eidenk

I can't speak for 98SE but with Windows ME and the native Esdi_506.pdr 4.90.3000, there is no problem for handling more than 128/137 GB of data on a single disk provided the partitions are smaller than 128/137 GB. I just tested it. See screenshots : 1) Filling the drive with data 2) Result

I use Eraser myself but I haven't the shellex enabled though I never had a problem with it when I did. Make sure you have the latest version. Make sure as well that your system files are up to date. Install Gape's Service Pack and maybe you'll be able to enable the shellex again A tip : if you want to at least to be able to erase the recycle bin through its context menu, merge this : REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\Shell\Erasext] @="E&rase Recycle Bin" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\Shell\Erasext\command] @="\"C:\\Program Files\\Eraser\\eraserl.exe\" -recycled" It does not call on the Dll and won't crash your system. You 'll still be able to erase your bin conveniently. PS : I know NirSoft's tools, all his utils are excellent.

Go in Eraser and disable the shell extension ( Edit\Preferences\General\Shell Extension). Try to do the same in Word Perfect as well and see if it helps.

Indeed I had successfully formatted a 200GB FAT32 drive and the problem arises when you break through the 128/137 GB barrier. I have tested it. It terminates abruptly your windows session and prevent you to reaccess windows by corrupting data. Not exactly it seems. In fact the data that has been destroyed on my disk has been the one that had been written the last to the disk. For example, the filling I copied to reach the barrier got integrally trashed. And I suspect the session did terminate only because the registry got thus destroyed as it is almost always the last thing written to the disk. Barely any of the old data I had got damaged. Additionally I did run several scandisk sessions from DOS on that drive and corrected several millions wrong entries (not all of them because I gave up). I did then delete all the data that was intact and I am now using the trashed drive as Disk D and I have on it my desktop, swap file and temporary folders, all perfectly working apparently beyond the 137 GB barrier. See screenshots : 1) Filling the Drive 2) All the latest filling is trashed 3) A recent folder that had originally only a few small files in it. Notice the reported size of it. 4) The current state of the drive 5) Partition Manager view. Note that the reported size is beyond the 128 GB limit and seems consistent with the 2.2 GB of workable data I have currently on it. 6) The workable data Hi Petr, If you want some more details such as inspecting the FAT, just tell me what I must do to copy it to a file. I can do other crash tests if you want and forward you the precise results you might need so that it'll help you figure out even better what goes on and make it easier for you to write that patch that I am willing to help testing. PS : I am currently on Windows ME but can install 98 for that purpose. Regards.

Clarify something else : Do those other problems (taskbar lock, etc...) arise only after you try to use the right click ?

PS : In case the above does not solve your problem, could you please export the following key and post it here as well : HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{B95057E0-44DB-11CE-A5D1-00608C83BD3F}

Yeah, it's probably Norton. I had serious problems with my OSes each time I have tried to install big names all in one security solutions. If it's Norton the culprit, all you've got to do is to merge the following registry file : REGEDIT4 [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\Symantec.Norton.Antivirus.IEContextMenu] [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\Norton WipeInfo] [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\Symantec.Norton.Antivirus.IEContextMenu] [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\Norton WipeInfo] It should disable entirely the interaction of this product with your context menu while leaving the rest of its functionality intact.

There is a known issue with right-clicking on Win98 SE and I have suffered several times from it (I am now on ME on which this problem never showed up). Reinstalling did not help. In my case it always had to see with the new context menu and the only workaround I found was to disable it not to have those freezes when right clicking. You can try it. To disable it : REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\New] @="" Paste this code in your text editor and save as disablenew.reg and double click on it to merge it in the registry To re-enable it : REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\New] @="{D969A300-E7FF-11d0-A93B-00A0C90F2719}" Anyway if this works it is only a workaround. As I am much more proficient now in those matters then when I was when those problems arose to me, I might be able to troubleshoot you if I get enough details. Could you export the following registry keys and post them here : HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\* HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory Could you as well provide the list of modules loaded by explorer.exe ?

Stupid question but have you tried to reinstall Windows on top of itself ?

????????????????????? As for your soft that you could have named it in the first place, (you still haven't) it is still flawed in design even if it is not P2P. There is no reason why you should compulsorily need Active Desktop to access the internet from a LAN.

REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer] "NoActiveDesktop"=dword:00000001 [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer] "NoActiveDesktop"=dword:00000001 This removes the Web tab in display properties and the Active Desktop entry in the desktop right-click. Reload of the explorer shell neccessary for changes to take effect. I repeat that unfortunately disabling or enabling Active Desktop through editing policies registry keys does not prevent webcheck.dll from being loaded. It must be unregistered if one wants to achieve a huge stability gain. Just change it as it is flawed in design and use eMule which is the best. It is resource hungry but you can disable the progress bars to make it resource friendly.

Maybe they have not lost the code for those files but these are most likely to have been written long time ago in assembler and compiled with MASM. Those who wrote them may now be dead (there are some legends about that) or more simply not working for Microsoft anymore for obvious reasons. So far as I have grasped reading posts at the Win32Asm Forum and the Masm Forum, it is very difficult if not often impossible for even highly skilled and experienced assembly progammers to make sense of even small snippets of code someone else wrote if is not exhaustively documented line by line. So yes I think it is very possible MS could be hexing their files.

I don't see how one can blame spyware for this. Spyware aims at spying at you in the stealthiest possible way, not at make you notice it is there by disabling system property sheets Speak about malware or virus maybe but not spyware in this context. Do you at least permanently run an up to date virus scanner as a background task when you browse the net ? If not you should as some websites are able to drop executable files on your disk and run them through IE flaws even with all the IE security fixes applied and script execution disabled. It happened twice to me and fortunately was relatively harmless and quite easy to deal with, just self replicating bargain.exe and assorted dlls. What if they had attacked my FAT ? Brrrr... Here is a good security forum : deny.de I have downloaded this there. Good laugh.

EFB.nu Freeware Home Enjoy !

It may or it does ? There is a big difference between the two. You obviously don't know what you are talking about here. This is indeed totally off-topic but nevertheless : I permanently run 13 additional background tasks to improve Windows's functionality and I use 32 bits icons and a 1280x1024 32 bits wallpaper. I have got ~ 400 MB out of 512 MB of free memory after startup and all consumes less than 1% of CPU time when idle. I am curious, how little RAM have you got on your machine that you need to strip system files from their icons and bitmaps to gain UP TO ONE MEG OF RAM at startup ? Ditch your 486 (or 386 maybe as you are so desperate of saving 1 meg of RAM), we are in 2005 and if you are interested in advanced interface hacking, have a look at WinT's mods. He does not like icons so he has reshacked many system files as to have a totally iconless system including in tree views. Very interesting. My point about webcheck.dll was not about saving some CPU cycles or a few MB of RAM which are both abundant enough today not to care too much about. My point was to speak about a totally misbehaved file which is responsable of 95+% of the explorer crashes and freezes which force you to constantly reboot your machine and spoils your computing experience. Yes that's finally what I said in my first post : All the other files can remain registered in the system as they perform without affecting stability. Indeed, enabling Webview on low spec system affects speed but that's another question alltogether and one about which I wouldn't have bothered to post anything as this should be obvious for even beginners : more stuff and cosmetic functions you use, more it consumes resources which is more visible on low spec systems. Just type regsvr32 /u webcheck.dll in the run box and notice the difference. And if after that you suddenly miss sorely needed functionality just type regsvr32 webcheck.dll in the run box and webcheck will be back to crash your system. As simple as that.

As for thinking better about an add-on pack it would be nice if you could list your essentials you can't do without and or your always running background third party utils. Here is for me : Always runing background tasks : Ram Idle, Taskbar Activate, Stroke It, Wintime, Free Shade, Cool Mouse 96, Hook99, PopupIconEx Open Expert, Dialog Box Assistant, Folder Cache, Zone Alarm, Antivir. I could hardly do without almost any of them at the moment except for Zone Alarm and Antivir when entirely offline. Can't do without add-ons : Diskeeper Lite, a task/process manager (I mostly use Prc View and Process Explorer), a startup manager (I use Startup Cpl and Autoruns), an archiver (I use 7-Zip and IzArc), a tabbed Notepad replacement (I use Editpad 3.5.1), a DVD Player (Media Player Classic), a CD-DVD Burner (CD DVD Burning 1.0) and many more in fact such as a font manager (The Font Thing), image viewers (XnView, IrfanView, PicView, ArtSee, Context View and VueIcons) and so on, Wordpad replacement (Atlantis Nova), Screen capture utility (MWSnap)... Multimedia : ffdshow codecs, asio drivers, audio players and utils, video players and utils. Network tools : A download manager (Net Transport) Runtimes : Sun Java, WinPcap. Many more in fact.

Well I think one really needs a good physical memory manager for example running permanently as a background task. Way before thinking of CPU cooling which is an issue for overclockers only. I'll begin a specific thread about all that as it seems there is a push towards creating an add-on pack of essential utilities. Indeed after installing all service packs and everything, many standard things need to be installed in my view to make the system fully functional such as a CD burner, a DVD player, an archive manager and so on.

They seem to be label or index only. I don't know exactly but there are some weird things for sure : For example the icon for the History folder is extracted from SHDOCVW.DLL and bears the label -20785 or -20780. This file contains many icons (31) but only 6 are accessible through the standard icon dialog box. The History folder icon can only be changed through the registry anyway : REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{FF393560-C2A7-11CF-BFF4-444553540000}] @="History" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{FF393560-C2A7-11CF-BFF4-444553540000}\InProcServer32] @="C:\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM\\SHDOCVW.DLL" "ThreadingModel"="Apartment" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{FF393560-C2A7-11CF-BFF4-444553540000}\DefaultIcon] @="C:\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM\\SHDOCVW.DLL,-20780" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{FF393560-C2A7-11CF-BFF4-444553540000}\ShellFolder] "Attributes"=dword:a0000004 But I haven't managed to figure out how to change the icons of the History virtual subfolders. Apparently the icon used there is SHDOCVW.DLL,-20783 but I havent found a reference to it in the registry. It may be that this one is hardcoded.

To avoid any other confusion, I will point out as well that unregistering or removing webcheck.dll does not affect at all the taskbar/toolbar system which is another IE4+ component. I have 12 toolbars (+ quicklaunch toolbar) on 3 taskbars at the moment and this works just extremely fine without webcheck.dll.

As there seems to be some confusion, I want to point out that unregistering or removing webcheck.dll DOES NOT affect web view for folders as this function relies on webw.dll. I do not notice any stability or speed difference by using or not using web view on my Athlon 2600. I do not use web view normally as I do not like it but I have just turned it on to make sure and it works fine.

Thanks MDGx and many thanks for your great site as well, one of the best on the planet. I am very sure you will be pleased to include in your software list this little pearl I have dugged out of Vector : Quick Terminator.

That's my best tip. It decreases by an estimated 95% (or maybe more) the explorer crashes, freezes and unexplained slow downs that everyone knows so well even on freshly installed systems with the best service packs as we have here.. I think that most of the benefit of 98 lite comes from the removal of this file which is a part of the Active Desktop component introduced with Internet Explorer 4. This file is the plague. It is permanently loaded and do nothing else but bugs your system. If you don't use a web wallpaper that needs to be regularly updated online, you don't need this file running. But it runs even if Active Desktop is disabled everywhere you can tick at for that purpose. Thanks to TaskInfo, I have quite easily spotted it some time ago. When explorer would almost freeze, instead of of rebooting, I would manage to load Taskinfo (sometimes waiting 10 seconds or more) and always explorer, instead of being idle as it should be, would take up from 10 to 40% of CPU time while apparently doing nothing. That's where TaskInfo came handy as it is the only utility I know that indicates not only processes CPU use but also the CPU use of the modules loaded by the processes. So I found out that it was systematically always webcheck.dll who was responsible for the explorer load. I took the risk to remove it from DOS. Since I have discovered that it can simply be unregistered to obtain the same benefits. I think Gape could include this fix in his next service pack. Strange though that the Microsoft experts have never spotted it themselves in their quest for stability. Too juicy in technical support I suppose. Would you please try and tell me if I am not dreaming. Difference for me is almost like, say, night and day.

I think I can remember that when I switched from 98SE to ME the first thing I noticed is that problem of Boot logo appearing only for a very short time as you describe. So I got rid of the logo all together. The install was not an upgrade but a fresh one.

I have a serial ATA drive spinning under Win ME. A 250 gig one with 180 gig of uncorrupted data on it. It's not the install drive though. I don't think I could install Windows on it but I may be wrong about that. Apparently it uses the following driver files (SCSI Controller) : Siisup.vxd and Si3112r.mpd. They aren't MS files and aren't in the Windows cabs.

Agreed. And what about trying to break the 64K fixed limit of resources ? What a pity I can't run more apps simultaneously because of it. If it could be only doubled to 128K it would be super bonanza already. As well I thought about an add-on pack with all the good MS freebies from the resource kits, kernel toys, power toys, preptool, etc.. some of which aren't on the 98SE CD and none on the ME one. As well maybe would be interesting to have a solid pack of additional runtimes that are commonly used such as VB, MFC, Borland, etc.. and whose versions are known to be the most stable on 9X, etc. I think I have noticed that sometimes the latest aren't the best on 9x nowadays. It will probably become more and more true as times goes by. I think such a pack should be a one click one should be able to overwrite any newer file version. It would include WinPcap which is a must install on a 9x system as well I think. Another idea would be to have a one click up to date multimedia runtimes pack including all the additional freebies such as the video encoding tools and maybe some more such as the Quick time and Real players as well as some open source filters (ffdshow notably and maybe some free DVD playback filters and Asio drivers) but including WMP 9 only optionally.