows 98SE as the installer reports no supported hardware. I gave my step by step for that in another thread. Once all is done, the ATI MMC 9.13 works perfectly (including the DVD decoder meant for XP), and the card runs perfectly including the ATI Control Panel, which installs fine once I've manually installed the drivers in device manager. On 98SE, I just miss out on Smartgart, Overdrive, and that thing that resets the display if the card crashes during a game. Otherwise, it's all there including all the 3D controls.

I got my Adaptec one from CompUSA. It's the ASH-1233CS Ultra ATA High-speed dual channel Ultra ATA/133 controller card. I couldn't install 98SE on it, but that's not saying it doesn't work. The reason I failed is likely that the driver needs to be installed before 98SE will work with it. The initial copying of files worked when the startup floppy was in control, then when 98SE's install rebooted itself (the first boot from the HD) a dos screen asked for a bootable disk. The Adaptec literature states it breaks the 137GB barrier. I probably just would need to install first on the normal IDE, partitioned to 120GB, install the driver, switch the drive to the PCI card (pray), and use Partition Magic to expand to the rest of the drive. I have so far successfully installed 98SE onto the SATA 250GB Maxtor HD using the whole drive partitioned by the updated 98SE FDISK copyed to the 98SE startup floppy. So I won't be experimenting with the PCI card for a while unless this fails. If it's built in to the board (the SATA controller) and it works, that's better than using a seperate PCI port. Apparently the Via SATA drivers run things, rather than the ESID Windows driver that messes up with drives bigger than 137GB. I set ScanDisk to not run at startup in MSCONFIG advanced, and installed Norton Utilities. Disk Doctor, WinDoctor, and Speed Disk have successfully ran. The system's fully updated and working fine so far.

As for ATI and my x850PRO - The Catalyst 5.9 does have a beta driver in there, but it will not install with ATI's installation program! Not only that, but on my Via chipset motherboards (Asus A7V880, Abit KW7, and Asus A7V333), I must do a bit of creative installing to get AGP (instead of PCI) speeds and AGP texturing to work. -I install the 4.43v 4-in1's but only the AGP driver, no reboot. -Install the Hyperion Pro 5.04A without the AGP driver. Reboot. -Install the USB 2.0 driver. Reboot. -In device manager, manually update the Microsoft PCI to PCI controller to the Via AGP normal driver, not the one with AGP 2.0/3.0 support that breaks AGP on 9x by using a .sys driver instead of a .vxd that the normal one uses. Then, after Direct X, etc, I need to install the associated ATI WDM driver, not reboot. - Remove the 2 default monitors Windows installed in device manager - Run the ATI Catalyst 5.9 setup to let it fail after extracting the drivers. - Update the Standard PCI Graphics Driver (VGA) by directing Windows to the ATI folder and the first inf in the list. - Choose the 3rd Radeon x850 in the list (at least, that works for my x850PRO). - Don't reboot. -Update the Standard PCI Graphics Adapter by directing Windows to the ATI folder and the first inf in the list. - Choose the 3rd Radeon Secondary x850 in the list. - Don't reboot. - Run the ATI Control Panel setup from the ATI folder. - Don't reboot. - Check in Sysedit for your PATH statement to correct it. ATI adds to the line as if it were beginning the line. Fix that. - Reboot, set your resolutions, and reboot again for the remaining WDM driver parts to install. That sure is a Beta setup routine, eh? Funny thing is that it all works perfectly. The things lost are Smartgart, an Overdrive tab, and that thing that resets the display if the driver crashes during a game (forget what it's called). But the Control Panel 3D stuff is all there and runs the card perfectly. I wonder if ATI is aware of this and, if so, why don't they warn users in the Release Notes that this setup routine is necessary? Maybe I'll do a problem report, if it's even possible without XP. I don't know. I'll check it out. But I'm sure others have noticed this, unless NO ONE with this card bothers with 98SE anymore. Of course, the latest Cat's and XP install normally. The weirdest thing is the ATI MMC 9.13, which claims incompatibility with 9x, works perfectly! (At least, with my previousely downloaded (on XP) DVD setup file. I direct the installer to it as I don't think it'll download it to 98SE.)

Easiest way is to install the Service Pack, then check for the Windows Updates that are still needed. I don't think there's a problem having your firewall enabled while Windows Update does its thing. Just have everything else turned off. Be sure to check out Gape's thread in the stickies with his recommended install order. That works well. MDGx also has one with slight variations in his readme in 98SE2ME program. Here's mine - -Motherboard drivers -IE6SP1 -98 Resource Kit -DOTNET 1.1, SP1, 2.0 -DX9.0c from the August redist -Videocard Driver -WMP9 -98SE Service Pack -All hardware and drivers -Office or WorksSuite, whatever you use -All MDGx Windows updates fixes addons, IE same, DX same, WMP same -Firewall -Connect -Windows Update (won't be much if you did all that stuff from mdgx.com. Download and cdr them. -Office Update -98SE2ME -Maximus Decim MDAC and USB updates -Disc Scanner run and Defragger run -Firefox, Thunderbird, plugins (Quicktime, RealPlayer, Adobe Reader, Flash, Shockwave, whatever) -DivX -Nero -DVD (ATI MMC or whatever) -Virus Scanner -Have fun That order (approximately) works for me.

Heh, maybe someday they'll be a ME2XP? Seems unlikely though. Jeez, I think we can just go to the gaming zone and play all these without the shortcuts, no? They just were put there for advertising reasons to get folks to check out the zone. Nobody will miss the XP version of the shortcuts, I suspect.

Oh yeah, your right. But it wasn't 3.0, it was a 2nd cd that was included in boxes that had that sticker. That cd had 3.1 on it. I seem to remember that 3.1 left out the installation of FirstAid though. I don't think it was made Me compatible until the redesigned Utilities in 4.0. I could be wrong. This was a long time ago. I have all these boxes and cd's though. Ya really want me to dig them out? If I can't tell by looking at the files on the cd I'm not about to install them. Maybe when I had XP installed and was using VMWare, but not here, on a system I'd rather not crash. I was a Utilty nut in those years, buying every version that McAfee would come out with and even a couple of Norton versions. Then I would use them and watch them screw up Windows instead of fixing it. Not Norton, but at times McAfee's program design of installing all these utility programs separately with just a GUI to bring them together caused a lot of conflicting files between all that stuff. Many systems couldn't start just after a McAfee Utilities install. I remember they packaged VirusScan along with some packages, and didn't stop the older version from installing with the Nuts & Bolts (or Utilities) program. Ready to reformat? You know, just by choosing the normal install, both versions of VirusScan would install and the system would be totalled. Even today, McAfee programmers must do limited testing. My subscription McAfee VirusScan makes the Windows Startup sound struggle to play, then after Windows loads it slows down stuff. This is not on XP, but just on 9x installs. The folks at the McAfee forums tell people to use the older 7.03 and install an older engine, which can't remove some of the newer virus's even if it detects them with the latest definitions. They're hoping the problems get fixed. They have a beta engine they're working on. I suspect they'll string things along before removing 9x support when Microsoft does. I'm using AVG Free right now and notice no such interferrence, even with it set to scan all files in the background.