Petr

So for no apparent reason everything is OK now? This means that you have installed some firewall blocking ICMP packets used by ping and tracert commands. This firewall may be either in your DSL modem or in your PC - ZoneAlarm, KPF etc. But if everything is OK, there is no need to do anything, right? Petr

No!!!! You just used your computer to access another computer on the Internet and the traceroute command was executed on this remote computer, not on your computer! I'm sorry, I feel really frustrated. Petr

Steerforth, I wrote that the traceroute command has to be executed on your PC, not that you should use your web browser to execute the traceroute command somewhere else. You just verified the traces from 2 different locations to www.citibank.com and you have also verified that these remote computers (servers) are able to resolve the www.citibank.com domain name correctly. What I asked you for was to execute the traceroute (and ping) command from your local computer. I wrote you exact directions, I can do nothing if you don't want to follow my simple instructions. Of course, you can eliminate your problems by using http proxy, but I don't think ot is the right way. Petr

No, the traceroute posted by Steerforth was not gerenrated by Windows 98 tracert command. No, I worry that Steerforth still did not made any ping or tracert from his machine :-(Please look closer at the visualroute output, it is Visulalroute Server and the traceroute goes not from his computer but from the server in Visuaware company. Steerforth wrote that neither IE nor Firefox worked so I really don't think that Opera will. Petr Dear Steerforth, I don't know how to explain to you that you have to execute tracert command or run Visualroute application from your computer, not from other computer in the Internet. Please follow these steps: 1. Open the MS-DOS prompt (Go to Start Menu -> Programs -> MS-DOS Prompt) 2. Type tracert www.citibank.com 3. Post the output of the program here. Is this clear? Petr

1. Traceroute is OK, it is normal that ICMP or UDP packets are firewalled. 2. Ping is also OK, it is normal that ICMP packets are firewalled. 3. The IP address is also OK, the private address range is 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255 - see http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1918.html Petr Steerforth, you are using Unix??? The output is not from Windows. Petr

he has already done that. and it worked exactly like it should. im only saying to edit the hosts file as a diagnostic measure to see if that bypasses the problem. http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&sho...ndpost&p=514250 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&sho...ndpost&p=514261 OK, I have not noticed what this reply means. If realy the output "it's exactly the same." like yours, then there is no problem with name resolution and no reason to do anything with HOSTS file. I only don't know what could then mean the message "Cannot find server or DNS Error" in the Post #4. So if name resolution works, I'd try traceroute www.citibank.com, it should look like: 8 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms sl-gw10-fra-4-0.sprintlink.net [217.147.111.113] 9 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms sl-bb21-fra-8-0.sprintlink.net [217.147.96.41] 10 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms sl-bb20-par-14-0.sprintlink.net [213.206.129.65] 11 92 ms 91 ms 91 ms sl-bb23-nyc-14-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.20.45] 12 91 ms 91 ms 91 ms sl-bb20-nyc-8-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.7.13] 13 91 ms 91 ms 91 ms sl-bb26-nyc-6-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.13.9] 14 96 ms 95 ms 95 ms sl-bb23-pen-12-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.20.95] 15 95 ms 95 ms 94 ms sl-bb20-pen-14-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.16.25] 16 94 ms 95 ms 95 ms sl-gw1-pen-9-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.5.2](fragment) Other possibility is wrong proxy setting or some sort of firewall. Petr

OK, I will repeat it the third time: 1. Open the MS-DOS prompt (Go to Start Menu -> Programs -> MS-DOS Prompt 2. Type ping www.citibank.com 3. Post the output of the program here. The output will be either Pinging www.citibank.com [192.193.226.190] with 32 bytes of data or Unknown host www.citibank.com. This is be the first step in the diagnostics. Don't touch the hosts file, it may cause even more problems or hide the primary cause of the problem you have. Petr

The ping command has to be started from the command line and not from the address line in IE or Firefox, exaxctly as janus zeal wrote. I'm sorry that I have not expressed it clearly. Entering 192.193.226.190 instead of www.citibank.com to the address line cannot work beacuse it is redirected immediately to http://www.citibank.com/index.htm. But still - if you enter 192.193.226.190 to the address line, what error message you receive? I can imagine two possibilities: 1. 192.193.226.190 will remain in the address bar and you will receive some sort of timeout error, or 2. The address in the address bar changes automatically to http://www.citibank.com/index.htm and then you will receive DNS or server not found error. In case 1 you have no IP connectivity to www.citibank.com, in the second case you are not able to resolve www.citibank.com. Petr

Steerforth, have you tried the ping command I have asked you for? What was the result? "Pinging www.citibank.com [192.193.226.190]" or "Unknown host www.citibank.com"? Please do this basic test if you need any help. This test will verify whether address translation works or not. Petr

I'm sorry but it was not clearly written. OK, so now you can verify that the error is in DNS. Try to enter the command ping www.citibank.com If the result is Pinging www.citibank.com [192.193.226.190] with 32 bytes of data then everyting is fine. If the result is Unknown host www.citibank.com then you have problem with DNS. Then you should check your DNS server(s) settings - either there will be wrong servers or these servers will not be operational. Verify with your ISP that your DNS setting is correct. Because of DDOS attacks using open recursive DNS servers many DNS servers restricted the functionality to some domains / IP addresses only. Petr

Here it is written clearly - the domain name cannot be translated to the IP address. But what URL you are trying to access? This is the essential information you have not provided yet! And what was the result? So what website you are not able to access? Petr

Please advise: 1. What browser do you use? Internet Explerer? Firefox? Opera? What version? 2. What URL you are trying to access? http://www.citibank.com/us/d.htm ? Or My Citi at https://web.da-us.citibank.com/cgi-bin/citifi/portal/l/l.do ? Or other? 3. What is the error message exactly? Without this basic information nobody can help you I think. Petr

Everybody is looking for release candidate - but I have not seen any bug reports, so why not to use the latest beta? Petr

Then why is the device ID for the 915GM in the INF file of the universal driver? From what I've seen so far, there should be no difference in the actual driver file itself no matter what model you choose to generate drivers for, as otherwise why would the INF file contain the other device IDs? I'm starting to think that it does *not* generate custom drivers as it claims to, but just gives a single universal driver for each OS choice. AFAIK there are 2 driver types available: 1. Commercial universal driver. 915GM is supported but this driver is not free. 2. Custom built free non-commercial driver available at http://my.scitechsoft.com/ - but these builds are based on 3.0.1 source code and therefore 915GM is not supported. This is from SciTech newsgroup: Petr

Probably not. The results are very similar, although the systems are not exactly the same: 3DMark03 Score: 1084 Date: 2006-02-02 CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2412 MHz GPU: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 250 MHz / 405 MHz OS: Microsoft Windows XP Res: 1024x768@32 bit Score: 1006 Date: 2006-01-31 CPU: Intel Pentium M 1862 MHz GPU: Intel® Mobile 915GM/GMS,910GML Express Family N/A / N/A OS: Microsoft Windows XP Res: 1024x768@32 bit And in 3DMark2001 Score: 4872 Date: 2006-02-02 CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2412 MHz GPU: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 OS: Microsoft Windows XP Res: 1024x768 32bit Score: 4972 Date: 2006-01-31 CPU: Unknown 1862 MHz GPU: Intel® Mobile 915GM/GMS,910GML Express Family OS: Microsoft Windows XP Res: 1024x768 32bit Or in PCMark05 Graphics Chipset NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Video Memory 127 MB Core Clock 249 MHz Memory Clock 405 MHz Graphics Test Suite 680 PCMarks Transparent Windows 226.56 Windows/s Graphics Memory - 64 Lines 245.18 FPS Graphics Memory - 128 Lines 196.91 FPS WMV Video Playback 26.16 FPS 3D - Fill Rate Multi Texturing 333.37 MTexels/s 3D - Polygon Throughput Multiple Lights 3.39 MTriangles/s 3D - Pixel Shader 4.58 FPS 3D - Vertex Shader 4.43 MVertices/s Graphics Chipset Intel® Mobile 915GM/GMS,910GML Express Family Video Memory 121 MB Graphics Test Suite 801 PCMarks Transparent Windows 186.63 Windows/s Graphics Memory - 64 Lines 376.41 FPS Graphics Memory - 128 Lines 338.41 FPS WMV Video Playback 32.26 FPS 3D - Fill Rate Multi Texturing 630.64 MTexels/s 3D - Polygon Throughput Multiple Lights 4.08 MTriangles/s 3D - Pixel Shader 5.22 FPS 3D - Vertex Shader 2.36 MVertices/s I'm looking for 915GM driver and this one is still not supported in SciTech SNAP Graphics PE driver on http://my.scitechsoft.com/ - there is 915G/GV support only because the online generated drivers are based on older code (3.0.1) and they still not upgraded it to the current version. Petr

It depends what do you mean by compatibility. The latest Intel® Chipset Software Installation Utility that supports Win98SE and WinME is version 6.3.0.1007 and it supports: ICH6 + Intel® 915G/P/GV ICH6 + Intel® 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML ICH5 + Intel® 82865G/PE/P/GV/82848P ICH5 + Intel® 82875P/E7210 ICH4 + Intel® 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV/E I have tried to modify the INF files for a board with 955X chipset and everything was fine, just Windows 98 SE was not able to swithch the computer off, but I have not tried it too long. Where could be a problem - here is my experience from testing the following motherboards: MSI 915GM Speedster-FA Gigabyte GA-8I955X Pro Gigabyte GA-8I915P Duo PCI Express Graphics card ATI X300SE with 128 MB RAM: always OK ATI X550 with 256 MB RAM: small problems initially Nvidia 6200 and 6200 Turbo Cache with 128 MB RAM: did not work in 915GM Speedster-FA (resources conflict), in Gigabyte boards OK Nvidia 6600 with 256 MB RAM: Both in GA-8I955X Pro and GA-8I915P Duo it worked but some programs caused immediate absolute freezing of the system. Always it is necessary to check if the selected graphics card is supported by the latest driver. 915GM chipset contains GMA900 graphics controller but there is no free Windows 98 Driver, just commercial from Scitech. USB Controller USB 2.0 Controllers are supported by Orangeware driver only: Driver version 1.1.0.2: supports ICH4 and ICH5 southbridges Driver version 2.4.2: supports ICH4 southbridges on certain motherboards There is no Windows 98 support for USB 2.0 in ICH6 and ICH7 southbridges. Since all southbridges are EHCI compliant and in Windows 2000 and XP use the same driver, I suppose it could be possible to modify it for ICH6/7, but I have not tried it. PATA Controller ICH5 contains 4 PATA channels, ICH6 and ICH7 2 PATA channels. No Windows 98 driver is available from Intel (IAA is for ICH4 only) so ESDI_506.PDR has to be used. SATA/RAID/AHCI Controller There is no support for SATA/RAID/AHCI controllers in ICH5(-R), ICH6(-R) and ICH7(-R). There are 4 modes of operation of PATA/SATA/RAID/AHCI controller in ICH6 and ICH7: PATA only: SATA is disabled, just 2 PATA devices are visible to the OS. SATA only: All four SATA channels are emulated as PATA, i.e. up to 4 devices are visible to the OS, but PATA port is disabled. Enhanced: All ports works in native mode, 2 PATA are visible as PATA, 4 SATA are visible as SATA, but these SATA devices have no driver in Windows 98. Maybe it would not be a big problem to modify ESDI_506.PDR to work with SATA disks too? Combined: In this mode the operating system sees 4 disks, 2 PATA and 2 SATA emulated as PATA. It can be selected whether what will be primary and what secondary controller. This mode seems to be the best because it enables to connect both PATA CD/DVD drive and SATA disk drive BUT! BIOS in MSI 915GM Speedster does not support "Combined" mode! Both Gigabyte boards do. This kind of information is hard to find. SATA emulated as PATA uses the standard ESDI_506.PDR driver and have the speed 150 MB/s (tested about 135 MB/s), i.e. the transfer speed is higher than highers speed that can be achieved by PATA interface. Some boards have additional PATA and/or SATA controllers with Promise, Silicon Image, ITE and other chips, most of them have Windows 98 drivers but not all and it is necessary to check if they supports ATA devices (HDD) only or ATAPI (CDROMs) too. Most of them have RAID support. Audio Controller ICH5 southbridge supports AC97 codec, ICH6 and ICH7 both AC97 and Azalia (HDA) codecs. There is no driver for HDA codecs for Windows 98. Scitech just made one for Windows NT 4.0 and would make the driver for Windows 98 if there will be commercial demand. Some ICH6 motherboards have Azalia codec, some AC97 code, I have tested GA-8I915P Duo with Realtek AC97 codec but for unknown reason the installation always ended with Windows protection error and no boot, I had this board several hours only so I gave it up, maybe there is no problem in fact, I don't know. Missed I anything? Petr

These files comes probably from DynaZip http://www.innermedia.com/dz/index.htm Petr

Just FYI, nvidia has released new driver on Tuesday: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_88.61.html ForceWare Release 85 Version: 88.61 Release Date: May 23, 2006 BETA Driver International File Size: 35 MB Petr

Does anybody know how to identify whql certified drivers located at ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Services/whql/drivers ? The file names are not very self-explanatory. Petr

I'm working on it... though I'm quite busy and haven't really gotten the uninterrupted time I need to disassemble, analyse, and completely rebuild the driver. Maybe in the summer... but I haven't forgotten about it yet It would be nice to consider SATA support as well. I have read in the official document about SATA: "Though Serial ATA will not be able to directly interface with legacy Ultra ATA hardware, it is fully compliant with the ATA protocol and thus is software compatible. (www.SerialATA.org)" There are also small adapters - converters from SATA to PATA and from PATA to SATA. So it should be not so big problem probably. Windows 98/SE/ME does not support SATA disk controller contained in Intel chipset (ICH5, ICH6, ICH7 southbridges) - yellow exclamation mark appears next to the IDE controller icon and maybe the ESDI_506.PDR modification could be very small? Petr

I have some ideas about future dvelopment of service packs fo Windows 98 Standared Edition, Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows Millennim Edition. What should be considered: - There are very limited human resources, so no big project can be finished. - Windows 9x operating systems are still in wide use, low percentage (<10%) still means maybe 100,000,000 computers with this operating system worldwide. Migration to other operating system seems to be hardly likely. - Creating of various language versions almost from the scratch is just wasteful use of people energy. - Official Windows 9x support will end within 2 months, therefore the "final" version of the service pack could be created. - Many people with limited possibilities to buy new more powerful computer have also limited access to to Internet, like dialup paid per minute. Therefore very big packages may not be the best solution. The idea I have is to define several separate projects and try to focus on finishing and testing them also separately. 1. Unofficial Service Pack I think it should contain all well tested components of operating system, but nothing more. Even no IE updates. What remains to do: - correct uninstalling (It means to back up of the files and registry changes replaced by the uSP during the install and to put them back during uninstall) - correct slipstreaming (modifying of some INF files) - deep testing of all new updates, resolve the modem issues. All fixes that conflicts with some hardware/software configurations should a) install just when no conflicting hardware/software is is installed, or b) be made optional during the uSP install, or c) separate packages should be created for install just by peoples who need them. An example of already known files with problems is ESDI_506.PDR 4.10.2226 but there are more such fixes I think. Internationalization I think I will be able to make localized versions of the service pack for all languages based on U.S. version of Windows 98 SE (probably also FE and ME), it means the following 20 language versions: Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese - Portugal, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. I can localize all files but not the installer and license. The result would be exactly the same service pack (the same code) for all languages, just text strings would differ. It means the problem / correction in any language would valid for all language versions. Questions: - uSP contains just hotfix (QFE) versions of files. What about to make also much smaller service pack containing official (GDR) fixes only. - What about to use the same installer/unistaller as is used in the Consolidated Support Pack for Windows 98 Standard Edition? 2. Internet Explorer If we consider the last release of every major version (4, 5, 5.5, 6) as possible candidate for installing, there are the following combinations: Windows 98 Standard Edition: contains 4.01SP1, may be instaled 4.01SP2, 5.01SP2, 5.5SP2, 6.0SP1 Windows 98 Second Edition: contains 5.0, may be instaled 5.01SP2, 5.5SP2, 6.0SP1 Windows Millennium Edition: contains 5.5, may be instaled 5.5SP2, 6.0SP1 To minimize the download size, I'd consider to repackage all versions just with one platform supported. I'd consider to integrate all the latest patches into the install package if it would not be too complex. There has to be also the consolidated update pack for each of the above mentioned version. My short test shows that files from Win2K 5.01SP3 latest update can be used and they support the latest html help update. I have also noticed that even the CD version of IE6.0SP1 install tries to connect to the internet to verify digital signatures and without Internet access the installation may take about 1 hour. The dependancy should be eliminated. 3. Skins and similar things In this package could be skins that would replace the icons and the general look as - Windows Me/2000 - Windows XP - Windows Vista - Tango Desktop (?) including new or modified boot and shut down logos. 4. Add-ons and updates from Microsoft, like: - Windows Installer 2.0 - (Managed) Direct X (8.0, 9.0c) - Media Player (7, 8, 9, partially 10) - .NET Framework 1.1 and 2.0 - WMI 1.5 - Jet Engine - MDAC - Remote Desktop client - ICS client from Windows XP - Directory Services Client - additional fonts - additional text/graphic filters - runtime files for VB, VC, ... - what about Java? Many of the above mentioned packages could be repackaged to containd the latest fixes and not to contain components required by other operating systems only. 5. New and improved programs - Notepad replacements - TweakUI - ASPI layer 4.6 and 4.71 - Tihiy's Add/Remove programs - etc... 6. nUSB driver - Provided that the nusb is installed on system with the unofficial service pack, no language dependent files are required and the nusb package could be much smaller and for all languages the same. 7. USB 2.0 drivers. This is big pain in Windows 9x versions. Although all chips are EHCI comaptible and therefore just one universal driver could be used (as it is in Windows 2000 and XP), because of some licensing issues, for every chip and sometines even for every motherboard or add-on board separate driver supplied by the manufacturer is required. Maybe somebody could be able to write such an EHCI driver? At present, in short, it looks like this: Orangeware driver 2.4.2 supports USB2 (EHCI) chips made by NEC, ALI, some ATI, some Nvidia, SiS for some motherboards, VIA VT6202 chip, Intel ICH4 for certain motherboards. Orangeware driver 1.1.0.2 supports Intel ICH4 and ICH5 chips. VIA driver supports all VIA based motherboards and add-on cards. ALI driver supports all ALI based motherboards and add-on cards. Unsupported are: - SiS chipsets on some motherboards - newer nVidia chipsets - newer ATI chipsets - newer Intel chipsets (with ICH6, ICH7, 6300ESB, ICH8 southbridges) Maybe one package with all available drivers for Win9x could be created? 8. 137GB+ EIDE driver I think that summarized information about the alternative drivers (VIA filter driver, VIA miniport driver, Intel ATA driver, Intel Application Accelerator, ALi/ULi, Promise, Highpoint, CMD/Silicon Image, ...) to ESDI_506.PDR could be summarized, compatibility tested (ATAPI devices, Nero various version, S.M.A.R.T. support, ...) and maybe prepare IDE drivers pack. 9. General chipset drivers I have created and tested INFs for Intel 945/955x chipsets, maybe even for other chipsets it could be created? 10. Drivers for other hardware SATA, SCSI, PCI-E graphic cards, sound cards, network adapters, wireless adapters, modems etc... Maybe some simple overview or database could be created? Of course there could be a bigger package with selectabel install of more of the above mentioned components, e.g. by using Gape's Infex. In general, when creating packages using Iexpress, is there any reason or advantage why to use Windows XP, Windows 2003 or maybe even IE6.0SP1 versions of these set of tools? Makecab creates cabines of the same size, but on Windows XP/2003 with incorrect times/dates, and advpack.dll and wextract.exe are just bigger and therefore the whole package is bigger. Is there any description of changes made in advack.dll to be sure what lowest (and smallest) version could be used without any problem? Code signing would be good idea but I've got no positive feedback to my suggestion. As a final result I can imagine a single website with set of smaller downloads (for people with slow Internet access) and one big package for people with broadband connection. I admit it looks partially similar to MDGx's website but my opinion is that although MDGx's website contains all the information and files or links to them, it may be very hard to use it by not very skilled people who just want to have their Windows 9x OS in top shape. Comments? Petr

It is part of IE 6.0 SP1. Petr

I wrote it twice already - new root certificatres are needed. Petr

Yes, IE6 contains newer root certificates as well. Petr

It was dicussed here several times already, you need to install either unofficial service pack or at least rootsupd.exe - http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownlo...en/rootsupd.exe Petr