Dave-H

You'll need to wait until the program thinks it need optimisation. It usually pops up for me when I'm playing a YouTube HD video or browsing my Facebook feed.

I thought that the hardware acceleration option didn't do anything on XP anyway?

I'm now trying Firefox Portable 31.8 ESR, as that seems to be the version which can be used with the least trouble. I've set the KernelEx options as specified, and it does run, but is quite unstable. Crashes with 'FIREFOX.EXE caused fault #c0000005 in XUL.DLL'. The GUI isn't displaying well either, with a lot of black holes left when things change. It also seems to have the same problem as K-Meleon 74 with the Trend Micro page, it freezes instead of completing loading.

The registry entries do appear to delete OK when 360Chrome is closed. I doubt there is anything wrong with my profile as there is no sign of any problems. To see the popup window, I have to select the 'Optimize memory' icon in the bottom right corner, and then enable 'Enable prerender'. Then wait until the large icon pops up saying the memory needs to be optimised, and click on it. That's when I see the popup window. It doesn't appear when 'Enable prerender' is disabled.

Well OK, I won't bother messing around with the theme/skin or anything else. If it's bloatware, I don't really care as long as it's not doing anything malicious, I'll just make sure I don't ever activate it again by enabling that speed-up option!

Yes, the pages hang on a download, but as you say, the spinner is still going. On pages which do complete, it stops. I'm not having any luck with RoyTam1's Firefox 45. Does it actually work on Windows 98, even with KernelEx, or have I misunderstood something here?

Thanks for that, although personally I don't like dark themes. I'm not quite sure why changing the theme would stop that window appearing, it's surely nothing to do with the theme?

Yes, that would make sense. As I mentioned earlier on, when the program apparently freezes the spinner is still active, but clicking anywhere on the window does nothing.

I tried running K-Meleon 74 with the logging enabled. Unfortunately with the logging enabled it just immediately crashes. When I tried running it again it still appeared to crash, but was still in the task list, and the log started filling with an enormous number of entries. I saved it and I've attached it. Maybe it will provide some clues @jumper? APILog.txt

Just to report that I've now also discovered that my Lenovo Flex 10 won't hibernate in XP, it just BSODs. Also it won't start in Safe Mode! It hangs, apparently on loading acpitabl.dat.

Thanks very much. I'll let you know how it goes with APILog. Firefox 3.6 does what I need it to do on a regular basis, but it does display many (most) sites now very badly. If an alternative has better javascript support for instance, I would certainly seriously consider changing away from FF 3.6.

I'm looking into this to see if it can diagnose what's happening with the freezing on K-Meleon 74. It's actually freezing on quite a few sites, not just the Trend Micro download page. I've downloaded the APIHook folder, and it contains ApiHook.dll and DebugWindow.exe. There is no file called ApiMon.exe (or ApiLog.exe) on the system anywhere, so I'm now a bit stuck again!

My Firefox 3.6 problem has been solved! Remember that Firefox 36 vc71-20171108 NewNSS would not run for me, even on XP? Well, when trying what you suggested, moving the files and folders around, I noticed something. In the unpacked folders there was a folder called "defualts". It should of course be called "defaults"! I corrected the typo, and it now all works fine, including retrieving the downloads from the Trend Micro page! Who would have believed that it would be something like that? I've checked the package, and the folder name seems to be OK there, so how it got changed is a complete mystery to me. I would certainly have had no reason to do it. Anyway, all's well that ends well there, I just hope it now keeps working. I'd still like to get K-Meleon 74 working better though, so I'm happy to carry on experimenting with that. Cheers, Dave.

I tried substituting the nine freexxxx.xxx nssxxxx.xxx and softxxxx.xxx files from the newer version of Firefox 3.6 to the older version. It still works, but it has made no difference to the security error on the Trend Micro download link. The DLLs are all significantly later versions than I had before, so I guess it would make sense to keep them there.

It moved. It's now here - https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?board=9.0

It's not Firefox 3.6 that's freezing, it's K-Meleon 74. Is it worth trying just replacing the nss files in the old version with the ones in the newer version, which I can't get to run at all? Is it just the five files with names beginning 'nss' in the program folder, or are there others?

Thanks!

I changed the KernelEx settings. I hope this is right. No difference with the freezing. It is actually doing it on some other sites as well, loading the page but then saying it's downloading something else but never completes. It isn't apparently completely frozen as the animation top right of the window is still running, but it won't respond to any mouse clicks anywhere and has to be forcibly closed down. Where is this log? Sorry but I'm not familiar with this part of KernelEx.

Thanks guys, I'll chew over all that and get back to you. I've been using KernelEx for many years now, but I'm no expert on its complexities, especially since jumper's great work over the last few years in keeping it going. I'll try and get my head around it! Cheers, Dave.

@roytam1 @schwups I've moved our conversation here as it doesn't relate to Windows XP (or Vista/2000). I hope you're OK with that and we can carry it on. Cheers, Dave.

@schwups I didn't have any luck with the later version of Firefox 3.6. For some reason, it won't run at all. When I run it, nothing happens. I tried it on Windows XP, and nothing happens when I run it there either. I have firefox.exe set to Windows 2000 SP4 mode in KernelEx, I assume that's correct. I had better luck with K-Meleon 74. The newer version definitely seems to be more stable. It still freezes on the Trend Micro page though. If I run it in XP, it loads the page fine. Again, I have kmeleion.exe set to Windows 2000 SP4 in KernelEx. I've moved this conversation here from the original thread which is intended to be about browsers on XP, Vista, and 2000, not Windows 98, so we can carry on with it here if you're happy to do so. Cheers, Dave.

Thanks, I'll give that a try as well! I'll let you know how it goes.

No I don't think so, all the files packed in the version I've got are from 2017 or earlier. That one has quite a few from 2020. Thanks, I'll give that version a try! I assume I can keep the same profile folder?

Thanks @roytam1. What is "fx3.6"? If that's Firefox 3.6, that's what I'm already using.

@roytam1 Some time ago, IIRC you created experimentally a couple of builds of old browsers which would work on Windows 98SE with updated security protocols. I've been using your builds of Firefox 3.6 Community Edition and K-Meleon 74 for quite some time now on Windows 98SE, and they have both worked fine, although there are some stability issues with K-Meleon. The only thing I regularly use Firefox 3.6 for is downloading weekly virus pattern updates from Trend Micro to keep my ancient installation of PC-cillin 2002 up to date. This has always worked fine until recently, but now although I can access the download page fine, when i try to actually download the file, I'm getting this - I have tried with K-Meleon, but that just freezes on the download page. However, if I copy the location of the pattern file from Firefox 3.6, and paste that into K-Meleon, I can then download the file! A workaround, but a bit awkward. Can anything be now done about the security error in Firefox 3.6, or is it now a lost cause? Strange that I can still access the download page itself, but not the file I need to download. Cheers, Dave.