Dave-H

Thanks Charles, all now working fine! The only thing I've noticed, and I spotted it doing a download, is that the speed readout on the downloads page seems to now be in Japanese instead of English! Not a big deal, but can anyone else confirm that? Also just updated to java 6 update 23, and all is working fine (except in Opera of course! ) Awesome work guys!

That's good news! Where is this "RC-6" though? I certainly can't find it on Sourceforge.

Yes, that's what happened for me too. I think the trick is to let Opera do an automatic upgrade, rather than downloading and trying to use the standalone installer. Click on Help>Check for Updates and if the update is offered, say go ahead and do it. That worked for me. I suspect that if you extracted the msi installer file from the installation package with Universal Extractor or similar, it would work too if run by itself. Once you have it installed, you will need to apply the Win2K compatibility mode to the opera.exe file.

Maybe, although I don't think Firefox 3 is without its issues on Windows 98, even with KernelEx! As I said, I'm a longtime Opera user and fan, and although I have Firefox installed on the XP side of my system for web page testing purposes, I've seen no reason to start using it as my primary browser. I'm just very grateful to the KernelEx developers for working to allow Opera to still function under Windows 98, considering its small user base compared with Firefox.

I can confirm most of the minor issues reported with the current Opera version under 98SE with KernelEx 4.5 RC 5. The only one I'm not sure about is the cursor problem, which seems to be fine for me. It's not only the "About Opera" page that doesn't render properly, it's also the plugins and cache pages. They look like they've lost their fancy formatting, although they seem to be functional. Strangely, the plugins page (only) seems to appear correctly the first time it's accessed in a session, but fails on subsequent views. The others are displayed incorrectly all the time. The browser is perfectly functional as before however, and as a longtime Opera fanboy, I'm very grateful for that! The only significant things that don't work at all are java and widgets.

Opera 11 seems to be working fine here! Thanks guys! :thumbup :thumbup The standalone installer doesn't work, as you say. I usually use the installer rather than do an automatic upgrade, but this time I let it do an automatic upgrade and it did work. Am I right in assuming that if I extracted the msi installer file from the install package, that would work too? P. S. Once again, isn't it about time that this was a final release of KernelEx?

Thanks for the heads up Den. Working fine here too!

Probably if you put the HP driver CD in again and run the installer, it should give you the option to uninstall the drivers. I have an HP printer too, a Photosmart 370 photo printer, as well as my main Epson A4 printer. The software that came with the HP printer was an absolute pig to install and get working, especially in Windows 98, although the Image Zone software that came with it is really good.

No, but my message box was full! Try again.

Which to my understanding is an intrinsic problem with Firefox 3 under Windows 98, even with KernelEx installed, nothing to do with the printer driver itself. I don't think it works with any printer drivers. Personally I think it's been a great achievement by the KernelEx devs to get Firefox 3 to run under Windows 98 at all! IMO getting the Firefox printing to work comes under the same category as getting Java to work in the latest Opera versions. Something to investigate for the next version of KernelEx, not something to delay the release of this version for!

I've been following the "printer problems" with some interest, as I use an Epson USB printer myself. Are people trying to get XP or later only printer drivers to work in Windows 98 using KernelEx, or are they saying that drivers that are supposed to work under Windows 98 aren't now working because of KernelEx!? My printer (Stylus Photo R285), supplied with Windows 98 compatible drivers, works fine, both before and after applying KernelEx.

Of course. I was going to suggest that Frogman and I take it up on a new thread if it had continued any longer. My apologies. To get back to KernelEx, can I ask that the developers make it a priority now to get this new version actually made an official release, as soon as any regressions have been sorted out. Trying to make more programs compatible with it before then will only result in it never being released. New compatibilities can surely wait for the next version!

Yes, http and https protocols are associated with *.htm and *.html files. That's why Opera is still claiming them. However if you set Firefox to be your default browser Firefox should take them over. Tools>Options>Advanced>General Tab. Press the "Check Now" button.

Go to Preference Settings in Opera, ans click on the Advanced tab. Select "Programs". Un-check "Check if Opera is default browser on startup". Click on the "Details" button and it will show what Opera is associated with. Check or un-check the ones that you need, and then run Firefox and make it your default browser. It should then open htm files again, and Opera won't steal them back.

What is not said above is that both those types are cumulative, so that a GDR file contains some new and all previous GDR fixes, while a QFE (= LDR) contains all that the GDR does, plus some new and all previous QFE fixes, being thus more completely fixed, but perhaps more prone to give problems, because less well tested. Moreover, once a QFE file gets installed, all the future updates to it will always be taken from the QFE branch, too, automagically, from that point onwards (until the next official service pack, which, for 9x/ME, 2k and NT4 or older, will never be issued). Hope this digests better. So the QFE/LDR versions of files contain further fixes, which are not completely tested and now never will be completely tested, or officially issued for systems where support has ended? That implies that MS have abandoned fixes in mid implementation because the systems they were intended for went out of support. Seems a strange thing to do, but that's MS for you!

I did. I now need to go and have a little lie down. My brain hurts.

Sure. I did that, too, already. But while you're at it, do also do update mshtml.dll once more. WildBill just correct a bug in it. KB2360131-v2, which contains it, is in the same place the original one was. Thanks Den, I've now got the new version. As you rightly surmised, I had also installed KB896156 at some point, hence my later version of mshtmled.dll. I'll probably stick with the version I've got rather than the 1502 version, as I've never had any problems with it.

If I remember correctly, Xeno said clearly that it is not possible without a major rework of KernelEx. Ah, shame. Strange that it does work fine in IE6 SP1, but that doesn't use the actual plugin I don't think. Does Firefox have the same problem, or can that still use the "old" java plugin? As an aside, i hope we can get an actual release of KernelEx soon. If the developers try and fix every problem with every application before it's released, it never will be! As long as there are no "show stoppers" or regressions I think it should be released as a priority so they can get to the next version!

Any progress on getting Java 6 to work with Opera? Opera now only works with the "second generation plugin", which doesn't seem to work under Windows 98.

Thanks Bill. I'll probably put my original version of MSHTMLED.DLL back in that case. It would be interesting to see what version of that file others have. As I said, mine is 6.0.2800.1501. Dave.

Working fine here on 98SE! There seem to be only four files in this update - BROWSEUI.DLL MSHTML.DLL MSHTMLED.DLL SHDOCVW.DLL They are all later versions than those found in KB982381, except for MSHTMLED.DLL. That file was never included in any of the IE6 SP1 Cumulative Updates that I hacked over to Windows 98 from Windows 2000 before support was ended. Also, the version I already had is dated 24th March 2005, and is version 6.0.2800.1501. The "new" version is dated 31st October 2010, but is version 6.0.2800.1107, which appears to be an earlier version of the file! I am puzzled.......

Let's hope this one ends up as the actual final release! Thanks for all your great work guys.

Hi guys, sorry for the very long delay, but everything is now sorted! Thanks to Cyker, who generously donated an ATI X850 256 MB card to me, I'm now up and running with everything working fine. I decided to try and go back to an ATI card to see if the overlay problem went away. I vaguely remember back in the mists of time reading that the capture card I have doesn't work well, if at all, with nVidia graphics card, and this does seem to be the case as the overlay works perfectly with the ATI card. Also, the Catalyst 6.2 driver, which is the last that works on Windows 98, supports the X850, even though it's not advertised as doing so. The card arrived apparently dead, the motherboard wouldn't even recognise that it was there. Cyker said that he had flashed the BIOS with a later version though, which I thought may have got corrupted somehow. Unfortunately, trying to fix that without being able to see any output was not really practical! I therefore had to buy a cheap basic PCI graphics card that I could use in the machine temporarily, and it was waiting for that to be delivered which has caused most of the delay. Once I had it, I used it to boot the machine, and re-flashed the ATI card with the BIOS files that Cyker sent me, and it all came to life! So, all working, and very pleased indeed, thanks to Cyker! Incidentally, I didn't have to reinstall Rudolph Loew's RAM limitation patch with the /a switch. It all seemed to work fine on Windows 98 without it. I have at least proved that it's possible to get a 512 MB graphics card to work in Windows 98, even if it proved not to be a permanent option for me personally. I will keep the nVidia 7950 as a spare card I think, as AGP graphics cards are going to become harder and harder to get as time goes on I feel. If I ever dispense with the capture card, or it fails, I can put the 7950 back in, as it is a better card than the X850. Thanks everyone who has contributed to this thread, I hope its content will help others in the future, which is what this board's about of course. Cheers, Dave.

Only one version of Opera (10.60) actually needed KernelEx to run on Windows 98. This seems to have been by accident rather than by design on Opera's part, and it was corrected in 10.61. I was really glad to see that although they don't officially support Windows 98, and haven't for some time, Opera are going out of their way to try and keep the browser still working on Windows 98. I use Opera 10.61 now, with KernelEx still enabled. I only installed KernelEx to enable me to run Opera 10.60, but I see no reason to remove it now that it's there. I've also now installed Java 6 Runtime, which I think needs KernelEx, but I can't get that to work in Opera, only in Internet Explorer.

Well, interesting to hear you say that, as the first replica card I bought blew up physically after only running for about half an hour, as you will see from my thread! I managed to get hold of a proper XFX 7950 card, which works fine. I hope you don't have the same experience!