Eck

Actually what I'm going to do is double click it and reinstall it. Since it installed while the newer IE Cum update was installed with the newer problem BROWSUI.DLL, and did not reinstall automatically when I uninstalled the IE Cum and re-ran Auto-Patcher, it might get fixed up by simply reinstalling it now that the older IE Cum's BROWSUI.DLL is in place. As has been stated, it appears to be the newer BROWSUI.DLL that causes problems. But perhaps the Visual Basic Scripting needs to register properly with whichever BROWSUI.DLL is on the system. Just my guess. I'm going to try it. If you want to remove the SCR569X.EXE I'd think just installing the older Windows Scripting 5.6 update would overwrite the files with its version. mdgx.com likely has both the official version as well as the unofficial version to download. But I'd rather see if the new one can work if it is just reinstalled. It's working for others without this problem.

Ah! Well the problem is somewhere in there. The BROWSUI.DLL and/or the JSCRIPT.DLL, eh? I had uninstalled the latest IECum and let Auto-Patcher do its magic with the December Final, installing the older one. I assume it also updated to the latest unofficial jscript update. From your post it looks like you managed to keep the older BROWSUI.DLL and all the rest of the newer stuff works for you without this error. But I probably have the older BROWSUI.DLL since I have the older IECum update, right? So I'm wondering how come I'm getting the error. I see what you're saying but can't figure out what I might need to do to actually get it working. Rerun the Scripting update by itself and see if it resets things to properly use the older BROWSUI.DLL that is now on the system? It is possible that it got installed while the newer IECum was installed, as I installed the SP2 while the newer one was installed and it skipped installing the older IECum, saying a newer version was detected as being already installed. Then before updating to the Final I uninstalled the newer IECum. So maybe since the Scripting update did not reinstall when I ran the final, having already been installed with SP2, I only need to reinstall that one update (Scripting). It'll see which BROWSUI.DLL to use and register the stuff correctly. Hmm. I think I'll try that. Gotta figure out which file in the Auto-Patcher files folder is the Scripting update. I've got the modules list printed out. Maybe that'll help me figure out what KB number it is, or hopefully it's just labeled SCR5.6 or something.

Hmm, KB942615 was replaced by the previous version 939653 as the Internet Explorer Cumulative update in the final because the newer one interfered with 98SE2ME Option 3 and Revolution Pack. I uninstalled 942615 before running the Final so it would install the older one. The other stuff in your list doesn't look like they have anything to do with Visual Basic Scripting. BUT, I had the problem with 942615 installed too. So I have no idea why the problem disappeared when you installed that. The problem also doesn't relate to the Web Folders update in the manual installs folder as it existed before I installed the Web Folders update and after. I installed it before installing 98SE2ME. Gotta be something in the Visual Basic Scripting unofficial 5.6 update, I'd think, since this always wants to install Visual Basic Scripting support. Looks kind of like a security thing. Like, it will only use it on an Install On Demand basis. Seems to ask for the install, then install it really quick, and then the advertisements on the webpage appear. That, or the Unofficial Visual Basic 6 thing in the Visual Basic module. Just looking at some of the newer updates for the likely suspect. Another way Microsoft can make browsing in older versions of Internet Explorer annoying? Maybe this only works transparently on XP/Vista versions? So perhaps we beat some security risk, but 98 has no way of making it less annoying like IE 7 would? Guess away! Be nice to get rid of it somehow by figuring out which part of the update causes it if possible.

This current VMWare 98SE install is brand new so it only had AutoPatcher December SP2 and then (after uninstalling the IE Cum update so the older one would be able to install) the upgrade to Final. Well, if it didn't happen with you with the Java 6, then I'd guess the Unofficial Scripting update is the cause. Is that an MDGx package? Maybe something in that needs some troubleshooting? Probably just one set of dll's or something. In the meantime, I haven't gotten to installing Firefox yet but when I do I'll see if the same thing occurs. Then again, I'm not aware of how Firefox works technically and if it even uses Visual Basic scripting to work. I did get 98SE2ME, 98MP10, EXPLOR98, and the q891711 update installed. All went well. I reinstalled NUSB after 98SE2ME. That was a bit crashy (BSOD), but I recovered and restarted normally and it ended up well. The USB 2.0 printer works. Don't forget this is on VMWare, which advises to turn off EHCI in its options as 98SE doesn't have USB 2.0 drivers. Well, I always used the Via USB 2.0 driver on 98SE (worked on both my Via boards and on my SiS748 board) and now used NUSB here instead and it works fine. I think q891711 patches explorer.exe so I figured I should wait until EXPLOR98 was installed before letting it patch the explorer.exe that is actually staying on the system. That's why I left the ani fix toggled off when using Auto-Patcher. Heh. I still needed to delete the shelliconcache file and reboot to get the nice My Computer icon to actually appear after EXPLOR98.EXE was run and the system restarted. So actually that thing takes me 3 restarts to be done (I like to see the new shelliconcache file appear before I delete the original file that I just move to My Documents. One time Windows never created a new one! I had to copy back the original, but the new My Computer stayed. This time it did recreate it after the next restart). I noticed I, as usual with Sun Java, needed to uninstall the previously installed Java 5 after 6 was installed. They never remove the older one and usually I download the whole installation file and uninstall the older one first. Being lazy I just let AutoPatcher update it and then uninstalled Java 5 afterwards. Guess some folks like keeping several Java versions around so they don't uninstall when they update. For me, the older ones are just crap lying around the system. Makes QuickTime tough, if that's been installed, as its QuickTime for Java installs into the current Java directory. Gotta uninstall QuickTime, then Java, remove the Autoexec.bat lines referencing QuickTime Java, then install the new Java, then reinstall QuickTime. Stupid software designers!

Does one of the new updates change the way Internet Explorer reacts to Visual Scripting? Because I now have a weird situation where on almost any web page I get a box saying IE needs to download Visual Scripting support, and that it is available on my hard drive. I click to have it go ahead, and I notice the remainder of the web page is loaded, usually some picture boxes. If I browse to another page the situation repeats, I get the prompt to install Visual Scripting, give it the go ahead, and the page loads properly. It only takes a second or so but I would think that once it does this once it should stay installed, no? Perhaps I need to reinstall something? I haven't messed with the Advanced Internet Options tab. All levels on the security tab are at the default levels. I had thought that perhaps installing the WorksSuite 2005 and OfficeXP, and the SP3 and all Office Updates from Microsoft along with the Works update might fix it. That stuff installs some system type files related to Visual Scripting I think. But all that works but this problem hasn't changed. You think perhaps running Maximus-Decim's MDAC update pack might install something properly that I somehow have a mismatched version for now? The only updates I have now are those installed from Auto-Patcher, and I did toggle on those Visual Basic Runtime Library modules so I have all that installed too. I was about to go on to the next step, which is running 98SE2ME, then 98MP10, then EXPLOR98.EXE. I toggled all that stuff off in Auto-Patcher including the ani fixes and the Explorer replacement module so I could run those things myself with the above packages. I kept the default of off for the shell98 and memory fix, copy large files fix too. I figure that if I have problems I can go back and run Auto-Patcher and toggle those unofficial patches to on but I'd try things first without them. All those Office installs worked fine and I haven't started copying huge amounts of things from my cdr's yet so I don't yet know if I can do without those fixes or not. I used to install them all the time but as you set them to off by default I figured I'd try things out without them.

I was about half a day too impatient. I just used RC2. What do you know? I was really impatient and lazy too. I did print out stuff from a thread over at the EasyBCD forum where they were discussing adding the XP boot files to 98SE and using Vista's boot loader for my triple boot with Linux and 98SE. But the idea of wiping things and going through all that when everything works now just didn't appeal. I tried VMWare on Vista. And, this was the "what do you know," my goodness, VMWare is heads and tails better than Virtualbox when using a Windows 98SE guest. It's nearly the same as using a real computer. Not quite, but surely better than Virtualbox which made 98 run in a way that I would never use it even with the full audio and video drivers I had figured out how to get and use (SciTech and Realtek). VMWare is real zippy! And Auto-Patcher did a fine job too (well, that always worked). The audio works much better, with the Creative Ensoniq ES1371 a much better card to virtualize than that Intel AC97 chip that Virtualbox uses. Went through a few hoops with the Creative software cd I have as the VXD driver it installs first crashes and can't be used on the VMWare 6.02 like it could on earlier VMWare releases. I had to be patient and wait through the crash and blue screen until the rest of the Creative software (PlayCenter, Wave Studio, Recorder, Mixer, etc, but make sure to remove the check from the Dos Drivers as the WDM's won't work with them) got installed and then before rebooting upgrading manually with Device Manager to the WDM drivers on the same Creative cd. I went through a lot of experimenting and manually deleting all the Creative registry entries (find, find next) and driver files in the System folder until I figured out that was the way to do it. After a reboot it all works together. Even their EAPCI8M.ECW midi synth plays midi's nicely. And mp3's sound great. Video files play without all the herky jerky and missed synchronization of the same on Virtualbox. Actually, 98SE on VMWare performs faster on Vista than Vista itself does. I know that sounds ridiculous, but on my hardware Vista really isn't a good performer so a virtualized 98SE is superior. Plus, no wondering why suddenly I need to wait 40 minutes here and there when Vista decides to thrash my hard drive for no apparent reason since I wasn't doing anything at the time. What the heck is that thing doing? It's not defragmenting. It's not indexing (nothing new to index). It's not Windows Defendering. It's just working hard at some mysterious process (all scanners active so it's not spyware, unless it's Microsoft spying on me). I haven't a clue but it makes me get the heck out of Vista and run to Linux after it's done. Who wants an OS that needs to use your computer for such great lengths of time with unknown, hidden activities and uses the hard drive so hard that the user can't do anything while it's doing it? Maybe I will just wipe it (but, darn I spent so much money on it) and use the real 98SE instead. In any case, GREAT WORK on the Auto-Patcher and thanks a bunch for it!

It restarts the computer a lot. Then again, there are no user interactions once setting it up and telling it to go ahead. It just installs stuff, restarts the computer, waits for about 15 seconds for Windows to finish loading everything and starts again itself, rinse and repeat many times. So if you don't mind not being able to watch its ms-dos window telling you what it's currently doing, it will just keep at things until fully patched and then at the end you just hit the any key (the space bar) and it exits, leaving the log file open so you can read it and save it (Save As...) wherever you like in case you uninstall Auto-Patcher and still want to keep the log (I save it as a txt file). No need to do that, but I like to have it besides its own .log in its folder. I print it out too. It's possible this would be a problem on future runs because occasionally there may be a loop and it will need your interaction to proceed. If that happens on your first run you're in trouble if you can't see the question it asks you. In that case you'd need to get that monitor going somehow! Hmmm. Maybe the name of the month Auto-Patcher uses is the month he started working on the next version? I'm just glad soporific makes it so I don't care what he calls this thing. Funny that the last version didn't break anything on my virtualized system. Maybe that's because the Internet Explorer cumulative update doesn't effect things adversely unless using 98SE2ME Option 3 or Revolution Pack? Whatever, I'll just use whatever the latest version is when I'm ready and not use the Explorer 5.5 included programs, like I never have anyway. I suppose when the new version comes out it'll patch things by going back to the older IE Cumulative so there won't be a problem installing that Revolution stuff after that. I don't think the next Revolution Pack is going to install that Windows Me explorer.exe anyway. Things are changing with that new Uberskin thing, thankfully.

About the 48bitLBA, well I don't know what will happen on a real system. As I mentioned I ran October FULL, updating to the latest RC2 afterwards. Both times the 48bitLBA was installed and no error or message about being already installed was displayed or in the log. It just installed it again. Guess that's a loop? And yes, I'd say go ahead and release it. The fixes, rolling back the Internet Explorer Cumulative to the one that doesn't cause problems with 98SE2ME Option 3 and/or Revolution Pack (not that I've ever tried Option 3 or Revolution Pack, but I think the coming Revolution version 8 and/or Uberskin looks like something I'll finally go ahead and play with as improving the look and feel of 98SE without interfering with other system files and having a small memory footprint is something I can finally sign on to) is more important than a couple of minor bugs. After all, Windows Update would break a lot more things than Auto-Patcher ever would. It's already a more stable updater than Windows Update ever was. Interesting that a few folks working on whatever their specialties are can do a better job than hundreds of Microsoft software designers at updating their own operating system. I'm going to shortly be putting a real Windows 98SE partition on my computer's hard drive and get away from using Virtualbox for it. That thing's just too slow when guesting 98SE. Can't stand using it that way. My first computer (AMD K6-2/300 with 66MHz FSB) was a speed demon in comparison! So I'm hoping the new Auto-Patcher comes out like, today or tomorrow, so I get all the new thingagabob's and fixes that come along with it. I'll be too busy watching the Election news today anyway so tomorrow looks like it'll be a good day to wipe that hard drive and get started. Gonna try to just keep the Linux hard drive as it is, as with Grub in the root partition my messing with the Windows hard drive shouldn't give me too much trouble if I just disconnect it and reconnect it once I get 98SE and Vista back on the first drive. I'll just unmount the Windows drive and delete the folder and fstab entry first and then recreate it with the new info once back in Linux. Guess I'll try to figure out the BCDEasy method of adding the XP boot files to the 98SE C: drive so Vista's boot loader can boot 98SE. That's one I haven't done yet. I already use Vista to boot Debian, but this looks a bit more complicated.

I think that's caused by the installation of EXPLORE98, the MDGx package of the latest combined explorer.exe security patches and improvements, along with the nice Windows Me style icon. That's not supposed to be installed if the Revolution Pack is used, and a warning is given about that in the EXPLORE98 documentation. I'm not aware what switch to toggle off in Auto-Patcher to stop its installation, but if it isn't one of the user toggle modules it certainly should be. Even if a new version comes out of EXPLORE98, the old version must be uninstalled first and the system restarted, and the system must also be restarted immediately after its installation as well. If not, we get a destruction of Windows! That dog won't boot! Some measure must be added to check both if the Revolution Pack or Option 3 of 98SE2ME is installed, as well as to make sure that if a newer version of EXPLORE98 is in Auto-Patcher the program runs the uninstaller for it and restarts first (which would restore the original Windows 98SE explorer.exe), before running the installation of the latest Explore98 release. And then the system must be restarted immediately after EXPLORE98 is installed by Auto-Patcher as well. Not sure how you can manage that, but something like that needs to be done. It is the best solution for users not using Revolution Pack or Option 3 of 98SE2ME (most users I would think), but care must be taken with it. The detection of an older version and one of those other optional explorer.exe versions (5.5 I think) is vital, and skipping it for the optional versions and the uninstallation before upgrading it is also vital. Perhaps a user interaction page of Auto-Patcher for that module can be mandatory. If the user answers that he doesn't use or intend to use Option 3 of 98SE2ME or Revolution Pack then EXPLORE98 is automatically installed. If an older version of EXPLORE98 is detected, then the uninstaller for it is run and the system is then rebooted before running the EXPLORE98 module. And then it is rebooted again following its installation. When I ran the new version of Auto-Patcher, it detected that the same version of EXPLORE98 was installed and so skipped its installation, which I was happy to see. It had been installed by my run of the October Auto-Patcher. When I use 98SE2ME I use Option 2 and so did not experience this problem as I also do not use the Revolution Pack.

Heh heh. We've been through the ASPI conversation. Almost no one wants the newer versions. When they work it's a miracle. The one in Auto-Patcher improves upon what comes by default with Windows and works all the time. The newer ones do nothing helpful and often just break things. You do know that you can just move the color slider and get the Windows 2000 scheme? Same with playing with the title bars in there. The icons are from Gape's older Explorer.exe update, but you can also download a Windows Me theme from various places and get those as well. I updated from October Full to the update November SP2 version of Auto-Patcher with not an issue. I did find that some kind of MS-DOS run thing was TSR'd for a couple of reboots afterwards, but it finally went away. I am ashamed to say my memory has totally failed me, I didn't write the name of it down, and I can't remember its name. But it showed up in the Close Program box along with winoldap and would require Windows to End Task it before shutting down. Also, the My Computer was having a problem refreshing so right clicking it would show the desktop options instead of the My Computer options and double clicking My Computer would bring up its Properties instead of opening My Computer. A couple more restarts and that's gone (for now). Things are just so darned slow on Virtualbox with 98SE that I'm afraid I didn't have the patience to run it for too much time after doing the Auto-Patcher upgrade, but those are the things that happened. The slowness is mostly things that access the web, and not thankfully the few programs I need to run in 98SE, but since I browse around a lot it is frustrating using 98SE virtualized. VMWare used to work tons better for me in that regard than Virtualbox does. Of course, I'm sure if I put XP on it things would be different. But that would do nothing for me as the programs I use in 98SE got broken by XP SP2, and that's why I want to virtualize 98SE. Sorry, the last paragraph was just me whining.

Yep, and that is why it was usually recommended to install MDAC 2.5 before the newer MDAC versions. Maximus-Decim took away the need to do that with his MDAC update pack, but now since just using Auto-Patcher for this stuff it is possible my systems miss the not-included components. But until something doesn't work I'm not too worried. This time on my emulated 98SE I haven't bothered with Microsoft Works or Office stuff. I've got a full hard drive running Vista and Office 2007 Home and Student and OpenOffice.org, can't print on Virtualbox OSE because of no USB included, and really only am using 98SE to play with old stuff and some 9x games. I installed OpenOffice.org just to have a nicer word processor than wordpad. Less hassle than WorksSuite2005 and/or OfficeXP. On a real system I'd do WorksSuite and Office. Office installs usually add whatever MDAC stuff is missing. Kinda silly installing the huge Microsoft Office suites on a system without access to a printer, and really slow NAT cable internet. So this stuff shouldn't matter much as long as I'm using 98SE virtualized this way. Things will change again if I get up-ity and want a real 98SE with Direct 3D again. Never know with me! For now, it's Debian Lenny GNU/Linux and these other OS's.

Don't see all the fussing being done to redesigning the Auto-Patcher as being necessary. The gui, yeah, if only to get rid of out of memory errors. But that patch included that increases it in Autoexec, when installed first as I did, seems to work fine. I didn't see someones updater package fitting into Auto-Patcher anyway. When the individual updates contained in something like the MD Cum update are tinkered with to fix or changed to include newer files, which happens often with the IE updates and other specific 98SE updates as well, what's to be done? Include the updated version to be installed after the cumulative package? It can become just a big mess and hard to deal with. Having all the updates separate makes it easy to obsolete older ones for newer ones, etc. Very easy to change between each Auto-Patcher version. I see the Maximus-Decim stuff as an alternative method of updating 98SE, INSTEAD of the Auto-Patcher. Even that MDAC thing could mess things up, as I think it's better to have some of those Visual Studio file updates packaged together by MDGx installed after the official MDAC (or whatever the order is, I think it was MDAC stuff first but I stopped paying attention long ago when I started using Auto-Patcher.) Trying to combine all these combo packages was the same tedious and hard to figure out situation that existed prior to the Auto-Patcher. You're just taking the hassle upon yourself instead of making us do it. I'm telling you, you don't need that hassle either! In my opinion, just keep up the current nice way of things where there are modules, and aspects within the modules that can be toggled off or on, with sensible defaults set for those users who don't actually check what's available to toggle. I think it's vital and good that toggling is available, but some will just push go and not even look. So conservative defaults is a good way to go. I like that stuff is off by default and I can go in and turn on the ones I want to add. I'd get nervous about the safety of Auto-Patcher if I noticed myself toggling a lot of things off. This last run was great, as I mostly wanted to add things. A couple of toggle offs, yeah, but they were harmless things like the 7Zip install since I paid for WinRAR long ago and still just use that along with the Plus!98 pack's compressed folders as the default for Zip. I didn't even see Revolution Pack in there (don't remember anyway). I'd keep that as something a user would need to specifically turn on! (You guys getting along now? Sort of? )

By the way, it's mainly internet speed that is slow on 9x in Virtualbox. I just played some of my old games and programs, including that QuickTime/Shockwave thing, and they work just fine and at full speed. Occasionally the audio/video would get out of synch, but it would correct itself in a moment. So, although browsing the internet is too slow for comfortable usage the programs I want to run that only run in 98 do run at full speed. Nice! I burned the Virtualbox vmi file to a dvd+r, so hopefully I won't need to install and setup Windows again when I jump around Linux distro's and format. They must just optimize that AMD/PCNet virtual ethernet card for NT operating systems. It works, but it's slower than 56k dialup on my cable internet with NAT. I wonder if there's something I could adjust for that? I recall the 98SE defaults usually were okay, but also some guide linked from mdgx.com with some recommendations. I'll go see if I can find that again.

Sounds great! The whole point is not to need to wade through zillions of updates ourselves, so there really isn't any need to have then all extracted and available to install individually if Auto-Patcher can handle it. I was only thinking of the case where one didn't want to run the whole program and just apply/reapply one update. For that it was nice to just have the thing in a folder to double-click without needing to re-run Auto-Patcher and go through the whole procedure. Mostly though, we only need to run Auto-Patcher once and everything gets installed so it's really no big deal. Regarding the GUI, I like GUI's so that's great. However I think it is important to be sure it can run in 8 bit 256 color with the Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA) as well as normally in whatever resolution an installed video driver would feed it. Sometimes folks will use Auto-Patcher before installing videocard drivers and sometimes they'll have the drivers installed. Some GUI's are finicky and won't run without Hi-Color 16-bit. When I used to use the Internet Explorer 6 SP1 Microsoft cd to install IE6, I needed to browse to the folder's setup executable because the GUI wouldn't run on 16-Color 8-bit 256K graphics. Many folks will install Auto-Patcher before the video drivers because some drivers require Direct X 9 installed prior to the driver setup. With VirtualBox this didn't matter as SciTech Display Doctor runs (although it complains about it) on the older Direct X. But NVidia/ATI need the newer Direct X installed first.

Don't know. But I kind of liked having a folder with every update in it and also watching as each one installed with explanation. Hopefully the pack will work as designed when integrated if that is the way you'd like to go, however I was never so obsessed with space or size saving. I think I'd like it to stay the way you've had it, but of course a nice looking gui is fun. No problem there. I've used the Maximus-Decim MDAC updater many times, though not recently because I got lazy and just hoped that whatever the Auto-Patcher installed would put whatever that stuff does onto the system properly. I've been a bit concerned that the 2.5 version is really supposed to be installed first as it includes components not part of 2.8. Maximus-Decim's MDAC updater included parts of the older version so we got the whole set of stuff when using it. I'm positive we're missing something when just installing MDAC 2.8. Not sure precisely which parts (used to know but it's been a long time and a lot of info that used to be part of my 98 knowledge now escapes me). So I consider Maximus-Decim's MDAC pack superior to just installing 2.8, if that is any indication of how his full updater does its thing. Perhaps his MDAC pack would be an appropriate package to substitute for whatever we're using for MDAC 2.8 now. I believe it includes a whole bunch of stuff besides just MDAC, some of which may already be included in Auto-Patcher so you should check out his readme. If I recall, you only see the readme with the details when you run the package. Maybe there was a version of Visual Studio in there? Again, memory fails. But you can run the package and check out the readme to see. Just cancel out of it instead of continuing. I can tell you that it works flawlessly. Virtualbox running 98SE seems way slower, at least in internet browsing speed, than I recall from my VMWare days. I tried up-ing the video memory to 16MB, putting the virtual memory fixed to triple the 256MB I have it running, activating the ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1. Still slow going. I've heard it works better with XP as a guest as they have it optimized for the NT versions of Windows. But I've got the real Vista to run stuff that can run in XP, so that wouldn't help me. It's things that were broken since XP SP2 for security reasons that used to run on 98SE (and XP until SP2) that I would like to be able to virtualize. They are still broken in Vista and Wine and Dosbox do not run this 98SE stuff I'm talking about. They require QuickTime, Shockwave within software (not the browser) so I am concerned that they will be just too slow and skippy to make the bother of this worthwhile. That's how video is on the internet using Windows Media Video embedded streaming, slow and skippy. Sounds great when it's not skipping, but the video still frame jerks a lot. Not too promising. Well, I'm almost near the point of testing those things out so we'll see. I'm not optimistic. And to think I again gave up a 98SE/XP/Linux dual boot to put Vista on here as my Vista/Linux dual boot. I was also swapping some hardware and I figured since I paid for Vista I might as well try to use it again as the more time advances the better they'll get it optimized for performance. Of course once I had it setup I've been in Linux all the time anyway. But no, it hasn't stopped thrashing the hard drive all the time yet as far as I could tell. Maybe the new Service Pack? Qemu may be the way to go for 98SE. There's a nice 3rd party GUI for it that is in Debian. Maybe I'll check it out if things don't satisfy with Virtualbox. Qemu is supposed to be better at the 9x systems than Virtualbox. But just not as easily configured. The major virtualization companies are concentrating on current operating systems as those are where they can make money from supporting them for business use. So I don't blame them, but really they'd probably just need to give it a few tweaks to get it running 9x better. Too bad. The only folks who still care enough to give attention to 9x are in this place it seems. Any virtualization wizards around here?

Don't worry. The current edition would only be missing a small amount of updated patches and any new goodies that may be in store for us in future versions. But most goodies are already there and in my experience all install nicely. No "are we there yet" anticipation needed with this thing. It already has just about everything. Once installed, perhaps just checking the front page of that current updates sticky topic once in a while will keep us informed of anything vital that we need to install right away. As long as our systems are working fine, there's really no rush to install the new stuff anyway. What's fixed in 98SE has been fixed. We're running dinosaur's here. Not much new under the sun! I'm sure they'll be a new edition, but there's no reason to rush it out before it's ready.

Happy New Year to all as well! I just used the October Full release on a Virtualbox 98SE installation on Debian (Lenny). Then I added 98SE2ME and 98MP10 to it. All went perfect! It did mention that it couldn't find Netmeeting so it disabled the installation for it. Actually I forgot to look for it afterwards so I don't know if it's in the proper place or not. I'll check it out later. Too slow browsing the net on that thing, but about the same as VMWare was when I used to use that. There's no tools for 9x, but substitutes work fine. SciTech Display Doctor 7 beta with a manufactured key from one of "those" things works about as well as VMWare Tools version for 98SE worked too. I even turned on SciTech's OpenGL part and now get working, albeit slow, software Direct3D like the old days on my SiS5598 archaic first computer. It has a whopping 6MB of video memory to work with (had to dumb it down from the default 8MB as Windows Setup didn't like it)! But since my old computer had 4MB video it kind of reminds me of the old days! My Windows 98 Startup floppy couldn't load its cdrom driver, freezing for some reason even though cd works in Windows once setup. So I used an OEM Windows 98 Gold cd I have and upgraded to 98SE with the Updates Cd. The OEM's boot from cd and setup went fine using that. I used the current Realtek AC97 audio vxd driver for Windows 95 they have. I needed to install Winrar and extract it as the installer only installs on Windows 95, but Device Manager updated the driver to the extracted folder fine. Boom! Pretty good audio. There's even SoundBlaster MS-DOS box within Windows emulation and a Wavetable midi driver, although the midi skips. The normal wave audio is fine. I did the Environment patch first, and then selected (mostly adding things) what modules I wanted and the whole process went just fine except for missing Netmeeting. Since this is Virtualbox OSS I don't have USB so no printing, and no shared folders with the host. I'll look into configuring Samba (no clue ) so I can transfer files back and forth. The NAT internet works fine. Kinda fun!

I just wanted to update that it was the videocard. When I had problems with Debian and freezing with glxgears and 3D games I went back into Vista and installed a more resource intensive 3D game than I had tested with it before. Sure enough, Vista froze just like Linux did. So I removed the drivers, shutdown, and put back my Gigabyte card. Once the latest NVidia WHQL's were installed (and, by the way, the WEI test went fine), I tried the game and it ran fine. Back in Linux I had no idea what to do when switching cards, so I just booted up to see what would happen. Turns out that since the chip is the same even though it's a different manufacturer, it just worked without doing anything to the drivers. Another win for Linux! Now I've got to see about an RMA on that PNY card. Good thing I tested it before the warranty was out. I bought it several months ago as a backup and I figured it was about time I at least tested it out. I did find it weird that Aero in Vista and Compiz Fusion on Linux both ran fine with the defective card. But as soon as a 3D game was started the whole system froze in both systems. I guess Aero and Compiz aren't as resource intensive as some would make them out to be.

Heh, yeah I haven't a clue what they're measuring. That 5.9 is the NVidia GeForce 6600GT AGP though. I think the ATI x850PRO measured a similar score too. I don't think they mean it to be a benchmark, but rather the existence of features. For instance, if it has pixal shaders 2.0 it gives it a certain number, amount of video memory, another few points, etc. I don't think it's measuring a score like a real benchmark test would do. That Windows Media test similarly just sees if it can play a video smoothly. Stuff like that. I was just a bit angry before. You think Linux software doesn't have bugs too? Ha! On my previous SUSE install the latest Gnome from the unsupported backport GNOME:/STABLE repo combined with the upgraded Brasero burner broke a few things in cdr burning. The KDE burning program K3b also had problems in the Gnome session. But then I could login to the other Desktop Manager, KDE, and there K3b would take the same multisession disk and add to it and verify it fine where the same cdr in Gnome was reported to have corrupted files and couldn't be added to with either program. Turns out the cdr and files were fine but the detection stuff was buggy in Gnome. They'll fix it, but you can see that computer software can be buggy no matter the operating system. There just appear to be a lot less bugs and a lot faster fixes for them in the free software world. There's just more folks working on stuff because all of it is open to explore and fix up instead of being hidden in some company's secret lab where they spend their time working on new versions to sell rather than fixing bugs in existing versions. Vista really isn't that bad. The drive access for indexing and backups is annoying but as long as things aren't broken it can run software nicely. Looks pretty too. Not as pretty as some of the Compiz Fusion stuff but nice enough. Heh. When I didn't have Aero working at first because of that test problem, the window title bars looked like the Gillouche Metacity theme in Gnome. Got confused there for a moment.

Thanks for the chat, by the way. I'm just churning with that need for anger management kind of feeling after having to spend so much time figuring out how to get this done with and move along. Something like this is supposed to be just a quick test and you go on setting up your software and happy computing with you. But because of some quirk in the OS that isn't quite right I was forced into internet searching, posting here and in the Microsoft Vista forum, and much starting, restarting, tinkering with files, and heck I even formated 4 times before I just said the heck with it and starting troubleshooting within Windows since the OOBE couldn't work properly. I added a ton of software, got all the drivers and everything setup and working, all my personal files copied to the appropriate places, then when I updated NVidia again I was forced to go through all this again because the original fix (renaming that folder) that had first worked no longer did. So you see how I'm not all smiles right now. And what's up with that sfc /scannow finding corrupt stuff and not being able to replace some of them? All except this Aero test appears to be working and all the software I've installed works. Oh. I do have an ATI x850PRO but haven't used it on either of my systems for a very long time because of its horrible Linux performance. It's actually a better card for Windows than my GeForce 6600GT (double the memory), but since I still will be mostly in Linux once I get it installed again I am not going back to ATI. The only old NVidia cards I have that work are a couple of PCI Geforce 440MX cards. I think I read that those won't work on Vista so that would be a waste of time. I got through the OOBE by hitting the reset switch when it froze doing the test, booting up, and creating a new user since OOBE didn't let me use the one I first created. It said that user already exists so please create a different user name. Then at the logon I selected the original user, it skipped the WEI part of the OOBE and once I got to the desktop I deleted the 2nd user OOBE had insisted I create to continue and had it delete any files as well. So it's just the one Administrator account using UAC with my desired user name. Annoyingly, I did that several times as I tried formatting over and over until I gave up and started just setting up Windows. How many times can one sit through an OS install when it can never get it right? It's not the video card as the same card worked fine. It's not the driver as neither Microsoft's driver nor the NVidia drivers work with that test until enough tinkering with the permissions on that folder and/or renaming or recreating it several times as the stupid machine keeps freezing on the test until it finally miraculously (dumb luck?) decides to run the test through fine. Once it does that I have fine Aero, 3D gaming, DVD playback, mp3 playing, Office 2007, Nero 8, all works fine. Thanks again for the opinion. Yes, their score isn't the most important thing in my world either. However, it does need to be run each time a video driver is upgraded and will be most annoying if this kind of tinkering is needed every time. It gives me a 5.9 for the videocard by the way. A 3.6 total because the processor is an AthlonXP 3200+ and not a fancy new Athlon64. But all the gaming I do works pretty well with Vista. It was the System Restore previous versions indexing constantly churning the hard drive that made me go back to XP originally. That's the least of my problems now with this new hassle.

Not so much an issue now that it's giving me Aero anyway. However it was an issue at install time as it wouldn't get through the initial OOBE test, freezing at the same early time when it was testing for Aero compatibility. I got through that by hitting the reset button and being forced to create an addtional user when the OOBE started again, it skipped the test thinking it had done it already, and I logged into the original user and deleted the one it made me create to continue. And after upgrading the NVidia driver, it is supposed to report that I need to test again because my system has changed. It did not request that, simply reporting my score. I couldn't care less what it reports, but it is supposed to at least be able to run the test without crashing the system. I had the same hardware using the same Vista DVD previously and had no problem running these tests. The only thing that has changed is that time has marched on. Since the test fails right at the start, it isn't a Windows Update that is at fault. I don't believe it's the driver either as the original or Windows Update drivers don't run the test either. It is likely permissions screw up that doesn't allow the test access to that DATASTORE folder. Defective by default it seems. But then why didn't I have this trouble before? I spent all day today on this, attempting to get the test to run. Safe Mode, redoing permissions on files to be able to delete them, etc. At last all is fine, but I know the next time I do the NVidia upgrade I'll need to "get lucky" again and just Russian Roulette until the test works. This is why I've spent the last year or so running Linux distros 99% of the time. Now that I want to try the "newbie" Windows operating system I see why it is rarely used for anything vital. I just discovered Linux last year. Thank Heaven! I mostly put Vista back so I could check out the Unofficial Creative drivers for the Audigy 2 ZS a fellow has on the Creative forums. They are awesome! Nearly all software and deactivated by Creative official drivers functions are now available on Vista with his Revision 2 cd and then his Vista Support Pack for even more features. The audio with the Audigy 2 ZS finally sounds better than on XP, as it should according to Microsoft's intentions with Vista Audio. So although cool in some respects, the inherent buggyness of Microsoft operating systems will have me running briskly to install a Linux distro again onto my 2nd hard drive to use most of the time. I really tried to like Windows but, my goodness. I can understand 3rd party software having troubles but not operating system provided materials a year after Gold release. This stuff should work perfectly now. 3rd party drivers for old hardware? I understand. Old software? I understand. Vista bugs. I do not understand and will just keep it around to experiment with occasionally while I do everything in Linux. How can people stand this?

I just returned to the Vista fold after a long stretch of a 98SE/XP situation, which I also combine with a Linux distro. At first I kept formatting and installing again and again because I couldn't get Windows Experience Index to get past the Aero test, and the initial first boot couldn't do it either. Finally I renamed /Windows/Performance/WinSAT/DataStore to DataStore.old and that enabled the test to finish. But today I upgraded the NVidia driver to the latest and needed to run it again and renaming it didn't work. Over and over I tried different things such as deleting everything in the WinSAT folder (except the Windows Media tests which I think only come with a WMP install and I didn't want to mess with that) including taking ownership of the file that wouldn't let me delete it. Then I ran sfc/scannow, it put back the stuff. Still, no good. Finally I clicked all the boxes for CREATOR/OWNER on the security tab for DataStore. It seemed to make the checks disappear afterwards, but when I ran the test for WEI it went ahead and updated my score. Has anyone else had so much trouble running the test? As soon as it starts the Aero test, when the problem is happening, the mouse cursor will freeze and I must hit the reset switch on my computer to restart the computer. This happened with any NVidia driver, Microsoft or NVidia provided. And this had never happened before with all the Vista beta's, release candidates, or when I first bought and used the retail Ultimate upgrade dvd. Also unlike before, running sfc /scannow gives final results all the time that there were some corrupted files and it couldn't replace all of them. The details in the log it mentions give no real clue what the problem is as far as I can tell. I just think this is related to the files dealing with that Performance folder and the permissions somehow not being set right by default to allow the tests to be performed or files to all be replaced by sfc. Any ideas?

The point is to not need to download updates yourself. Sometimes official updates need tweaking as their 98SE compatibility is either ignored or intentionally removed. Once an update reaches Auto-Patcher, these problems have been fixed so they will install and work on 98SE smoothly. So, yes it is fine for you to install the latest Direct X 9.0c yourself (as long as the last full version for 98SE, the December one, has already been installed), but since it includes some nice additions it is a good addition to the Auto-Patcher. Of course, installing it yourself assumes it is okay for 98SE but I think the Direct X one is fine as long as the older one was installed first. I'm waiting, personally, for the upgrade edition now as I already have the last update edition that updated the previous full release installed and would prefer to get the fixes announced to be included in the upgrade edition without, hopefully, the problems some have experienced with running the latest full edition.

Yes, the Paint update hit me with an error as well, about some files not being able to be replaced. I only had it install it because I remember I used to install that update all the time. Perhaps users of stuff like OfficeXP already get some of those file formats? Maybe some older versions are in the Paint update and aren't exactly intelligent. If they can overwrite they do, and where some Office, Microsofty type of thing prevents it, they error. Don't know. Try a bunch of files in Paint and see if they'll open, edit, save to different formats. I hardly ever used Paint except for a simple change of something from bmp to jpeg or backwards. Thanks for the details, briton. I guess I bought the wrong boot manager when I was just starting out with Linux and wanted to try something like you're talking about. I bought BootIT NG, which a bunch of folks seemed to be praising at the time, and saw XOSL as an alternative but BootIT appeared to be more feature filled so I went with that. It worked fine for my 98SE and XP mix, but when I started trying to install Linux (OpenSUSE 10.2 at the time, when it was new), I just couldn't get it to use the partitions I had made for it, or have it create partitions (on a second hard drive or included on the first with the other OS's) and preserve the shared data partition I wanted to keep. It always wanted to format that. It was just a hassle that I couldn't get working. For me, who enjoys operating systems but generally likes only one version of such type (98SE and XP aren't that different except for a few things that were broken for me on XP and so is still nice to have), I saw Grub as an easy one stop shop for only one Linux distro and a couple of Windows versions. It's performed nicely for me once I figured out what configuration works for mixing Linux and Microsoft. I had just Vista and either OpenSUSE or Debian Lenny for a while (now using Debian Lenny with 98SE and XP) but Vista churned my hard drive incessantly and not just when doing its indexing. I'd install a program or move some files around and the computer would be nearly impossible to use as Vista would be usurping the hard drive to write all the changes to its Previous Versions crap. Just about the worst part of using the old GoBack and Vista included it without the ability to go back to the XP style of only making Restore Points for its operating system files once in a while. Couldn't stand it and went back to XP and added back 98SE to the mix. I just didn't see that the hassle, which it was during my BootIT NG experience, of messing with a boot loader was necessary for 2 or 3 operating systems. But the advantage of the boot loaders I lose it the ability to easily format any Windows and install fresh. Reinstalling Windows boot sectors and/or Grub SOMETIMES works okay but often times things get messed up. So you see that I'd like not to have to mess with Windows all that much. Changing Linux distro's is easy. Just install one and it'll replace Grub with its own version of the same. Just make sure the Windows things are mounted properly and tinker a bit with the automatically included Windows sections in Grub and I'm back up and going. The auto settings distro's use work fine for one Windows and one Linux but need to be adjusted for other combinations. You'd thing I'd be pretty much settled in now, but just a few days ago I replaced a very impressive new OpenSUSE 10.3 with a return to Debian Lenny. I just felt in the mood for messing with Debian, with all the talk of the new release of Ubuntu. Heh, I feel no lure at all to install Ubuntu even though I burn it to a cdr to take a look at it Live. What do I need that for when I can have the real thing (Debian)? If I used the boot loader method like you, I could just shrink, stick its Grub in its own partition and keep everything. But then, there I go again not liking mostly the same software needing attention on both systems. Too much to bother with. Hmm. I wonder what I'm going to do when I receive the boxed set of OpenSUSE 10.3 I ordered in a fit of thankfulness for a job well done on the distro? Unless I'm peeved at something in Debian I'll likely store it away for a rainy day. Ha! Eidenk, I know even we had our encounters here. But that takes nothing away from when I've seen something written by you that applied to something on my system as well, when I've lurked around reading various threads. Don't sell yourself short, but yeah, you can be pesky at times. But that's great because you add color to the picture of the forum. Without characters of many kinds life gets boring. Plus I was ROFL when reading some of your, shall we say, stronger exchanges with some other posters. I'm always grateful for a funny.

Hey again, Yeah guys, isn't this thing the greatest thing since sliced bread? Not only is it a stable time saver that helps out a new installation, but can ensure just about any system has whatever is available to keep the 98SE as secure as it can be (as far as the operating system, browser, media player, Direct X, etc) in these days of these forums really being the only way for keeping up as much as is possible without Microsoft support. And isn't it nice that this forum and the folks therein have continued to patch up anything they find that it is possible to improve upon? And I don't see soporific retiring from this. No sign of it anyway. So I'd expect that if the other gurus keep pushing out improvements, fixes and upgrades then he'll keep the Auto-Patcher going so we can all partake in the goodies without hassling trying to figure out what order, what to replace, how to do it, etc. Just run the latest Auto-Patcher and you're all set. I just applied the latest Update version and it all went completely smooth. Yeah, I'm still having it give me the list first and checking it, as well as toggling things off or on as I see makes the most sense for me. I never just hit go until I run through all the sections and set it up how I want to use it. Especially for the things that are always set to install but have a toggle available and that I know I don't want. But I've gone through two update packages on top of the original and all have installed and ran nicely on the current system. 98SE is available and ready to run whatever I want to on it with a whole lot of improvements over how it ran in the years everyone was using it. I mean, no copy large files or freezing My Documents folder hassles. No mysterious breakage in Internet Explorer, though I only open that to see whether it's still working. I use Firefox and Thunderbird for real work, and anyway I'm in Linux for that kind of thing and return to 98SE for older Windows 98 era games and programs. So I agree that we should thank soperific, MDGx, Gape, Maximux-Decim, Tihiy, and yes a thank you to LLXX (oh boy, was that the right forum name for her? Still sorry we can't still have her around. Some really important contributions from her there), Eidenk, and all who have and still work on this stuff for us. We're a small group now, we keepers of the 9x alive type of thing. It really was a nice operating system and never really got many of its bugs and kinks dealt with by the manufacturer during its official lifetime. The Ladies and Gentlemen around here have really fixed things up as much as they can be without source code. Incredible job, really.