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It helps to read their license agreement carefully. Very carefully. I have never used, and never will use Google Desktop or any similar programs that have intimate relationships with the Internet, unless I know and approve exactly what gets sent out of my machine.

Where is F-Prot (the one I use)? And what's Norton doing up there? The reviews themselves are actually self-contradictory, if you inspect them carefully. One of them says that everything was excellent but then gives it a low ranking. Definitely not a reliable source...

Good electronics supply stores will have them, they're also known as "shielding beads" for their effect. Example: http://www.cwsbytemark.com/prices/largerBeads.php

Virus scanners aren't going to be affected by being run on disks bigger than 128Gb, since all they do is read files into memory and scan them for virii. The only direct access I can see from a virus scanner would be scanning for boot viruses, but that accesses the MBR which is the very first sector on the disk; obviously, large disk or not, the first sector will be readable.

Don't forget that in the days of Win98, AMD was not as popular as it is today, and thus the majority of code was optimised for Intel CPUs such as the Pentium II.

Environment variables don't need to have equals signs in them. They're just a series of null-terminated strings, followed by another null string. Here's one way...run DEBUG and then do d 0 command, this shows PSP and looks like this (addresses may vary): -d 0 129E:0000 CD 20 00 A0 00 9A EE FE-1D F0 4F 03 23 0C 8A 03 . ........O.#... 129E:0010 23 0C 17 03 23 0C 17 0B-01 01 01 00 02 FF FF FF #...#........... 129E:0020 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF*01*0C*4E 01 ..............N. 129E:0030 2A 10 14 00 18 00 9E 12-FF FF FF FF 00 00 00 00 *............... 129E:0040 07 0A 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 129E:0050 CD 21 CB 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 20 20 20 .!........... 129E:0060 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20-00 00 00 00 00 20 20 20 ..... 129E:0070 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........Now find the word at 2c - third line, fourth and third bytes from the end, I've highlighted that area with asterisks above (01 0C); in this case it's 0C01 - and display the start of that segment, you can use d command without address to continue displaying: -d c01:0 0C01:0000 54 4D 50 3D 43 3A 5C 57-49 4E 44 4F 57 53 5C 54 TMP=C:\WINDOWS\T 0C01:0010 45 4D 50*00*54 45 4D 50-3D 43 3A 5C 57 49 4E 44 EMP.TEMP=C:\WIND 0C01:0020 4F 57 53 5C 54 45 4D 50*00*50 52 4F 4D 50 54 3D OWS\TEMP.PROMPT= 0C01:0030 24 70 24 67*00*77 69 6E-62 6F 6F 74 64 69 72 3D $p$g.winbootdir= 0C01:0040 43 3A 5C 57 49 4E 44 4F-57 53*00*43 4F 4D 53 50 C:\WINDOWS.COMSP 0C01:0050 45 43 3D 43 3A 5C 57 49-4E 44 4F 57 53 5C 43 4F EC=C:\WINDOWS\CO 0C01:0060 4D 4D 41 4E 44 2E 43 4F-4D*00*50 41 54 48 3D 43 MMAND.COM.PATH=C 0C01:0070 3A 5C 57 49 4E 44 4F 57-53 3B 43 3A 5C 57 49 4E :\WINDOWS;C:\WIN -d 0C01:0080 44 4F 57 53 5C 43 4F 4D-4D 41 4E 44 3B 43 3A 5C DOWS\COMMAND;C:\ 0C01:0090 57 49 4E 44 4F 57 53 5C-53 59 53 54 45 4D*00*43 WINDOWS\SYSTEM.C 0C01:00A0 4D 44 4C 49 4E 45 3D 77-69 6E*00*77 69 6E 64 69 MDLINE=win.windi 0C01:00B0 72 3D 43 3A 5C 57 49 4E-44 4F 57 53*00 00*4C 41 r=C:\WINDOWS..LAThe highlighted zeroes indicate the end of each string in the environment block. Two zeroes in a row indicate the end of the environment block. My suspicion is that this behavior is caused by a Virus, if you have already checked to see if any environment variables are being set on startup.

What about doing a raw sector extraction and attempting to open the resulting ISO? If a standalone DVD player can read the disc, there must be data on it. A raw sector extraction should work.

The most expensive would be the supercomputers, but regarding PC-architecture computers... Their "4.2GHz" CPU is just a 3.6 that's been overclocked; I have a P4 HT that's running at 4.17, so 4.2GHz isn't impossible. Their solid-state hard drives are commonly encountered on high-performance servers. Their systems are simply overclocked regular machines with hardware RAM disks and other minor enhancements. It still doesn't justify the price though.

Are you sure this applies to win9x? I thought only NT based windows OSes bypassed BIOS. ESDI_506.PDR would be the standard driver (which does NOT support 48-bit LBA).See also the related thread in Win9x subfourum Unofficial Service Pack.

It doesn't seem to do much... The first 1750 bytes of the file. Appears to have been compiled with Microsoft Visual Basic v6.0 - notes importance the MSVBVM60.DLL occurrence: Sees "http", "WebBrowser" and "SHDocVwCtl" here, most likely it accesses the Internet. Also notice the name of the user account that created this, as well as the entire path to the VB file, is visible: Finds clearly the URL embeds within. It is quite obvious that this program was written to "click" an affiliate link (?a=1 parameter of PHP script). Notices the fake property items before icon in this resources area near end of the file: All it does is produce regular HTTP requests to the URL shown in the above diagram. Not particularly harmful, but can produce excessive network traffic and congest. It seems to not attempt to install itself in any startup locations nor infect any files in the system. I have confirmed this, by starting the process, observing its behavior, and ending it with the Task Manager. It did not add itself to any startups nor attempt to persist and infect. This can be considered to be of Low Severity.

Unless you're running in DOS-compatibility mode disk access, the OS bypasses the BIOS and accesses the hardware directly using its own driver. BIOS support for 48-bit LBA has been around since the introduction of Int13x, in the mid 1990s.

Use FDISK to partition it, then FORMAT it. FDISK should be self-explanatory (make sure you create the partition on the second drive, the empty one), FORMAT is used via format x: where x is the drive letter of the new partition. Don't accidentally format the wrong partition!

If you smell a slight burning, most likely on the first run the thermal contact was not good so a hot spot was created on the CPU, and the temperature rose to the point of slightly burning some of the thermal compound and activating the thermal protection. If it still works, it should keep working for a long time.

You must be in the vicinity of a broadcasting station, and the microphone wires are acting as an antenna and receiving the signal. A ferrite bead or two on the wire should remove this interference.

That looks like just a Vista DDK... Useful only if you plan on writing your own drivers.

I don't think right-clicking on My Computer should produce any disk activity at all. What CPU are you using? My suspicion is that it's an AMD, and there have been reports both this site and other sites that improperly installed CPU will cause major slowdowns. How many HDCs does it show for all the different modes of the SATA controller? For the list you have above, try disabling the (single fifo) IDE controllers so that only the (dual fifo) and the VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller are enabled. It seems that the Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller is the root of all the (single fifo) entries.Also, try booting into Safe Mode, removing ALL of the entries under hard disk controller, and rebooting. Sometimes hidden devices might be conflicting, and they can only be seen in the safemode.

It seems that mdgx.com is going to be the "unofficial" Windows 9x Update site... is every single 9x-related fix/update there? However, 98se is inherently more secure than the NT-series, as exemplified by the latest malwares and exploits (including WMF-vulnerability) that just don't work at all under a 9x system. This is because malware writers have focused on the most widely used operating systems so as to cause as much damage with their malware, and currently that OS is XP. A virgin install of 98se is, as far as I know, immune to *all* non-user-initiated remote exploits because of its detached network functionality. I have NO virus scanner, NO antispyware, NO firewall, and have had NO problems for 5 years.

If the IAA's EIDE driver supports 48bit LBA, would it be possible to use them on a non-Intel chipset? From what I've seen, the EIDE primary and secondary ports have been at the same addresses ever since the late 1980s when IDE drives first came out. My suspicion is that these drivers have nothing to do with Intel chipset-specific commands/ports, and will work fine as an ESDI_506.PDR replacement.

I don't think they even sell 98SE CDs anymore... However, I believe you could register on the Microsoft site for some Academic related thing (the registration is free, and what you get is the standard 98se retail distro with the license to install on an unlimited number of computers for non-commercial/educational use) which I forget the name of.

Using the HOSTS file is a better option... doesn't bloat the registry too much. I prefer to do it the opposite way, as there are more suspicious/harmful sites than good ones and it's better to be on the safe side. I just set the Internet zone security to disable everything, and allow only site I trust in the Trusted Sites zone. Now there is no chance than a new malicious site will cause any damage by running in the highly restricted Internet zone, which allows nothing but plain HTML rendering. Running for 5 years so far, no problems with any malware or virii.

But if the prefetch begins to become full of entries for programs that are rarely used, it'll slow down the performance somewhat. Emptying it too often will decrease prefetch performance, but not emptying it at all will cause it to waste space and slow down the prefetcher. My advice is to empty it no more often than once a month, and more often if you seldom run the same programs for long times (i.e. you run a mix of many different programs for short times instead of a few for a long time).

Uncheck "Keep aspect ratio" option in Configuration dialog? Or disable hardware acceleration and set the resolution manually?

It'll be slower than 98se for sure... but if software needs it then you'll have to... a dual-boot is what I'd use in this case. You don't need to reformat the HDD, just resize the existing partition and create another, then install XP to that partition. As for the system requirements, it'll run decently. The system requirements lists a Pentium 233MMX and 64Mb of RAM as the lowest recommended, with PII-400 and 128Mb as "minimum optimal".

It depends where the timeout/retry logic is located. Most likely somewhere in the driver. Figure out where the timeout/retry values are found in the driver, then edit it to reduce the timeout/retries.

If the external drive is working properly, no errors should occur... Especially with external devices I recommend checking the cabling. They are more prone to interference than internal ones as the cables are longer and exposed.