LLXX

Is the Workstation service running?

Not a good idea. Windows periodically reads/writes to the drive even when idle, so that could create a conflict. The best image is still created from a disk that is otherwise not in use, e.g. from DOS or live CD boot.

Sites in the Trusted Sites zone may still be able to use cookies (and should, if you use Trusted Sites for its intended use) depending on the security settings for that zone. My IE 5.5 is configured to accept cookies in trusted sites zone, and block otherwise but still allow session cookies (that are deleted when the browser is closed). How do you know that the cookies are still being downloaded and stored? Does the Cookies folder grow after you've deleted its contents and browsed a few sites?

and a 5Gb one at that. Flash drives come in sizes that are powers of 2 - 256M,512M,1G,2G,4G...Of course formatting a small magnetic hard drive as NTFS isn't going to shorten its lifespan much, since it's much the same as a standard desktop drive. Brief lesson on terminology: USB drive - could be magnetic or flash or any other storage device USB stick - flash USB disk - definitely magnetic or optical (CD-ROM?) thumb drive, pen drive, stick drive, U fish, U rod (slang Chinese terms), etc. - flash

Which tweaks are we talking about here? The usual - services, file cache, pagefile, prefetcher, etc...

X-Originating-IP is very easy to fake... that's no means of verification.I think what happened was someone hacked your account's password and then used it for spamming. Accounts are deleted, not "closed". Anyway I'd just create a new one, these accounts are free anyway and M$ can close/delete them at any time they want.

Try disabling all those protection options and see what happens. Ensure LBA access mode in BIOS is enabled. Backup data before proceeding. You could try some of the other fileversions I've fixed as well.

...Virtual PC 2004 doesn't run under 9x to my knowledge... you'll have to have XP anyway...As for VMware, I think the older versions did support Win98SE.

ChatZilla rocks. It's easy to use and has no whizbang. It's JavaScript-based, not Java-based, or it'd be REALLY slow. They're both slow scripting languages.

Shows just how much users know about their browser. The option to enable/disable cookies has been present probably since the very first versions of IE. For sure I know the IE 5.5 I'm using has this option, and 7 likely has it too.Tools -> Internet Options -> Privacy There's all your cookie settings. Block, allow, etc.

Now tweak Windows and you'll really find out what the hardware you paid for can do. I did that with a (Lenovo) laptop I bought recently. First thing to go into the CD-ROM drive? The XP CD I did a test to see how long it'd take to boot up, the original preinstall took over a minute. After the clean install it's approximately 10 seconds, and as I mentioned earlier, BootVis managed to get it down to ~7. That car analogy isn't exactly accurate; just as those who don't know much about cars would probably not be messing around with them, those who aren't very familiar with Windows will not be doing much tweaking. Disabling services etc. is for those that know what they're doing.

You can use the filter option to only log accesses by explorer.exe, and also stop any unnecessary programs you have running in the background (could those be causing the problem too?)

Just search for OEM...

This also occurs when the Workstation service is not running. I'm fine with that, since I don't need Workstation service to run anyway and it's a single-user machine (me). ...and I think Terminal Services is disabled on mine too (can't check, on 98SE right now).

A few minutes is quite normal.

Nod32 > Norton.

Linux toaster? No joke. http://www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux/toaster/

As I mentioned before, if you don't get the starting sector right you'll get nothing.Have you managed to locate the partition's superblock with a disk editor?

Please do not put hueg images directly into your post... I happen to be on 128Mbps at the moment but I would be even more annoyed if I was using my 512k at home

The INF files usually have a description as to what hardware they support in the first few lines or so.

IRC? I just use netcat or telnet... BTW there's also the (not so tiny) "TinyIRC" : http://www.tinyirc.net/

Memory dumps and "no identifiable data" don't belong together. I doubt they would only dump the code section and not include the data section as well. There is definitely identifiable data in there, I can open any dump with a hex editor and look through and find filenames, text, and other indications of what was going on at the time. It's like preserved in time. M$ probably needs that information to determine the error, but then again calling it "no identifiable data" is just wrong and done for the sense of making the users feel oversecure about their privacy.

How long is long? It usually does take a while. It's scanning through all the INF files for a matching hardware description.

Fan maintenence: http://www.dansdata.com/fanmaint.htm Normal computer fans don't have sealed bearings.