Urge

Thanks, I'll check it out. Urge

Does anyone have the last version of Log Me In free(or a link) that works with Win98? thanks, Urge

It's working for me now also, must have been a temporary glitch. Urge

Download links for December 2007 Final to December 2008 UPGRADE and December 2007 Final FULL are dead. The web site http://soporific.dsleague.com is not responding, I am hoping that this is just a temp situation. Anyone have any info? Soporific??? Urge

RetroOS wrote... Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! I was a slacker for not trying this when I saw it a few days ago but it worked great today. I just knew it had to be possible but wasn't clever enough to figure it out, thanks again RetroOS Urge

tomwwrote... I have Kernelex installed already, that is what I thought but, sadly, no happy ending. The Win98 computer reads the disk so it isn't ntfs. I have searched and I'm just not coming up with anything. I thought for sure that on this forum with all the amazing people here modding Win98 that this would be cake. I have to believe that it is possible but just not worth someones time especially if there are some components that work. Hey, is it possible that drivers from another model keyboard/mouse would work? Is there such a thing as generic drivers for these input devices? I'm just askin... Urge

I am trying to install a MS wireless keyboard and mouse(MS says only for winXP and Vista) on a newly installed system with 98SE2ME KERNELEX vo.3.6 Maximum-Decim native USB drivers etc. all updates, no driver issues, everything works great. Computer is a pentium III 500MHz HP Pavilion, Is it possible? I get "this program has performed an illegal operation etc" when I try to start the CD. Urge

It appears that most of the installer/uninstaller files that are taking up 27GB+ in C:/WINDOWS/installer are associated with office 2003. If I uninstall Office will that get rid of all those files in the process? I can set the recycle bin to remove the files immediately. Even if it doesn't I can then just delete them yes/no? I know there must be other installer/uninstaller files in the folder (I haven't found any yet but there are 1800 files) but it is a reasonably quick process to scan over them with the mouse and see what they are associated with. Are you saying I should reboot after each of the 1800 files? Galt, I implemented most of your suggestions (thanks-went from less than 1.5GB free space to 4.4GB) but the crux of the problem is getting the installer/uninstaller files off. If I could get msizap.exe G!( the G! is a wildcard) to run it supposedly will just identify the orphan files but I have not been able to do this. My knowledge of and experience with DOS commands is limited. I'll have to read up on it some more. The positive in all this is that I learn more about the nuts and bolts of computing and that's kinda cool. 70GB HD- Windows 32GB, Program Files 10GB, music 14.5GB, everything else 10GB, free 4GB+. I am trying to convince him to burn the music and get it off but he apparently just uses the computer for entertainment and is reluctant to do this. He doesn't have or can't locate the winXP media edition OS disk or I would reinstall. He may find it this week-we'll see. Urge

I only had a minute when I posted last and just wanted to comment on the xp_remove_hotfix_backup utility. I mentioned in an earlier post that I had done a disk clean up. I tried to defrag but the drive is too full to do it effectively. I did not know about the "detect and repair" option in office but I will try it. My intention all along (and I have already spoken with my son about this) was to eliminate uneeded programs and files. I am a big believer in backups. On my computer I have several partitions that are easy to back up (OS,Program Files, Data, Games, etc.). I use Drive Image to backup-love it. Just because I didn't mention it doesn't mean I wasn't going to do it. I'm still trying to come up with a plan and it would be nice to know why this happened so steps can be taken to prevent it happening again. If I could have successfully run the "msizap.exe G! " utility it would have identified the orphans so I could delete just the uneeded ones but no such luck. Finances are probably going to preclude him buying a second hard drive at this point. I started reading "What files can I safely delete in Windows Explorer?" and I'm thru 3+ pages (of 9)so far it either wasn't relevent or I already knew it but I will read it all. CC Cleaner is free so I will download it and check it out. Tune up Utilities is a little too pricy(I'd buy a 2nd HD before that). I appreciate all the suggestions and will probably utilize most of them. Thanks, Urge

I am going to give Doug $5. today and give it a shot but will this permanently fix the problem? All of you reading this didn't have this issue so what was different? I guess since the computer has already downloaded the files it won't be doing it again. I haven't checked with Windows Update yet so maybe I should do that and see if all these updates have in fact installed or have they been trying repeatedly to do so and that is the problem. In rereading Doug's info I see this "NOTE: This utility does NOT remove application specific hotfix backups (Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Media player and etc.). It will only remove hotfix backups that are specific to the Windows XP operating system." Will it remove Office hotfixes? Maybe I should be asking Doug these questions. Alright, he has an e-mail address on his site and he is a MS MVP so he will probably answer me. I will post back what I find. Thanks, Urge

I don't know if it's related but in the WINDOWS directory there are 173 files like this C:\WINDOWS\$NtUninstallKB957095$. When you open up the installer folder there are 53 files like this {1A24F9E8-009D-40FC-ABED-2AAFFAB0F4F0}. Below that are 1830 files like this 1a8e430a.msp (by far the vast majority of them) & 9670de5.msi. They are between 5-10 MBs on the ones I looked at. When I looked at properties for these files this is what you get for all the ones I looked at (a small subset)- Office 2003 Patch;pp;8227;FullFile;ALL. So it would seem that the .msp files are my problem. Is there a way to isolate them and just delete those? if it's just Office that's causing the problem maybe the fix isn't so bad. If my son's computer just has a restore disk can I just reload Office? I don't know how any of this was installed, I am going to be seeing him later today and I'll ask. Thanks, Urge

I did run clean up but that does nothing to address the underlying problem. here is what MS has to say about manually removing the files. With over 2200 files this is just not practical. Last Review : January 27, 2005 To work around this problem, you can manually remove each orphaned .msp file, after you search for each file in the system registry and do not find the file. To do this, follow these steps: 1. Using Windows Explorer, open the \Windows\Installer folder. 2. Make a note of all files in the folder with an .msp file extension. 3. Click Start, and then click Run. 4. In the Open box, type Regedit and then click OK. 5. In the left pane of the Registry Editor, click My Computer to select it. 6. Click Find on the Edit menu. 7. Type the first .msp file name in the Find What box, and then click Find Next. 8. If you receive the message "Finished searching through the registry", the .msp file is orphaned and can be deleted. Make a note so that it can be deleted. If the Registry Editor finds a LocalPackage name with the .msp file extension in the Data column, the .msp file is referenced and should not be deleted. 9. Repeat steps 5 through 8 for each .msp file that you noted from step 2. 10. For each .msp file that you noted for deletion, right-click the .msp file in Windows Explorer, and then click Delete on the shortcut menu. Click Yes to confirm the deletion.STATUS Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. MS provides The Windows Installer CleanUp Utility(Msicuu.exe ) to help but... Warning The Windows Installer CleanUp Utility is provided "as is" to help resolve installation problems for programs that use Microsoft Windows Installer. If you use this utility, you may have to reinstall other programs. Caution is advised. HOW DO I RUN THE WINDOWS INSTALLER CLEAN UP UTILITY? To run the Windows Installer Clean Up Utility, use either of the following methods: - Click 'Start', click 'All Programs' (or 'Programs' on some operating systems), and then click the shortcut for the Windows Installer Clean Up Utility. - Find and run the Msicuu.exe file. A dialog box will be displayed that contains a message, a list of installed products, and four buttons. The message that is displayed is as follows: Continuing further will make permanent changes to your system. You may need to reinstall some or all applications on your system that used the Windows Installer technology to be installed. If you do not want to proceed, please press the 'Exit' button now. Choosing 'Remove' will make the permanent changes. The list contains the titles of all the installed programs that are registered with Windows Installer. Because the Windows Installer Clean Up Utility installation also uses Windows Installer, the Windows Installer Clean Up Utility should be included in the list. Select the programs that you wish to remove. (To select multiple items in the list, hold down the SHIFT key or the CTRL key as you select the items.) The four buttons in the dialog box are as follows: [select All] - Selects all the programs in the list. [Clear All] - Clears the selection of all the programs in the list. [Remove] - Removes the Windows Installer installation information for the selected program or programs. [Exit] - Exits the Windows Installer Clean Up Utility. If you click 'Remove,' the following prompt is displayed: Warning - All items selected will be removed from the Windows Installer database. In order for the items to work properly, you must individually re-install all items selected. Select OK to continue removing product, Cancel to abort. If you click 'OK,' all the Windows Installer information that is associated with the selected programs is removed. This includes the entries for the programs in the Add/Remove Programs tool in Control Panel. If you remove the installation information for an installed program, the program is prevented from being able to add or remove components or to repair itself. NOTE: If you remove the installation information, files or shortcuts for the programs themselves are not removed. You should reinstall the programs before you try to use them. It does not appear to be selective at all. They (MS) also have this little program msizap.exe included in The Windows Installer CleanUp Utility and I found this info to just identify the orphaned or duplicated files. How to Safely Delete Orphaned Patches After safely identifying orphaned patches, you can delete them. There are a couple of different ways to identify orphaned patches. If you have the Windows SDK or the older Platform SDK installed or are willing to install either, you can use msizap.exe to identify and remove orphaned data files such as patches. Run the following command. You will find msizap.exe in the bin folder of the Windows SDK or Platform SDK installation directory. msizap.exe G! If you don't want to install either SDK just to get this executable, you can determine which patches are registered and applicable and delete extra patches you find under %WINDIR%\Installer. I have attached a simple script(WMsps.vbs) to identify which patches are registered – those patches you should not remove. So I ran msizap.exe G! and this is the result. very unsatisfying, it did not perform as expected. C:\Program Files>msizap.exe G MSIZAP - Zaps (almost) all traces of Windows Installer data from your machine. Copyright © Microsoft Corporation, 1998 - 2000. All rights reserved. Usage: msizap T[A!] {product code} msizap T[A!] {msi package} msizap *[A!] ALLPRODUCTS msizap PSA?! * = remove all Windows Installer folders and regkeys; adjust shared DLL counts; stop Windows Installer service T = remove all info for given product code P = remove In-Progress key S = remove Rollback Information A = for any specified removal, just change ACLs to Admin Full Control ? = verbose help ! = force 'yes' response to any prompt CAUTION: Products installed by the Windows Installer may fail to function after using msizap So then I ran the .vbs script and it showed 22 files one at a time on the screen in individual boxes. Maybe 15-20 characters per file. I have no clue how to copy them. In add/remove programs I found 135 entries! So this is my dilemma, can anyone help? I know this is a very long post and you have already attained hero status if you have read this far. Thanks for listening, Urge

I'm trying to clean up my son's computer (he's 29) and the computer has a 70GB HD. He only has 2% free space. So in looking for what is taking up all his space I found C:/WINDOWS/installer is 27.2GB-yes giga not mega- with 2,231 files/61 folders. For comparison, on my computer it's 142MB with 172 files/64folders. I spent a few hours tonight searching on Google with not a lot of luck but with suggestions to use msiinv.exe and msizap.exe(I downloaded both but haven't run them yet). Using those might mean that someone (me?) might be reinstalling everything on his computer so I thought I'd ask here before I step in it bigtime. Is there some little program that will clean this up without risking the viability of all the programs on the computer or does someone have a suggestion or somewhere I might read up more on this? Urge

Kurt, I am a little confused on where to put the "Download the current Hotfix 7zip archive from eSnips, extracting into the same directory that you chose to extract the Config archive into". I extracted the Config archive into C:/Windows2000ubcd. When you open up C:/Windows2000ubcd I see a folder that says Config2000sp5_10jan08. Do I put the files here? If you doubleclick on Config2000sp5_10jan08 it opens up the folder Win2000sp5+ and when you clic on that it opens up to all the files in Config2000sp5_date.zip i.e. addons, directx_9c, hotfix, misc., runonce etc. This is where I think the current Hotfix 7zip archive should be extracted to, am I wrong? moving along in your guide I see "7. Copy all the files and folders that you have downloaded, except those at \Hotfix and \Misc to your nLite working directory, maintaining the directory structure" Is this the same folder that I put the current Hotfix 7zip archive into or the Nlite folder in program files or does Nlite create a folder when you go thru step 6 "6. Make any tweaks you want, then run the process." I haven't run the process yet, I entered all the updates and files and made all my mods but I am unsure where some of this stuff goes. Sorry, I am a little slow sometimes, just a rookie geek wannabe stumbling around in the dark. I would be grateful for any help you could provide. Thanks

I have been having trouble with this site also. A page will just finish loading and then I get the -this page cannot be displayed- Or something like that. Anyway, if I hit the back button I connect to the page but then it happens again everytime I change pages. If I grab the scroll bar just as it finishes loading and scroll down I can prevent it from happening. It doesn't happen everytime and it only happens at this website. Urge