eidenk

Two new patches available courtesy of erpdude and MDGx : * Microsoft Windows ME ATA Flash Card Standby Error IOS.VXD build 4.90.3004 Fix: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=308236 Direct download [174 KB, English]: http://www.mdgx.com/files/Q308236.EXE * Microsoft Windows ME MS-DOS Prompt International Keyboard Errors MSCONFIG.EXE build 4.90.3001 Fix: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=272719 Direct download [175 KB, English]: http://www.mdgx.com/files/Q272719.EXE

@rhelic and siim04 I won't switch back from ME to 98SE that is sure as I only share your appreciation on ME over 98SE if speaking about a standard out of the box installation. Once System File Protection and System Restore are removed filesystem speed is equal if not better than 98SE in my subjective judgement. Once all the other unnecessary services are either shut or removed, I find that it is pretty much similar to 98SE with the bonus of higher stability in low free resources situation and generic USB mass storage support. I also found it necessary to remove by hand (as there is no utilities for doing so unlike for all the rest) the Scanner and Camera Wizzard/Still Image Monitoring component who is buggy enough to regularly almost freeze the OS after loading stimon.exe as a background task for no known reason. Besides this, all the other performance tweaks I use on ME, I was also using them on 98SE. Thanks for your opinions and advice on 2003. I'll most probably try it some day aside my WinME install if that's possible as with 2000 and XP, just to see what it is.

Try this : Go in Control Panel/System Properties/Performance/File System/Floppy Disk and untick "Search for new floppy disk drives each time computer starts"

Preptool is supposed to remove all hardware before imaging. What you could try to do do is just run it on your system and reboot instead of imaging and see if it removes your audio properly. I think it is also a good idea to actually uninstall the hardware before resetting the registry as setup might find the files for your old audio hardware and installs them automatically. (It seems to me that some older AC97 drivers will work on an older card but not on a newer one despite that they install on both.)

I have 512 MB of RAM and I do use the optimizer part with the following settings : Autofree 10 MB each 1 minute if RAM is below 50 % and also 100 MB minimum free RAM and 350 MB as a target. CPU usage disabled. It works remarkably well. I use version 2 I have from a cover CD.

@rhelic I have two OSes you haven't spoken about. ME that I have currently installed and since recently three brand new 180 days evaluation copies of Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with serials. I am tempted installing that but I really like my WinME and did not like 2000 for some reasons when I had an opportunity to try it. What would you say about ME vs 2003 ? I have an Athlon XP 2600 on an Abit NF7S v2 with 512 meg of RAM that works splendidly with ME.

It's an ME box I must say and the total available size for resources is I believe (but I am not exactly sure) a little bit bigger than in 98SE. So I probably would be lower to startup with resources on 98SE than I am on ME with the same load. Also I did like you, I disabled or removed all the MS services that aren't absolutely needed for my purposes without doing any miracle of exotic stripping. What's nice with ME over 98SE I noticed is that it is much more stable when in low resources situation than 98SE is. With 98SE you can get stability issues when under 15-20% of free resources left whereas ME does not exhibit wrong behaviour even at only 1%. In fact Windows ME will abrupty crash if you go below 0% whereas 98SE will begin to exhibit an increasingly unstable behavior as free resources go below 15-20%. Sometimes I manage to free a few % of resources by killing and restarting the Explorer. I have often wondered if certain system files could be tweaked as to maybe increase the available size for resources by simply changing a few strings but I have no clue as to where to look at. Also there is no tool or trick I know of that would allow to free the areas of memory marked as used by resources when they aren't used anymore and haven't been properly freed by apps. I doubt such a tool exist otherwise it would probably be quite well known. I know one interesting tool that actually shows in details what resources are used by apps and modules : http://www.japheth.de/Download/TaskList.ZIP PS : I have also an old but good HP LaserJet IIIP whose drivers are always loaded and that I forgot to include in my above list but I don't think those take 8% on my system and I haven't been able to locate them in the above app.

Maybe you could try to use the little known Microsoft Preptool for Win98 and then report back how it does work as no one here seems to have ever used it. http://download.microsoft.com/download/win.../WIN_DEPLOY.exe

Yes, remove TIMEDATE.CPL from the system directory. It can still be used by double-clicking on it wherever you put it but this will break the link to it on the taskbar clock and it won't appear anymore in the control panel either which is what you also want.

Well I run quite a few third party background apps. They are Zone Alarm, Antivir, Open Expert, Dialog Box Assistant, Stroke-it, Cool Mouse, Ram Idle, Hook 99, Taskbar Activate, FreeShade and PopupIconEx. Also I have several shell extensions installed that are consuming resources (7-Zip, IzArc, Copy2Clip, Mp3 Info property sheet and a few more). I also have a SATA drive, a Sound Blaster (on top of the onboard AC97 audio chip), a TV card, an USB broadband modem and an USB midi keyboard, all of which are using specific additional drivers and therefore consuming some resources. That's why I start with resources that seems low. But after a week of uptime, it is extremely unlikely I have more than 30% of free System and User resources left. GDI usually remains quite high. You say free system resources remains almost as when freshly booted after an uptime of 8 days on your system. How do you manage that ? PS : As I have seen that some are confusing resources with RAM, I stress that I always have as much free RAM as when I boot (around 350 MB free).

This does not adress the vanishing resources issue which are finally forcing to reboot despite the best RAM defragmenters and freers.

Which resources ? System ? User ? GDI ? I start up with 75% of both System and User resources and 85% of GDI resources free. After a week of uptime those resources are never at that level anymore on my machine. If they still were I'd rarely need to reboot I think. What's your recipe not to loose resources over time ?

Search win.ini or system.ini or the registry run keys for the file path and delete it where you find it. Shortcut in the startup folder is another possibility albeit unlikely.

Can't you put a shortcut to your folder in the SendTo folder ? Maybe there is no SendTo menu on XP, I think I read something about that somewhere. If that's the case you can install File Targets. It is a SendTo clone and it is free.

Dialog Box Assistant remembers size and view style for the open/save dialogs on a per application basis. It also remembers last used folders and files. It is actually one of the must have add-ons to Windows in my opinion. As you've seen it is not free but if you have a 9x system you may find a download for version 1.1 (beta1) which works well on those systems and is free but this version does not work on the 'Office / XP' style enhanced 'Open / Save' dialog boxes I have just read in another forum. Worth buying if you have XP and a few bucks to spend.

The latest ffdshow is apparently buggy. Go on Doom9 forum for more info.

On 9x you can kill and restart explorer after modifying the registry, but you need to use one or another script (I use Batchrun for doing that sort of things). On 9x all the settings that concerns the taskbars (quicklaunch + eventual additional taskbars) are normally dumped to the registry only at normal shutdown. If you quick reboot or crash Explorer before normally shutting down, all changes made to the taskbars are lost. Relevant data is stored in those keys : HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams and HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StuckRects2 (There is no StuckRects key on my Win ME system) I think the first of those keys also contains also the location of the desktop icons. On ME you can do the following : Create a taskbar environment, shut down normally to write the taskbars/desktop data to registry, restart the machine, backup the above two keys. Create another different taskbars/desktop environment, shut down again, restart, backup this new desktop environment. You can create and backup like that like that as many others environments as you want. Then with a script that do the following : 1) Kill Explorer. 2) Merge a backed up environment to the registry. 3) Restart explorer. You can switch desktop environment with one click. It is also possible to switch in the same time the location of the desktop, the various system icons, color scheme, context menu entries, etc. Wallpaper can also be changed by using a command line wallpaper changer. (Merging like that a backed up environment with additional taskbars will create the taskbars even if the corresponding folders do not exist but they won't be usable.) PS : There is a small proggie called refresh.exe that will dump the quicklaunch settings data from memory to registry without needing to reboot. Unfortunately it doesn't dump the additional taskbars data so it is of limited use.

Hi again, with simply merging this registry file you can register and unregister dlls with the context menu instead of using the run box or a batch file. Multiple files can be selected. REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\Register] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\Register\command] @ = "regsvr32.exe \"%L\"" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\UnRegister] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\UnRegister\command] @ = "regsvr32.exe /u \"%L\"" It works on 9x. Dunno on NT+ because of privileges but otherwise I think the syntax is the same. I also use that with ocx files and ax files (DirectShow Filters).

Make sure you have CD-Rom selected as first booting device in the BIOS. (See your mobo manual on how to get in the BIOS, usually pressing the F8 key) You are probably trying to boot on your Hard drive and there is nothing on it.

Please be more precise. What is a media reader ? What soft have you installed ? Otherwise no one will answer you.

IE Standalones on evolt.org

Maybe that's what you need :

Petr is the man for that. He is knowledgeable both on FE and hardware. He'll probably answer you something. Just wait a bit.

@KerguelanAvon Theoretically you are correct. This service pack applies only to 98 First Edition (or Gold). If you upgrade to SE, you'll need to use Gape's pack and not this one. But I suppose you could install it on FE, upgrade to SE and then install Gape's as you've said.

There is a GUI tool to tweak DOS called MS-DOS Mode Wizard Customization (DOSWZCFG.EXE) that is part of the Win 95 Kernel Toys. Very unfortunately it does not have a help file so it is very difficult for me to figure out what all the many options exactly do as I am not exactly a DOS geek. That's the type of MS tools Gape should consider including in his pack I think. Along with TweakUI, TimeZone Editor, Boot Editor and ScanRegistry Editor I would say.