LLXX

The maximum burst speed of the ATA100 interface is 100MB/s, but the transfer rate from the disk platters is much lower. This is why a larger HDD cache is better - it'll be able to sustain longer burst transfers. 10MB/s is quite a normal speed, do not be concerned about it.

I think he means a 98FE version of these: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=43605

There are two types of restore CDs, one essentially contains a ready-to-run HDD image or set of files that are just copied during the restore process, the other is a standard XP CD with some extras. The first type is easy to manipulate if you know how it copies the files - usually with an install script or something similar. On an old IBM restore disk I have, consists of two huge ZIP files with essentially the entire contents of the HDD on it and a crude batch file to format the disk and perform the "recovery" process. For the second, you'll have to take a look at the installation script and remove all the additional OEM stuff. The OEMs probably use the same methods as the normal unattended installs. Copy the whole thing to an HDD, clean it up, then burn it to a CD and try it out. Of course, if you already have an XP CD somewhere, use that instead.

That's most likely a Windows 2000 Pro serial that they thought 2000 = Millennium/ME (which is NOT true).

Very interesting, good work. However, that is not exactly what I had in mind... yours can run many different programs and is consists of two parts (one EXE and one VxD), while what I was thinking was one small VxD only, that only runs explorer.exe when the key sequence is pressed.I tried the Reload option of your Taskmgr, is that the same as Virtual Reboot in the RP? It doesn't work as expected - it performs a full reboot.

You may notice a barely perceptible decrease in speed when loading the DLLs/EXEs and while starting up the system, caused by the need to unpack in memory before it is run. However, once the DLL has been loaded, it will remain unpacked and function at the normal speed.

You're left with your desktop wallpaper, a movable mouse pointer, and nothing else. What do you do? Normally, you're only left with the choice of restarting. However, there are often other programs in the background that you're running, and wish to shut down in a more graceful manner. Recently I thought of a solution that can revive the shell - write a VxD that hooks the keyboard, and whenever a certain key combination is pressed, run c:\windows\explorer.exe. Assuming that the underlying kernel32 and VMM subsystem are still intact, this should restart the GUI. I'm also wondering if it is possible to reload the kernel and other DLLs via VxD, i.e. a "virtual reboot". Any comments or suggestions are welcome. I hope to have a release by mid 2006.

To test your speed you can download a large file from Microsoft's download server. They have huge amounts of bandwidth, usually you'll get speeds much higher than on the speed-testing sites. They have enough bandwidth to saturate a normal DSL or cable connection.

IP addresses are assigned by location... if you connect to a server obviously it will know your IP and then it can use that IP to figure out your location. If you use a proxy, you'll get different locations instead.

On the side of hardware... if you have an AC'97 chipset it has a "Voice Cancelation" feature that will (sort of) do what it says. But it is impossible to remove the voice without degrading the music.

An MS-DOS 7.10 kernal with FDISK, FORMAT, EDLIN, assembler, debugger, hex editor, disk editor, and some other utilities... just barely fits on a single 1.68M DMF bootable floppy.

All because you changed the case? This sounds more like a hardware problem. Make sure the mobo isn't being shorted out by the case - take it out and run it on e.g. a wooden or glass (nonconductive) table to be sure. Or, if it did get shorted, you might've fried something on the mobo

If the BIOS supports SATA devices then they should just appear as standard disks to the software. You shouldn't need a driver specifically for a SATA device. BIOS upgrade maybe?

Very strange that 5 voted for PestPatrol. In my experience, they're the *worst* anti-spyware I've ever seen. Too many false positives. They even list packers as spyware? Look here: http://www.pestpatrol.com/spywarecenter/br...aspx?cat=Packer Some of those I know for sure are NOT spyware! More than 1/2 of what they list in their "spyware encyclopedia" is NOT spyware at all.

Try killing off a few processes and disabling a few services, see if that helps. Is there excessive hard disk activity?

Never heard of it. Even the thought that ME is "professional" contradicts itself.

If the reason you want NTFS is because you want files to be bigger than 4Gb, I don't think it can be done. With that commercial driver mentioned you might be able to read/write to NTFS drives, but you'll still only be able to read/write files less than 4Gb. This is because Windows 9x predominantly uses 32-bit values to store file sizes internally.

To me, the themed look seems to be in excess. All the styled buttons, rounded corners, shiny effects, and in general all the eye-candy just irritate and distract me. A button is something that is meant to be clicked, it seriously doesn't matter what it looks like as long as it can serve its function, namely being able to be clicked. Also, there's the unsettling thought of the memory required by every single GUI element being a bitmap picture instead of simple rectangles/circles (raster vs. vector). Turn off the themes service and see how much RAM you just freed up. The fancy effects seem to make the machine seem slow - especially the fade-in/fade-out and animated minimise/maximise. Turn those off and it suddenly feels a lot faster. I prefer the standard flat slate-grey look. It's clean, elegant, effective, efficient, and simple. The themed look is so outrageously excessive.

I've tried it just to see if it could be done (not that I actually like the XP look), and apparently it can't. XPs GUI system involves quite a few files, most of which don't run under 9x systems even if I changed their intended OS version. There is also the "themes service", and since there is no equivalent of an NT service on a 9x system, that is impossible to duplicate. All programs that you want to use the new style have to also be edited to include a ".manifest" in them too. Use e.g. WindowBlinds or something else to skin 98 GUIs. However, it *might* be possible to do it on Win2k, since that is an NT-based system.

Windows can already do that (Actions list in the associations editor) but it doesn't have the nice context submenu (for some files, my context menu is 10+ items long).

10Gb of HDD is a bit on the small side... as a normal installation of XP takes ~2.5Gb, leaving little room for anything else.

9x will work fine on a multiprocessor system, but it will not take advantage of more than 1 CPU.

DOS 7.10 accesses the disk using the BIOS Int13x interface which uses 48-bit LBAs, but internally it uses 32-bit sector numbers. It should be good for disks up to 2 terabytes, the limit of FAT32.The problem is with the Windows pmode driver directly accessing the hardware and only using the 28-bit LBA commands to the drive, truncating the upper 4 bits off the internal linear sector number. I suppose if you run in the "compatibility mode" filesystem (which involves disk access via BIOS) it should be alright...

I have an installer for DirectX 9.0c... it's 33.4Mb. If it's still called 9.0c then is this the same as the one I already have?

Also, you can refer here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=59856 for an absolute minimum files required for the OS to still work.