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BTW, you can manage these file associations via View -> Folder Options -> File Types.

"become invisible"? What exactly do you mean by that? Anyway, try restoring your user32.dll and explorer.exe. If any other program that uses a listview control is also broken, then it's most likely the user32. Otherwise the explorer.exe could've gotten corrupted.

Be careful with extremely badly scratched discs, as in the high speed of rotation of most drives today (7000+ RPM) deep scratches can cause stress cracks and cause the disk to shatter under the force of the rotation.

I've used almost every Microsoft OS from DOS 3.20 to Windows XP Pro, but still 98se is my favorite. Reasons to run 98se: - Small. A base install consumes less than 200M of disk space, and the OS can be trimmed down to <100M without excessively losing functionality. - Simple. The architecture is simple when compared to that of an NT-based OS. This makes configuration, customisation, and troubleshooting easier. - Compatible. It's based on the legendary DOS kernal, so it'll run most older games etc. with no problem. It's DOS emulation environment is considerably better than that of 2K or XP. It can also run most newer software as well, and certainly a large amount of software is available for it. - Fast. On an old 386DX25 I have (250M HDD, 16M RAM), it boots to the desktop in ~20 seconds and is surprisingly usable. For older machines, it runs extremely well. On new machines (e.g. my 4.17GHz P4) it simply flies and the response time is excellent. - Efficient. Compared with XP, 98se consumes very little resources and its minimum requirements are very low. The kernal and associated components require very little memory, leaving the rest available to programs. - Ease of maintainence and recovery. Files such as the kernel32.dll can be edited and manipulated freely with a boot to MS-DOS 7.10, for customisation purposes. FAT32 filesystem is widely documented and data can be easily recovered, not to mention the FAT32 structure is simple and easy to fix with only a disk editor and some basic knowledge. - Secure (as in remote-exploits). In all my years of running 98se I have never been exploited remotely or have the OS infect itself with no user intervention. There are no large amounts of background services to exploit (unless you install some yourself, like an ftpd), and the OS does not automatically access the Internet at periodic intervals. It accesses the Internet when you want it to, and only when you want it to. A firewall is definitely not needed, and a virus scanner need not continously monitor the system if you're careful of what you run. Most newer malware (including rootkits) no longer function under Win98 Reasons why I don't like WinXP - Huge. It takes nearly 2Gb for a base install which includes many unwelcome features. It can certainly be reduced in size, but not as much as 98se can. - Complex. All NT-based OSs tend to be extremely complex - the more complex, the more chance for bugs and exploits to be present. The amount of critical updates issued illustrates this. - Noncompatibility. Older hardware and software are not supported well. The DOS emulator is more secure, but lacking in features and noticeably slow especially when running in a window. Many older programs for Win9x won't run on XP. (Nor does the compatibility mode help that much...) - Slow. It's barely usable on a P133 and needs plenty of RAM. They may have improved the boottime a bit, but response time is more important. When working in WinXP the system tends to periodically freeze for brief intervals of less than a second; it's small, but noticeable. Redrawing icons and windows also feels slower than for 98se. The OS just feels sluggish. All of the (optional) fade-in/fade-out effects make it seem even worse. It also tends to access the HDD more (for the swapfile?) which further slows it down. - Inefficient. The core components require copious amounts of memory to reside in, leaving less for applications programs. The "new" skinnable GUI with all the bitmaps takes further memory. (I disabled this on my WinXP installation) I also prefer the clean, elegant rectangles of the traditional GUI to something more fancy and totally frivolous. - Difficulty of Maintainence. Booting to DOS is impossible without a dualboot system. The "recovery console" is not very featureful and difficult to use. Although there are utilities available for reading NTFS, it is still a proprietary filesystem of Microsoft. "Extended attributes" and "alternate streams" (which some malware use to hide themselves) are troublesome to deal with. Data recovery is more difficult than with FAT32. The NTFS filesystem is complex and easily corrupted structure. - Insecure. The OS can be exploited remotely and thus a firewall and virus scanner is essential. I've had a virgin install become infected as I was downloading the critical updates from the MS site, supposedly to fix the vulnerabilities that the trojan exploited. Removing unneeded services is an undesirable task that must be done. Most new virii and trojans target XP. If I am *forced* to use XP, I can, but otherwise I will keep running 98se for as long as I can

It's not hardware problem, you can use 137GB+ disks with any IDE controller since its's invention more than 10 years ago. It's really just software problem, please read my post in 137GB limit - ESDI_506.PDR and other limits thread. BIOS is also software :-) Award BIOS on my GA-6OXE-1 motherboard with i815EP chipset supports 137GB+ and it was produced in the first half of 2001. ESDI_506.PDR patch is all you need for your box made in 2001+ to let Windows 98 SE fully support 137GB+ disks - but just in case you don't have specific IDE controller drivers like Intel Application Accelerator for your board, in that case you need nothing. There will be some cosmetic errors with some tools, and partition size limited to 136GB if you want to use DEFRAG and Windows SCANDISK (It's memory allocation problem). But you can use any other tools e.g. from Symantec. Petr I am currently working on an ESDI_506.PDR which will enable 48-bit LBA support for drives up to 2048 gigabytes, as I recently acquired a 160Gb HDD with which to test. Expect it to be done sometime in 2006.Strangely enough, if you disable 32-bit disk access and use Compatibility Mode instead, Windows uses the BIOS to access the disk and the limit is whatever the BIOS supports or 2 Tera, whichever is less. It is such a similar fashion to the fact that MS-DOS 7.10 will use the BIOS and however much it supports.

Then open the eventlog and take a look... It does say "please check the system eventlog for more information"...

Doesn't Windows XP refuse to run in any resolution lower than 800x600 and have to be altered to run in 640x480? With some adjustment to the drivers, I've been able to run Windows 98 in 320x240x256; although it looks rediculous at such a low resolution on a computer monitor, it might just be more readable on a TV. Also, if you're hinting at the more stylised GUI elements in XP being the cause of the readability issues, you could turn those off. XP and 98 look nearly identical when XP is running in the Classic GUI mode.

Your "rescue disk" appears to be running a standard Windows GUI on top of a Symantec(?) base OS... but IO.SYS looks like a standard DOS 7.1 core from its filesize (or is it 8.0? The filesize is slightly different...)

about:blank. I don't like it automatically grabbing from some site whenever I start it, especially because I never visit sites in a particular order every time.

I have the slightly older Lite-On DVD-RW SOHW-1633S... and using it with Nero 6.6.0.3 working perfectly. In the hardware properties DMA is enabled, Disconnect is also enabled, and Sync Data is Off. I'm thinking your problem is something to do with the DMA.

I know this topic is old but still very importanty since the capacity of disk drives are increasing fast... I just wonder how many copyright laws "dear" Rudolph R. Loew broke, while working on his little hack. Heck, what about the patch as is? He's making profit from a hacked piece of software. One thing industry has demonstrated in the past is that they come down hard on profiteers. You make any money, in any way, from their product, you get hit. I am a reverse-engineer, and as such I find this matter interesting. Where I am, there are laws *against* the prohibition of reverse-engineering, copyright is not really enforced at all, and as such once I have some time I'll be sure to take a look at Loew's solution. It's probably not going to be too interesting, as I already know what to expect... 32-bit internal LBA getting padded with an extra 2 bytes -> 48-bit LBA and existing commands -> extended commands...

Is it an OEM version? That's the only version I know of that doesn't have a normal setup.exe... You can try renaming the dossetup.bin to dossetup.exe and running that, *if* dossetup.bin exists at all.

Did you originally install 98se from the hard drive? The cabs can be found where you originally installed from. Yes, there is a setup.exe in the same dir as the cabs. It's fixable without a cdrom if your cab files are on the hard drive. explorer.exe is in win98_45.cab.

Because in the early days, programmers coding in Asm would manually look up the sequence opcodes for each instruction in a table and "assemble" an instruction, one at a time. Now, an Assembler does that task.

At home, "512K" DSL $13.00USD / mo. 480kbps dn / 32kbps up ( 60KB/s and 4KB/s ) At the office, 128mbps OC3 I don't know exactly but it's over $10K / mo. 56K Dial-up is free here...

I've been using IE 5.0 for nearly 6 years with no problems of adware/spyware/popups etc. That's because I secure it for Internet zone (*everything* that could potentially cause harm is disabled) and add only sites that I trust to Trusted Sites Zone (almost everything enabled). Tried the latest Opera recently. The configuration is confusing and less configurative than IE. Tried FF too... it seems slower than IE.

Some computers will shutdown fine with FastReboot enabled, others will just reboot. I think it's something to do with the design of the mobo chipset. A short while ago I set it to 1 on my main machine (it had been 0 before) and it reboots instead of shutting down (maybe that's why it's called a Fast Reboot??). Another of my machines has it set to 1 but it shuts down normally.

He wants 700+ MB...

I remember someone made it down to ~4MB... but anything less than 100 is good enough for me. A dependency analyser is very helpful in deciding which files are needed or not, so it can be found which DLLs are needed by programs or other DLLs.

Patched notepad. The one with the unlimited file size and line numbers. I prefer a service pack to have programs that are close to the originals, but with improvements.

It looks like they originally thought you could have negative free space on a hard drive...

896MB? Are you sure about that?

Take the hard drive, put it into a computer that has a CD-ROM and copy the files to it.

I don't know how that's done in the registry, but editing explorer.exe's Menu resource for Start Menu can remove it: MENUITEM "&Help", 503, MFT_STRING, MFS_ENABLED MENUITEM "&Run...", 401, MFT_STRING, MFS_ENABLED MENUITEM "", 450, MFT_SEPARATOR, MFS_ENABLED MENUITEM "&Log Off %s...", 402, MFT_STRING, MFS_ENABLED MENUITEM "Suspe&nd", 409, MFT_STRING, MFS_ENABLED ****** MENUITEM "&Eject PC", 410, MFT_STRING, MFS_ENABLED < remove this entry MENUITEM "Sh&ut Down...", 506, MFT_STRING, MFS_ENABLED } }

My 98se is installed on a single 120Gb FAT32 partition. It works fine. However, I would advise strong caution to anyone who seems to be having no problems with disks larger than 128Gb. It may seem to work properly, but only because the disk is not filled near the 128Gb limit. Once it goes past that, the sector address will wrap around and overwrite the first sectors of the disk, corrupting the filesystem and possibly losing data. This is because the standard ESDI_506.PDR does not use 48-bit LBA methods to access the drive, instead using the older CHS or 28-bit LBA methods. I am currently working on implementing support for 48-bit LBA via a patched ESDI_506.PDR. However, DOS 7.10 will work correctly up to 2 Tera, since it internally uses 32-bit sector numbering and calls the BIOS Int13x functions which accept 48-bit LBAs. If the BIOS supports it, DOS 7.10 will. Thus, it is safe to work on huge hard disks from within DOS but not in Windows ...