Eck

Analada, Disable the Nvidia Panel, eh? I'll try that next time, which will be soon. I've been getting familiar with Linux and have noticed the almost unusable 3D games problem while using the ATI 3D drivers. They just fancied things up in the latest version with an official ATI Catalyst Control Center. But 3D gaming still is too slow to play. Looks great, but the frame rate is too slow to bother playing anything (at least, in OpenGL 3D). I've heard that NVidia does not suffer that difficulty so I plan to switch back to my noisy fan box (drat) and put 98SE on it with Vista (gotta buy another license I guess, another drat) and OpenSUSE Linux. I could just format and swap the videocards. A lot cheaper that way! Vista should activate fine with only the videocard changed. A shame though, since the ATI card has 256MB memory and the NVidia is 128MB. If ATI fixed the 3D problem that is the better card. It certainly is for Windows, and should be for Linux too if not for that driver problem. The driver gives nice support for fancy OpenGL 3D Compix/XGL effects but not for gaming. I have to leave that stuff off anyway because that turns off Direct 3D rendering in games. They really need to work more on that stuff rather than control panels.

Yeah! Who says 1024x768 is outdated? I'm on an HP Pavilion Mx70 17 inch CRT monitor which looks fine at 1024x768. In fact, here on Linux the ATI fglrx drivers have that as their highest resolution. I think that's only for 3D though. It lists 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768 in Xorg.cfg but the new Catalyst Control Center does allow selection of many others, both higher and lower. I think you can set the desktop res to those, but 3D OpenGL applications have to be run at the 3 listed xorg.cfg resolutions. Not that 3D gaming really is usable with ATI right now. Too slow. If I'm going to mostly stick to Linux I'd better switch to my other, nearly identical box that has an NVidia card in it. I keep hoping they'll fix things but even the new Catalyst version just offers a new, nice Catalyst Control Center with monitor switching (only have 1 so that doesn't effect me) and color adjustments. No 3D improvements that I can see. Mupen64 still runs at between 3 and 5 fps! Umm, that's unplayable. Looks pretty though! At least I can play all my NES and SNES games. FceUltra with the GFCE Ultra frontend is perfect, with gamepad support and full screen as well. Snes9x works without gamepad support (keyboard stinks but at least it works) and only in a Window but if I maximize the window it takes the entire screen with only a tiny titlebar on top and the game fills the whole screen. Looks awesome. The audio is better than on Windows. It's in synch, no scratchiness, and high quality. Anyway, using the Microsoft TrueType fonts everything looks just fine in 1024x768. Can hardly tell I'm not in Windows! Except for no Virus Scanners or Spyware detecting wasting all my resources and time. Vista sits on my first hard drive unused! (Mostly.)

Ooh! A Question I can answer! Yes, you can uninstall it. You already ran it and it installed the updates so removing all the files causes no problems. Just make sure to burn the installer to a cdr first so you can install it again! You might want to check out that manual installs folder to be sure you've installed the stuff in there before getting rid of it all. In any case you can always install it again as long as you saved it.

I had WMEncoder and the legacy stuff checked and didn't get that issue. That was with 1.91 though, and I had it install WMP9 and the codecs as well. I also deactivated 98SE2ME and 98MP10 stuff, installing those afterwards. Next 98SE install, I'll be using the new version. Just to comment on what's being discussed about future updates, besides bug fixing current patches and working on fancy GUI stuff I really don't see a lot of updates in the future. Without knowing Microsoft proprietary secret information there's only so much that is possible. I find it amazing how much has been accomplished, witness the ESDI fix for 48 bit LBA, IE6SP1 patches to fix Explorer slowdowns, etc. I think the community is sorely missing the creator of those. Web updates to fix, update already installed patches would be a cool thing though. That way we wouldn't need to download and run an entire new version of Auto-Patcher just to fix stuff it already installed. A good suggestion there by MDGx. It would be nice if an easy way could be figured out that would accomplish that. Maybe just a dedicated thread only for links to individual update patches to update an Auto-Patched system? I don't think something as complex as WindowsUpdate would be needed. Perhaps just patches we could download that specifically target updates to fixes done by Auto-Patcher?

Um, like soporific said guys, download Auto-Patcher for Windows 98SE. Run it. Say to install Dialup Networking 1.4 silently, after reboot set toggle to on, go through all the screens turning on or off the stuff you want, don't want. If you have a Windows Me cd turn off the 98SE2ME and 98MP10 options and download the full versions of those to do manually after Auto-Patcher for Windows 98SE is finished. When finished install your hardware drivers (that's right, do that AFTER the Auto-Patcher), Office, cd, dvd burner software, dvd player, Firefox, Thunderbird, plugins, games. You won't need to update anything. The man did it all for you. And unlike Microsoft Windows Update, these updates have been patched to actually work. I wish we were so lucky for XP and Vista. Oh, on XP use RyanVM Post SP2 Updater. Make the cd, next time you format use that instead of your XP cd. Not as good as Auto-Patcher for Windows 98SE (heh, heh) because they are all official, buggy Microsoft updates but better RyanVM than Windows Update to trust installing them.

Hi again! Just reporting in with my latest run of Auto-Patcher. I'm in a long process of setting up a multi-boot with 98SE, XP, and Vista on one hard drive and OpenSUSE Linux 10.2 on a second hard drive. I've gotten through 98SE and XP at this point. To avoid confusion I've not used any extended logical drives, preferring to let Partition Magic create 3 primary partitions and letting XP format the one C drive it sees when setting itself up. The others are hidden by PM. PM, in my experience, does not do a good job formatting NTFS partitions so that's why I have XP do that during setup. I've given 98SE 40GB, XP 80GB, and Vista 128GB. Imagine my surprise when seeing that XP now only has 30GB free space after all my software basics and my music, picture, and emulator game roms are installed. Well, I've reduced the System Restore capacity to its minimum of 300MB so I guess that's about the best I can do. I had no idea my stuff took up all that space! I haven't even installed any games yet, except for those roms which take up about 7 GB. My mp3's take up about 17 GB. I've yet to decide whether to install my old XP Home Edition on the Vista partition first and have my Vista clean install its upgrade from that or to use the recently discovered method of having the Vista Upgrade DVD upgrade itself by installing it twice. I never use the XP Home Edition anymore as I've gone Pro, but I'm still not sure what I want to do. I suppose either way works fine. I'm sure I'm in for loads of fun figuring out how to manage the multi-boot scenerio I prefer. My way, Vista will only see itself so will not set up the multi-boot menu for me (I hope). PQBoot from each OS will set the active partition whenever I want to change OS's. My biggest wonder is what's going to happen when I install Linux to the other hard drive and what Grub is going to leave me with after setup. I think it's possible to manually setup Grub to boot the various Windows partitions from tinkering with Grub within YaST. Don't know. I've printed out plenty of guides though so I'll see if I can tinker things up properly. I know BootMagic can't handle Vista so I haven't even bothered installing that. I'll either use Grub or PQBoot. OKAY! The Auto-Patcher results: Perfect, perfect, perfect! I absolutely love this thing and thank you for developing it. No problems using 98SE2ME and 98MP10 afterwards either. I did need to delete shelliconcache, reboot, then restore it from the Recycle Bin to get the new My Computer icon to show though. I toggled off all the MDGx stuff in Auto-Patcher and instead installed the full versions myself afterwards. NO SURPRISE: I got the Error Loading Device IOS, real mode memory allocation failed after installing something. I renamed smartdrv.exe to smartdrvold.exe in safe mode and 98SE then booted up fine. Interestingly, when checking bootlog.pre I see that it has a line saying that load vxd: SMARTDRV.EXE was successful. What the heck is calling that to be loaded I have no clue. Apparently it eventually fails to load it successfully and so I get that IOS error. I promise that smartdrv.exe is not called by ANY startup option screen I know about. It's not in autoexec.bat, config.sys, msdos.sys, protical.ini, win.ini, or system.ini. There are no references to smartdrv.exe in the registry. But something on ANY of my 98SE installations thinks it needs to be loaded for Windows. I'm totally clueless.

Is the OEM much cheaper than the Upgrade versions? If not, you might not have seen this but you can install the Upgrade version on an empty partition without entering a license key. Just select the version you purchased and installation will continue. When done and fully installed, boot from the DVD again and this time enter the license key. Choose a clean install and setup will detect the already installed Vista, format it, and install your Upgrade version fresh. No need to install XP first, as it considers the installed Vista as qualifying the same as it would if XP were installed. This method was distributed by Microsoft to its internal emails so it's not as if I'm advocating anything bad. It appears they have no intention of changing this behavior either. Doing this, you'll have a retail version which will not have the OEM ties to only use on the original hardware. You can change the hardware as long as you do not use the license on more than one system at a time. That's the normal retail policy. You just need to call as the different hardware will not be allowed to automatically activate over the internet. Seem like the better solution. You'll have bought Vista at a more reasonable price, be allowed to use it on one machine, but will not be shut out someday if you decide to upgrade to a new computer like you would if you bought the OEM. In appreciation of the price break, if I were you, I wouldn't use the XP you might have anymore. That way you would be more in line with that "Upgrade" you did pay for. Not necessary because of the way the installation is designed, but the nice thing to do! If you're like me and have purchased more than one license for XP, that wouldn't hinder you from still using XP but only retiring one license so you actually do qualify legitimately for the Upgrade Vista version. If you never bought an XP, you could still do this but then you would be a bad guy!

That would be a redesign of the software, something that 98SE2ME does not do. Do you often need to go into Safe Mode? If so, just set the option in msconfig to show the startup menu. I used to leave it like that when using BootMagic. It was hard to time my pressing the Ctrl key so that BootMagic would boot me to the startup menu. To make getting to Safe Mode less of a pain if I did need it, I set the option in msconfig to always give me the startup menu.

2Turtles, I think all those in your list need to be toggled on to be installed by auto-patcher. They are disabled by default. I remember going in and turning most of those on, then I got them. That was when using version 1.8. For those you want you can go in and run the installers manually or, and that's the beauty of this thing, you can simply run auto-patcher again. Just toggle those things on and run it. It won't reinstall all that stuff it installed the first time since it will detect that they are present.

Okay, maybe I can help with something simple like this. Fdisk will work, especially the fixed version that is installed by one of the Windows Updates. The Windows Update puts it into the Windows, I think the Windows\Command folder too, but it doesn't put it into the Command\EBD folder. So any Startup floppy made from add/remove programs will still include the old one. I just copy the fixed one from the Windows folder onto the Startup floppy, overwriting the one there. You'll still get a cosmetic bug, as you do with format, but it works fine on large drives. By cosmetic I mean you'll see the size of the partitions reported incorrectly but if you type in what you want then that is what you will get. And if you tell it to partition the entire drive it will, regardless of the size it reports. Same with format. When Windows is installed you'll see the correct amount. For ScanDisk and Disk Defragmenter, when I used a large drive I installed Norton Utilities 2002 and chose to let it replace ScanDisk with its own DiskDoctor. So I used DiskDoctor instead of ScanDisk and Norton SpeedDisk instead of Disk Defragmenter. Norton has no problem with 48bit LBA so you can safely do a surface scan with Disk Doctor and use SpeedDisk to defrag. There are other commercial and perhaps free defragmenting programs as well. At least the commercial ones should be easy enough for you to find. I think you can get away with using Scandisk as long as you only scan for errors in folders and files. Just don't let it do a surface scan. So you'd only need to get a 3rd party defragmenter. DON'T use Windows Disk Defragmenter on large drives! Do make sure you're using the Windows Me version of ScanDisk as it is essentially Norton SpeedDisk without the GUI, and is much faster than the 98SE version which, although it was also made by Norton, had 16 bit access and was therefore slower.

allesok, Greetings! Heyyy, now that's interesting that you kicked a startup problem by using setup /p i. For those looking in, that installs 98SE as a Standard PC without ACPI support. Another trick for those that WANT ACPI and are sure that the motherboard supports it is to use setup /p j. That forces ACPI support. I have one old computer that had a bios date older than Windows will let ACPI install automatically, even though the original HP system software was setup with ACPI. If I use the recovery cd then it has ACPI, but if I install from a retail 9x cd then I need to use setup /p j to get ACPI. And that board needed it as without it if I installed a videocard to replace the onboard the system would turn off the USB ports. Oh, they would be active and "working properly" in Windows but nothing would be powered or detected if plugged in. With ACPI, it didn't exhibit that problem. When I played with installing XP on that board (an HP Pavilion 4430(US) with a SiS5598 chip) it didn't even let me force ACPI, no matter what I selected with the F6 option during setup. If I didn't let it install as a Standard Computer it would blue screen when setup ended saying that it was doing that to protect my system. Since Standard Computer left me with no ability to install a videocard, XP was out of the question. That onboard video was just too slow. It's kind of a peppy system with something like a Voodoo 3000 PCI in it. But your comment interested me because when I use 98SE on my current system it always automatically installs ACPI support, but also always then reports 2 device errors for 2 ACPI Holder for PCI IRQ Steering devices. Everything works, but I have eventually encountered a problem. At some point after a restart after any random software is installed, I get a blue screen (actually a dos black screen) regarding an error loading device IOS, real mode memory allocation failed. Perhaps I'll try installing as a Standard PC (setup /p i) and see if PCI bus steering is enabled and working properly. It always reports that it is when using ACPI, but it gives those two device errors and eventually craps out. I found that renaming or deleting smartdrv.exe in safe mode fixes it temporarily, but then at some point the IOS bootup error happens again with me having no clue then how to fix it. I think I remember that I did install twice using the p i switch on another board. Once, it said that PCI steering was disabled due to an unknown problem, but the second time IRQ steering was enabled and working properly. I don't recall whether I got the IOS bootup error on that board when using standard pc. I know I had the error when using ACPI though. I seem to always wind up with that error on 98SE these days. Except on VMWare. Oh well. Perhaps some time soon I'll try it on this board (the EPOX in my signature) and see what happens. Too busy playing with Linux now to bother with it but eventually I'll have the calling!

Alright! I didn't know that trick with getting the urls. Awesome. Typing now from Firefox in OpenSUSE Linux 10.2. Gosh, this operating system is cool. I'm a first timer in any Linux and after years of spending, and spending, and spending $$$, I am simply amazed and can hardly believe how absolutely everything in this Linux world is free (excepting the hardware, ink, paper, cds, dvds). It appears that the only thing I'll really need a Windows setup for is for complete game compatibility. Unbelievable. Where have I been? I was so afraid of needing to learn complex new commands but found that not only are they not so complex, but really the only time it was absolutely necessary to leave the GUI was to install the proprietary ATI videocard driver so I could get all the neat desktop 3d effects. And the KDE GUI is, well, not dissimilar to anything I've used before. And it's pretty too! I'll stop since this isn't the place I guess, but I'm finding this new to me thing quite exciting. I'll likely keep multi-booting with my Windows stuff mainly to keep my games alive but, to be honest, I've got XP on here but I can't seem to want to leave this here strange new world so I can begin the much more tedious process of installing all my Windows programs. At least I'm glad I didn't have the funds to get Vista the first day. I see now it will cost me just $259 instead of a whopping $400 as it's been discovered that we can upgrade with a clean install without having XP previously installed just by running the Vista upgrade setup twice, leaving out the key the first time and choosing a clean install the second time. Then it'll format and install itself fresh. I've got 2 XP Homes and 2 XP Pros so I certainly qualify for the upgrade price discount anyway. Heck, with all the feedback I sent in during the Customer Preview time and all the money I've spent on Microsoft software I find it hard to justify spending even that much money on the thing. Still, it'll be at least another month before even that'll be possible for me. Might not do it at all. I'm searching for things I CAN'T do with the free Linux running the computer at this point, and wondering what Vista can offer me that's worth $259.

http://www.mdgx.com I tried to give a direct link to the page but the site navigation leaves the main url there wherever you go. Just scroll down and click on the 98SE2ME link and you'll see the manual installation method. That autoexec.bat bug existed in very early releases of 98SE2ME. The files are copied the first time you restart after installing 98SE2ME. You don't need them copied again! So you can just delete those lines. I was hoping to solve the system just turning the monitor off when trying to restart in MS-DOS Mode by installing the patched 98SE versions of USER.EXE and USER32.DLL from an extracted Unofficial 98SE Service Pack sp2.cab file. I need to set the ExittoDos.pif to its own dos configuration in order to get Windows to restart to dos mode properly. Returning to the 98SE versions didn't fix it so I'll just keep the Exittodos.pif with its own configuration. It works fine that way. Perhaps it's videocard driver related. I just can't set it to use the default dos configuration, but whatever. As long as I can get there! I'll keep the 98SE patched files. Don't see the need to switch them back.

Oh, and that SHELL98 must not be the cause of the weird Explorer windows problem as I activated that in auto-patcher and suffered no problems. I've also installed 98SE2ME and 98MP10 afterwards with no problems either. Hmm, wonder what caused that? Well, it's just nice it isn't happening anymore.

Oh! So that's the correct actual order. Thanks a bunch for that. I'd always mess it up when I tried installing MDAC myself so I've left it to either Office or a Service Pack to handle it. Used to use Maximus-Decim's version too but haven't for a while. Nice to know a way that works. Actually I just finished a new 98SE setup. I let auto-patcher install 2.8 SP1 but since I installed WorksSuite 2005 and OfficeXP afterwards I hope MDAC is installed properly. In the future I'll do what you advised myself now that I know.

He, he! I made it back to the web. I changed the install folder to c:\autopach so I could keep it around when I delete everything it the Temp folder. Yep, the 905495 loops. I guess I'll install it manually as you said that's the way to do it. The process went fine with no more errors about environments and stuff. The usual assortment of Windows Updates that it says I need is there. I won't bother with them. Most are superseded by unofficial updates the auto-patcher takes care of. My problem remains my personal bootup error of "Error loading device IOS, real mode memory allocation failed." My temporary work around was to cut and paste smartdrv.exe from the Windows folder to the Windows\Command folder so I can still have use of it for MS-DOS Mode. I'll need it to exist somewhere and I figured that the Command folder was a nice choice as it get put into the path. I tried all sorts of ways to solve it like changing to the version that comes with 98SE instead of the WinMe version that comes with 98SE2ME, replacing RMM.PDR with the one on the 98SE cd (although I think it's the same one), etc, etc. Nothing allows bootup unless smartdrv.exe does not exist in the Windows folder. See, everything is fine until any particular software is installed, doesn't matter what and that software does nothing that relates to smartdrv, and then the bootup error occurs. Then I need to go into safe mode and get smartdrv permanently out of the Windows folder. And I never know what install will trigger this. It has been with completely random software installations. The work around would be fine, except that the last time I had 98SE on a real hard drive (as opposed to VMWare where this never occurs) the error happened again when I rebooted from installing something after I had already done the work around. So I had no clue at that point which file was causing it and therefore had no way to fix it! That stank! I think this has some relation to video drivers as once when I was originally troubleshooting this before I learned about smartdrv, a return to the Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA) enabled me to get back into normal mode. But even redoing the Via AGP and the ATI or NVidia drivers brought back the bootup error. Obviously I liked the smartdrv work around better! No way I'm operating without video drivers. Of course, nothing is calling for smartdrv.exe to be loaded so I'm at a complete loss to understand why it has anything to do with a Windows bootup problem. I've checked msdos.sys and all the files in sysedit, msconfig, etc, and absolutely no reference to starting smartdrv is in anything I can see. DRAT, DRAT, DRAT! What the heck is this thing really caused by? If anyone ever comes up with a permanent fix for this I'd pay! Since it happens on some other unknown file even after the smartdrv work around I suspect it really doesn't have anything to do with smartdrv itself, but something that triggers IOS.VXD to not like any particular file existing in the Windows folder. And it is always triggered by a restart after a software installation.

Um,er, I'm using XP. My 98SE in this setup has been in a VMWare virtual machine. That's about to change in the next day or so as my hard drive will be blanked before installing BootIT NG, 98SE, XP, and OpenSUSE 10.2. But yeah, sorry, but I've been conducting most of my recent business from XP. I just don't have the money for Vista now. I've got a second hard drive in here just waiting for it (used it for the pre-releases), but it'll stay blank for now. Hmm, I hadn't had those MSVCR80.dll winoldap errors. I used to get winoldap errors a lot when I was running MS-DOS games within Windows but now use either Dosbox or run them from a reboot to dos mode shortcut (or from MS-DOS Mode directly). It might just be that I haven't been running the dos windows while an application was using MSVCR80.dll so that's why I haven't seen the errors. I don't use dos much except for the old games. I hope you didn't mean that the errors where happening while running auto-patcher. That would be a bad bug. Nice that Softpedia has it! Too bad about the lack of community support. This project should be a sticky and really should become the preferred method to update a fresh Windows install, or even an older Windows install since it only updates what isn't already there. That would be an easy way to get the current updates added on without figuring out where or how ourselves. It may be dos based, but it's run in Windows. So what if it doesn't look pretty. Hmm again, on a real hard drive install I'll probably want my motherboard and videocard drivers installed before auto-patcher. So I'll likely be installing Internet Explorer 6 SP1, DotNET 1.1, SP1, and 2.0, and Direct X 9.0c beforehand. However, maybe that's the nice part about not having a Windows GUI. Perhaps I'll just adjust the large memory stuff in 386 Enhanced of system.ini (so the thing will run on my 1 Gig of memory) and then just run auto-patcher. I could do all the motherboard driver stuff afterwards I suppose. Not sure though. But having it be a dos window type of program negates the need for the videocard drivers that offer nice resolutions being necessary. It might possibly even help to have Windows updated before installing any drivers Windows didn't come with. As I advised someone who was having problems, sometimes doing the driver installs afterwards ensures that the newest files are installed by the driver and that older files these drivers would use are replaced correctly as they aren't in use while the updates are running (not having been installed yet.) Yeah, I'll try that and see what happens. Install Windows, make the memory adjustments, run auto-patcher. Whenever I finally get back on the net I'll let you know. After all, I'll be installing 3 operating systems so this will be a while!

GUI's are nice, yes. But without being all prettied up the white on black MS-DOS window the auto-patcher provides does have pretty much all the choices presented to a user. A few nice GUI boxes could do the same. I do think though, that most folks who would get this will be able to read what's there now and press the correct keys to toggle stuff on and off and continue. The masses won't be using anything 9x anyway. Most of those that are will just go to Windows Update and hope for the best. Those in the know will decide for themselves which update package they prefer. Of those, I don't think reading text in a dos box is too much of a hastle. Certainly less so than needing to install all this stuff myself. But of course, by all means if it can look nicer I'd be all for that too! I think it's unnecessary, but yeah GUI's are nicer looking. Whatever soperific decides on that is fine as long as the choices aren't removed. I like being able to toggle things on or off. Ouch! That's a long wait time at that speed. I hope downloads will get faster when some folks who actually understand what the word sharing means (ya gotta share back) begin to find this.

Alright! It's safely tucked away to a cdr. It looks like a few folks are downloading this. For a while after I was done several seeders showed up, but today only 1 seeder (with an 8 in parentheses whatever that means) is seeding. This is weird, as I would think it would list soporific AND at least me since I'm still seeding. At any rate, and if I'm understanding the uTorrent program correctly, is appears that folks downloaded the thing then shutdown uTorrent and didn't bother seeding. That's not nice torrent ettiquette. Thanks soporific! Your patcher is awesome. (As long as this new version still works and doesn't muck things up, eh?) I just read through the Revolution Pack thread. It hadn't interested me much in the past, but using WindowsX's Vista Visual Styles Pack 6 on XP got me used to the Vista style stuff and I became interested in possibly seeing a similar look in 98SE. Wow! I saw your exchange of love their with Tihiy. Bombs bursting in air, eh? Well, everyone got along perfect with everybody else I guess the world would be boring. Perhaps I'll try the Pack when I set things up. Seems to me it should be getting pretty much stable as Tihiy's been working on it for years now. Something like that I generally don't experiment with much until after everyone else has already had the problems and most have gotten fixed. Sort of how I approached MDGx's implementation of XP/WMP10 files onto 98SE. I didn't quite trust that thing for a long time. Now it is pretty much finished and stable so I use it. It was different with the auto-patcher as the changes it makes are just what the clearly defined updates that it installs do. Well, I would install mostly all of those anyway so better your program does it than me! That's why I think it's kind of funny that so many around here seem to be ignoring your program and using the old, old, and a bit intrusive into the system as far as changing some key driver install methods and other things, Unofficial 98SE Service Pack instead of your up-to-date patcher. And yet they go nuts with these programs such as 98SE2ME and the Revolution Pack right as soon as the first Alpha, Alpha, REALLY Alpha versions are put up. The exception regarding 98SE2ME is that MDGx had already been experimenting with the files transferred from ME to 98SE on his own system for years before he put it all together into an installable program. So that was pretty much safe right from the get go. With yours, what you labeled as Alpha was really right from the start a better way to update than the Unofficial Service Pack. Heck, it was just a few scripts that installed more of what we needed and included a much more up to date set of updates. Now, it's just more refined as to choices, includes even more neat stuff, and is more polished as to installing and uninstalling. As far as folks complaining about the size, my goodness these folks would need to download and install all of these things seperately anyway. I'd much prefer having nearly everything I need all packaged up so I can simply click on the program and presto my system is all updated. That's far superior to figuring out what to install and in what order and who's package is best and all the other decisions and time consuming run on sentences, etc, etc. So, once again thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope you start getting some nicer recognition for this. It kind of annoys me when I still see folks recommending the Unnofficial Service Pack and not giving this pack any mention. I don't think folks outside of these forums even know it exists. Well, now there's a preview release. Gosh man, with the exception of some of those environment error work arounds I needed to take, every version has seemed to me to be as good a final as any of the other packs that are out. Maybe time to take this thing to MajorGeeks, CNET Download.com, etc? Too early? Well, if it works (and perhaps when you get it to install its stuff to its own folder either in Program Files or the root - whichever works better), then it's time for folks to use it. And, be able to find it and download it easily. A lot of folks won't be installing EMule or uTorrent stuff. They'll need to be able to see it on common sites and click a button to get it. I don't mean the forum members here, rather the general public who still think Windows Update is an option. At this time they generally only know about either Windows Update or the Unofficial Service Pack.

Right click the file, choose Properties, and it's either right on the first page or on a tab labeled Version.

Yep! As soon as that 1 seed showed up the download started and has been going strong, albeit comparatively slow, for the last several hours and reports about 45 minutes left. Not critisizing the speed at all since I don't know exactly how it works either. I'm just happy about it doing its thing and getting the file. Normally it is many times faster but who know what kinds of servers I'm used to. Plus, generally I've not come in right at the beginning and several seeders were already available. That also makes things faster. Right now it looks like 10(14) (which it is, I don't know but there's always a number in a parenthesis there) folks are downloading. Hopefully most of us will leave our torrent software running and the file in the download folder so the speeds will be faster for others. If there are many others. Although there are probably a lot more 98SE users than one would think, there are even less of those who know about this project and of those, are interested in using it. Hopefully that will change. I'll be leaving it up until I finish reading the Novell manuals. That's pretty tortuous work. It's not that there's so much to read but it would be nice if I could retain at least a bit of it in my head before wiping the computer and not having them available until I get Acrobat Reader installed into Linux. I've got a lot of other stuff I've printed out but there's no way I'm printing out hundreds of pages of manual. I'm pretty sure I know enough to get the thing installed. Plus, most wouldn't have bothered to do the research I have anyway and would probably do okay. I just hate operating blind. It's always been RTFM for me. Annoys the heck out of my sister! I read the manual for can openers before I plug them in for the first time. Only problem these days is I don't retain much in one sitting. Used to. Anyway, 98SE will go in first. So I'm glad this update is available for it. I'm not one who likes running software again over itself unless there's a problem or the kind of thing that needs updating like Firefox or something. That's why I haven't been too helpful in the request to run auto-patcher again to see what it detects as being installed. If it works I don't like to mess with it.

The torrent reports 0 seeders (I think you have to seed it first) and a 0 for download availability. Hmm, something's not right there. I downloaded a couple of other torrents just to check it and uTorrent downloaded them perfectly. For at least RapidShare you do know that you need to split it into 100MB parts? WinRAR will put them all together again when extracting. I don't mean split your program. I mean for example when you Rar it up you tell it to create it in 100MB parts. That's file001.rar, file002.rar, etc. Then I download each one and put them all into the same folder and right click the first and extract it to a folder. It then all becomes one file again. But then, you likely know about that. Just making sure. Besides that this forum (all of msfn.org) is having problems now on my Internet Explorer 7. I links to the main forum work, but the individual sub-forums leave an error page. I needed to search for auto-patcher. That link led me back here. I don't think this is my machine. The forum worked fine a couple of hours ago. Okay, the forum is back up but there is still nothing coming from the torrent.

Just to defend here, no this isn't vaporware. Although some of the updates have been updated since, for those that don't already have all the stuff in the Power Pack it's very conveniant to have it all on one disk. It has a nice GUI autorun as well. I don't know if they'll be another one made but if it is being worked on then jimmsta is probably just waiting for some of the other projects to settle down before deciding what to pack into it and how to do it. For those that want to use the programs contained in the current version, then with the exception of keeping an eye on updated versions of some of the stuff it is still a good collection. Vaporware is where nothing of value ever gets released. This project has already produced a nice collection of software in a well thought out format.

With the exception of some 98SE trials and tribulations in just getting a working system to finish being built (my problems involved IOS bootup errors. See some of my other posts ranting and wondering what the heck was the reason. Never found out), my fresh reinstalls of XP or what have you are normally on purpose. I've got a bunch of free time as I just take care of my sick elderly Mom. It's been like that for a few years now. So some of this time is spent playing around with different hardware/software configurations. Like now. I've got a perfectly operational setup with XP. And I have a 98SE install that I have running in VMWare. (Strange that those VMWare 98SE setups never give me a problem.) Nothing wrong at all and it does everything I could possibly want. When I was visiting another forum I posted a grumble regarding Vista being sold at such a high price. Especially the full retail Ultimate Edition. I could say the same for Office, but I do see there's a new release for Home/Student that really has the programs I install anyway. I guess that's instead of an upgrade to their WorksSuite series. It is still $30 more than the WorksSuite used to be (and that's not counting that I usually bought it on sale), and doesn't contain the other software programs that made the suite a good buy. Since I already got the new Encarta Premium and Digital Image, that plus the stuff in the Office 2007 Home thing is all I'd want now. I don't bother with Outlook so I wouldn't miss that. Anyway, a poster replied something like, "Sounds like you need Linux." That was the whole post. The next guy said, "Uh Oh, here we go!" No OS war resulted but it perked my interest. After reading up and downloading stuff I figured I'd do a bit of a different configuration. It'll be fun! That's all. No problems here with the box, but I just want to plug the stuff in a different way. I'll still be using Windows but it'll be an experience messing around in the Linux world too. So you see that with my constantly changing a lot of my hardware (yes I call Microsoft a lot for activation. I'm talking swapping out motherboards, soundcards,etc.) and some very different software setups, Ghosting isn't really a suitable process for me. I wouldn't want to use what I Ghosted as I'd want too many things to be different.

Drugwash, Okay, imdb.com, yes nice website. Been there, good stuff. Why? Did you mean BitTorrent (newly merged with uTorrent) doing some deals to make legit movie downloads? I don't think I've ever downloaded a movie anyway. Same with music. All the thousands of mp3's on my computer are ripped from cd's I own. I just use that as a conveniance so I don't need to keep cd's near my computer and swap 'em out to change albums. I just use WMP or Winamp libraries to access the songs. Not all torrent fan's use them to get stuff free that we're supposed to buy. Sometimes there are old, not available things or big files people post and torrents are conveniant ways to distribute them. Ooh! Yeah, get Link21 all riled up. Love to read threads with his stuff. Fun. (You weren't seriously angered, eh? He just offers his pretty out there opinions. I think mostly to p-ss people off. He reminds me of Elvis Is Alive who used to come up with all sorts of outlandish things in 3dfx Voodoo card threads. ROFL material!) Those kinds of things may be frowned upon on boards with serious stuff going on but a little off the wall humor lightens the day in my view. For anyone wondering, an old, old thread regarding Link21 was revived when his childish POS OS rantings managed to rankle our friend here. Whew, he really gave it to him. It's like Rock-em Sock-em robots! 98SE will live forever! It stirs up hormones we forgot we had! Soporific, Just reminding you that another update to 98SE2ME and 98MP10 is up. Yeah, I turn those off and do them myself but in case you hadn't noticed there you are! Just waiting for you now before redoing my computer. Since 98's the first thing that gets installed I'm waiting on the newest version of autopatcher before getting started. No rush! Get it right, but I'm just saying. And thanks for what I think is the easiest way to get 98SE all ready to go.