Tripredacus

I just ran my WEI and scored a 3.1. Thats pretty good considering I am using onboard video and have 2 ATA133 HDDs in this system. Oh, this is my home PC. I will have to run this at work and see what it says. Interesting that WEI on scores the primary HDD, which is probably why I got such a high score. CPU: 4.4 RAM: 4.5 Graphics: 3.1 Gaming Graphics: 3.3 Primary Hard Disk: 5.7

Here's an update for you all. This project turned out horrible! Let me start out by outlining these systems: 1. Infocore: This was my regular XP system. 2. Old Infocore: this was the system that used to be my XP system. 3. Shiva: This machine was my Win98 PC 4. Server(s): I had 2 PCs in 2U Server chassis that I got parts from. Step 1: Build new Shiva. - Take out PSU from Infocore, 400W Antec. Put into 5 Bay chassis from work. - Take out motherboard, CPU, RAM from Old Infocore and put into chass.... WOOOPS! Guess what, I happened to have gotten 2 Mini-ATX chassis from the scrap pile! The Intel D850 board I had was full ATX! It did not fit in the case. Secondary objective: use Shiva's old case. - Take out video card (Voodoo) and motherboard (Abit BE-6?). Take out IO Shield, take out power supply. - Take out PSU from new Shiva, put into old Shiva - Put in IO Shield.... doesn't stay in. Hold it in while putting in motherboard. - Put in Voodoo card.... WOOOPS! Guess what, part 2. AGP slot in D850 board has different keying than the Voodoo card! What a pain! I took a break, just sat there looking at it and decided to shelve it. - Take out Radeon x1650 from Infocore. Hook everything else up. - Boot PC. At this point, Windows started without error, of course it needed to install some drivers. But there was an initial problem, the CD Drive was not detected. It also had decided to reboot on its own twice before I got the CD Drive to show up. It was also unable to detect UFD I had plugged in, I had put the chipset drivers on there but couldn't get to it. Shiva is REALLY unstable now, it likes to reboot sometimes while accessing the CD Drive. Course of action to be taken at a later time: 1. Try a different CD Drive. 2. Try a different video card. It is likely that the video card, which requires additional power, is causing a problem. I had also not researched whether or not Windows 98 (or the board) liked the fact that I had put a 512MB Radeon X1650 in it. Project Shiva is on hold! However, I am obviously typing to you from something, and if you were paying attention, I said I took the PSU out of my main computer, and that Shiva reboots! So here's the continuing story... 1. Take out motherboard, CPU, RAM, Sound card from Infocore. 2. Take out motherboard, CPU, RAM from 2U #1. Put those parts into Infocore. 3. Take out RAM, HDD from 2U #2. Put into Infocore. 4. Take out ATAPI DVD and CD drives, put in SATA DVD drive. Hook up SATA HDD #2. There are 2 SATA HDDs in this system. One is new, the other was already present. I made sure to keep that one, and the two IDE HDDs disconnected for now. 5. Boot PC, and then run BIOS update. 6. Go into BIOS, set memory to custom timings 533, 4-3-3-11. Reason is, have 4 sticks at different speeds, so underclocking 2 sticks but keeping dual channel. 7. Install Windows 7 Pro using answer file. 8. After booting to audit, sysprep -oobe -shutdown. 9. Hook up remaining Hard Drives. Go to BIOS and set to boot off SATA first (as XP is on one of the IDE drives). 10. Go through Windows welcome, new computer name: BEHEMOTH 11. Install Creative Drivers that were saved to IDE HDD before upgrade. Set up 5.1 surround with Windows Speaker cpl. 12. Install Firefox, copy over profile from IDE HDD, go to MSFN and post! Project Shiva is not finished yet. I need to rectify the rebooting problem, if you have any ideas, let me know. And NO the Voodoo card is not available. I will be keeping it. In addition, I need to take the parts from Infocore I removed and make a whole other PC with it, but I don't have a chassis to fit a full size ATX board in it. I may yet need to do a reinstall of 98 on Shiva, but I'd rather not. I was pleased that it didn't BSOD on me because it is customized with boot up and shutdown screens already. Current full Shiva specs: board: Intel D850MV RAM: 768MB RDRAM PC800 CPU: Pentium 4 2.0GHz Video: ATI Radeon X1650 512MB AGP Sound: Creative Sound Blaster Live PCI HDDs: 20GB WD, 20GB Maxtor CD: 48x Compaq "Spare" CD-ROM ATAPI PSU: Antec 400W ATX

So far I have spent only $28! That is for a SATA DVD drive for my other computer. I have all the other parts for it already. Not only do I like that video card, but I like Rambus. The only reason I stopped using it was because of the prices to buy more memory! When all is said and done I will do some benchmark comparisons between the two systems and we will see how it looks. Only things left to buy on this project are Wireless card, and also a PCI-E video card for my other computer. Total about $100 I'd say.

Welcome to Project Shiva! This is a project to resurrect (no pun intended) my old Windows 98 Server. Yes, you read that right. This project officially starts tomorrow, but be warned: Its not just Windows 98, also Windows 7. First let's do a little history. Once upon a time, I had my first Windows 98 PC was called Hive City. I had almost forgot about it until I posted a screenshot in this thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/142168-transparencys-in-98se/ Hive City was built in 1999 and had the following specs: CPU: Pentium 133MHz RAM: unknown (this information is actually known but kept on Shiva's original HDD) HDD: 8GB ATA 100 Sound: Guillemont (sic) 128 voice PCI Video: Intergraph Voodoo Rush 6MB Hive City had some problems. It was originally built with a 4x CD-ROM drive. I had bought a 24x CD-ROM drive at a computer show. This drive proved a disasterous (sic) upgrade. It did not work, in fact it worked its awesome "frying" magic on the following components: - Power Supply - Serial Port on MB - itself - 14k Modem All was not lost, as I spent the "mad dough" on a PCI USB card. It cost $40 I believe. Previous to this (since such things as PCI USB card did not exist yet) I had used the PC 6 months with just the keyboard. I had also replaced the modem with a 14k I found in the trash. You won't believe this, I can't prove it, and I don't care. But this modem I found in the trash connected at ISDN speed. IDK if it was an ISDN modem, but it worked with my regular dial-up I had at the time. Besides it saying it connected to the ISP at 100k, it actually downloaded near that speed. Average DL speeds were 80kbps iirc. Unfortunately, I had stored this PC away and it was mistakenly thrown out! That screenshot is all that remains. Hive City was replaced by Shiva, a totally new PC. It started with a Gigabyte motherboard, a Pentium II 233MHz CPU and a 32MB Riva TNT2 video card. Also I think a Sound Blaster of some sort. In 2003, Shiva was upgraded to another motherboard and a Pentium III 533BMHz CPU. Yes B! For some reason, some P3's had a B after the speed before the MHz, don't ask me why. It also ended up with 768MB RAM. Shiva has had 3 video cards. The first was mentioned. The second a Voodoo 3 PCI which was traded to a dude for a GeForce 2 MX and $20. The last (and final) is the video card I paid the most money for. You know this guy: 3dfx Voodoo 5500 AGP 2x 64MB. You 9xers might not have ever owned one of these guys, but this is why I still prop 98. This Voodoo card excels in 2 things still unmatched in today's video card world. HEY if I am wrong, please show me some infos! OK OK to start these are those 2 things: 1. On-chip AA 2. Open GL support Let's start with #1. On this card, you can enable AA (1x or 2x) and have no CPU hit. I have not owned a video card since this (both GeForce and Radeon) that do not make a CPU hit when AA is enabled. The Voodoo handled all AA with no CPU requirement. This is a win in my book. OK now, #2 yes Glide and OpenGL are a "thing of the past" yet still companies use OpenGL in their games. You get no CPU hit with GL with this card, still not matched against others using games that use GL. Of all the video cards I have parted ways with, or put in the basement, I can't let go of this guy. This Voodoo is the centerpeice and is the focal point of Project Shiva. As I may have mentioned in the past, Shiva was a Windows 98 Server. It ran Windows 98a and hacked USB 1.1 support. It served up Quake 3 Dedicated and Shoutcast back in the day. The crowning achievement was the uptime record (for me) which was just over 3 months without a reboot. So now we have set the stage. Let me detail this project: First, I need to upgrade my existing computer using new parts Second, I need to rebuild Shiva using my computer's old parts Third, I need to build a PC for my mother using my existing computer's parts However, my main goal will be to build Shiva first, as it does not require parts from either of the 2 projects above. To start, I have acquired a free 5 bay chassis (read:case) and ... oh wait for this. I asked the VP of IT of my company if we had any leftover Windows 98 VLKs, he said "WHAT? Here take it" W00T! The chassis is In-Win Z589AQB. Known specs for Shiva: Mainboard: Intel D850MV CPU: Intel Pentium IV 1.7GHz RAM: 768MB RDRAM (1st gen) PC800 Video: Voodoo 5 5500 AGP 2x 64MB Sound: tba HDD: 20GB IDE, 20GB IDE CD-ROM: 8x CD-RW Iomega Terminator model For the first time, Shiva *may* get Windows 98 SE. It currently has a different version and may need to get installed if it doesn't like migrating all those things. Note, I had posted here on MSFN from Shiva (as it exists as of this moment) almost exactly 1 year ago when Infocore (my current PC) had a mainboard failure. Anyways, Infocore mainboard, ram will go to new PC using the other In-Win case I picked up. It will then move to Intel DQ965GF with SATA HDDs and Windows 7 Pro x86. I had bought a SATA DVD-RW drive because the target board only has 1 PATA port, and I have 4 PATA drives.... bad things. So new board will use 2 PATA drives, 2 SATA HDDs and 1 SATA DVD-RW. OK OK this was all a fine story and TL;DR to most of you guys I bet, but I needs to know this important infos: Where Shiva goes there is not ethernet up thar. What do I need to know about getting WiFi to work on 98? Can it handle G speed? Anyways, if you have any questions, ask away.

Adding clarification to #5. In Notepad, you need to change the "Save As Type" option for TXT File to All Files, or else you'll have a .txt extension.

You can't activate Windows with the OA key on the internet. Or are you using the key on the COA?

That's right. Windows can't do it by itself, you need a third party program to do it. I would be interested to know how well that Opera add-on works over time. I had stopped using ObjectDesktop (even the demo lets you do this but it asks you to buy it once a day) because if I left the PC on for an extended period of time, it would lock up. Other things it would do were graphical glitches or artifacts. I wanted to point out that my screenshot above looks a little distorted. It didn't look that way in action, only in the screenshot. I'm not really sure why that was. In any case, as fun as it was to toy with, I stopped using transparency altogether because I needed to keep the PC on for extended periods, as I was using it as a server. I think the Shiva specs were: EDIT: I AM ERROR I just noticed my C drive in that picture is "Hive City". This is my really old PC! I don't remember how much RAM it had. Also this one wasn't a server. Durrrr. It had a 133MHz CPU and a 32MB Riva TNT 2 video card. I used it to play Quake 3 (it was my main computer). So transparency might work a lot better on the systems you guys are running Windows 98 on nowadays.

I've changed this before, on Server 2003. I can't remember exactly but it was either msgina.dll or shell32.dll. Maybe Explorer.exe. I can say that because those are the only files I had changed. Try looking at shell32.dll next. Moving to Customizing Windows forum.

Welcome to the MSFN!

I sometimes run into systems where the C is not available, because some other drive takes it. I run the following diskpart script, which so far, the destination letter has always worked: sel vol c assign letter=e exit That will fix your issue with the C being taken my something else.

Yes transparency does work but back in the olden days of computers made for 98, transparency was a big time burden on the system. Even my old computer (Shiva) which was beefy back then for 98 displayed well if you didn't, say move stuff around or try to run a program that used 3D acceleration or shell. I managed to find this screenshot of transparency on Shiva which was taken on Dec 01, 2001 (date seems right, its in the properties of the pic) which actually used whatever the current version of ObjectDesktop was available at the time to do this. Oh it was Windows 98a or, not B or SE or Plus! I am really out of the loop on 98 nowadays... Oh and don't worry. None of those AIM names are active anymore except mine.

I tried to research before making the post. I'm sure it on the Partner network someplace but there's something wrong with my account so I couldn't check. Edit: actually, I forget this is in XP forum. I don't even know if XP has N or Starter versions. Before my time.

If we had a "GRiDCase that went under water and has no power supply and takes 30 minutes to boot off a Toshiba DOS disk when hooked up to a printer power adapter" forum I would have made a better greetings.

For some reason I can't stand Kings of Leon. One dude from work introduced me to them as "this is the best band ever" then I heard them and went "feh" Prodigy - Three (feat. Cormega)

MSSE is not for corporate use. Forefront is the enterprise version, and is supported by WSUS.

Do not assign the System Reserved partition a drive letter. Assign the OS partition the C letter. Then run BCDBOOT.EXE C:\WINDOWS.

See the very bottom of this page: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd772269.aspx

Ah ha, I posted the answer in your other thread. So speaking of which, I am merging the 2 topics. I do not know how to do this with the GImageX implementation you are using. See the DISM commands in Post #2 of this new merged thread.

Also we must remember that some users do not have the same resources that we may have. For example, my WIMs for 7 are just the OS and drivers. I have a custom program that is run after imaging where you can select what programs you want to install. Of course if you choose, say Nero and Office, that's almost 1GB of stuff right there. But in my case, these files are kept on a network server. A bunch of people here are limited to using USB Keys or DVDs and don't have servers to install Windows with, and this is a reason why file size becomes an issue.

Validation, aka whatever the WGA does. Or sometimes when you need to download something from Microsoft, you have to validate first before the website will let you save the file. I am guessing this is what he means. I am wondering if the Canary Islands are one of those places that are designated as N or Starter only.

Easy way is to make a shortcut for your program. Then put that shortcut into the Startup folder in the Start Menu. Remember, making things start when the computer boots will make that process slower. Your other option is you can put it in the registry: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Run

We let almost anyone join.

If you are running this from Normal Mode (aka not Factory or Audit Mode) you may need to run this CMD elevated. I believe you can specify a runas option in a batch file. I've never done it myself.

If there is only one user, is there a specific reason why you want this screen to appear at boot? You could always just turn the auto-logon option on. Then you can say, set your screen saver to prompt for credentials on resume. And always lock your session when not using the computer.

Welcome to the MSFN!