Drugwash

Thank you for thinking of me. I already knew about that attempt as well as about Keysharp, AutohotkeyX and others. See this comment in AHK forums for details. In a world where options are slowly (or quickly) being taken away from us I think we should refrain from second-guessing other people's choices as at some point they may even become our own choices. Don't forget: allergies are treatable with close to 100% success. Be well!

I believe it's about WebComponents. A lot of sites are making use of that and as such older browsers became doomed. Even Pale Moon which is constantly being developed has difficulties implementing that. Strangely, the old version 9 of Midori does have at least partly implemented WebComponents, which allows log in and operations in WordPress blogs. For e-mail I am now using ClawsMail natively instead of POP Peeper which was used with Wine until about a month or so ago. That is in Linux. Win9x probably has much dimmer chances of getting something usable with respect to browsing and e-mail.

You can say that again. There's too much to be said but unfortunately nothing to do.

One or more missing libraries may not have anything to do with KernelEx. Newer applications can be linked to various libraries that may not be native to Win9x, so one would have to search for them in newer OS versions (or on the web, there are sites that provide various DLLs) and attempt to port them to their system. Some may work, some may not, depending on whether they work standalone or require other dependencies themselves. All this requires quite a bit of work. If you mentioned which library/ies exactly you're missing maybe someone could help further. Usually the latest...? As far as I know the latest was v3.66. In view of recent reports below it may be prudent to avoid v3.66 and try an earlier version - maybe v3.65 as suggested below. I just checked and the SP3.cab package inside uSP3 v3.66 contains unicows.dll v1.1.3790.0 so you shouldn't have to download it separately. Nowadays' Linux is fairly easy to deal with, some distros provide a Windows-like feeling and the GUI has evolved pretty well. Unfortunately a lot of them only provide 64bit versions of the distros but there still are a few that provide 32bit for whoever doesn't own a 64bit machine. Some distros are quite small i.e. Puppy Linux. There is a learning curve though and it depends on each person how welll they cope with that. Personally I switched to Linux about three years ago when 98SE + XP couldn't deal with the web in an acceptable way.

Someone mentioned before installing the correct version of unicows.dll if you have anything different than that or none at all. It may be best done in pure DOS mode or Safe Mode if it requires replacement. Also other updated system files provided by AutoPatcher or uSP3 may prove useful along the way. Either should be installed prior to KernelEx, so if you already have KernelEx installed you'd have to first uninstall it, then update the system with either of the aforementioned packages. I believe uSP3 does install the correct unicows library too so you may not have to perform multiple steps. Installing KernelEx 4.5.2 - the original version - should be straightforward. If you are unsure you may visit the related topic and see if there are any specific advices there. If all goes well with installing KernelEx the somehow complicated part is setting the proper compatibility for each application that requires it, and sometimes for some of its pertaining libraries. To find out which executables and/or libraries require higher compatibility I use Total Commander with the FileInfo plug-in which displays the missing or incomplete dependencies, it's very easy to check each file that way. Thing is, your KernelEx installation may not even be broken - maybe you just didn't set up the correct compatibilities for the required executables and/or libraries. In POP Peeper only the main executable - POPPeeper.exe - and the database convertor - PPconvert.exe - require higher compatibility due to missing APIs while all the libraries, including the SSL ones that it downloads during installation, are fully compatible with Win98. Setting XP compatibility for the two files should fix it. (right-click the file, choose Properties, go to KernelEx Compatibility tab and select XP).

For what it's worth here is my own recent experience with searching for a truly free e-mail provider: link Do check out the link quoted there to get an idea of what has become of the freedom of communication today. They do not mention mail.com though. No idea how they go lately, I had my account created a few years ago without the need to provide a phone number. It has been working fine in POP Peeper. You should really fix your KernelEx installation, it may be required for much more software. I just checked POP Peeper 4.5.3 yesterday in a virtual 98SE setup and it only misses three APIs that should be easily fixed through KernelEx. Also uSP3 might provide additional help, but make sure it's installed before KernelEx. If it's of any comfort I couldn't wrap (pun intended) my head around WinSSLwrap either, and without false modesty I do consider myself fairly knowledgeable. We may just have a completely different way of understanding things which requires a different approach in explaining certain procedures.

You could try POP Peeper (the free version) but I'm not sure if it works on a vanilla 98/SE or it needes KernelEx. I did use it a few years ago on my 98SE machine but it did have KernelEx installed as well as other system library updates. Also used it until a week or two ago in Linux Mint under Wine 5.14 (later Wine versions have a problem with displaying HTML messages).

There used to be a plug-in for Total Commander that could read NTFS partitions. Never had any luck myself with any full-access (read/write) NTFS tools under 9x.

Can be useful in an emergency situation. If set to only act manually there would be no interference with running applications at possibly unwanted time. For most available operations - including copy/move files and/or folders - I have only ever used Total Commander. For the copy operations the large files option was enabled in its settings. I really can't remember how Explorer looks like.

Or there's MemPanel in my package that displays RAM, swap, total system load, and CPU usage. There was a utility for freeing memory, I think it was called Free RAM XP Pro or something like that. On occasion it did clip some of the used memory as well leading to problems but most of the times it did its job well.

Thank you everybody for your welcome. The virtual world is getting wierder everyday. Today found more than two dozen MSFN notifications in my mail's Spam, something I can't usually check with the daily mail application since it doesn't provide that option in its free version. Looks like "someone" is trying hard to bury your/our efforts as it's not the first time these notifications have been hidden away despite having them flagged as not spam everytime. Now, as for image operations I used to use FastStone Image Viewer in my supercharged 98SE. Very intuitive interface, almost always working in full-screen mode having all necessary tools autohidden on all four screen sides. No idea if recent versions still work in Win9x, with or without KernelEx, and also can't remember what was the last version I had installed on that 98SE machine. One can always try and see. Event sounds were a nightmare to me. One of the first things used to do right after installing the OS was to disable all event sounds except for the one for Critical... error or whatever (forgot the exact name). Too sensitive hearing and/or too crazy. Also, one of the important things was to replace the default Startup, Waiting and Shutdown splash screens. Seems like a lifetime ago when I was working on the WLL (Windows Logo Loader) project here, taken over from the one started by... Tihiy if I recall correctly. There also used to be a parallel project called WBL (Windows Boot Loader?) by user PassingBy. So much fun working at bit level. Gosh, so many good memories, at least as much as I can remember something, anything... And this world changing so rapidly into something I utterly dislike. Gah, not gonna start ranting now. Y'all have a good time anytime possible, as much as possible, coz time ain't waiting for nobody. And if any of you misses me or you got problems with my AHK scripts do drop me a line at drugwash [at] mail [dot] com (the only address I can still be reached at, the rest are long gone). Peace!

Oh, if that's the case then sorry for the misunderstanding. And also sorry for the delayed response, I had gotten no notification e-mails whatsoever from this board until today when I found about 15 of them all bearing same timestamp. Maybe, but wouldn't that specifically require for that particular machine to be running in order for any other machine on the network to use that printer? A true network printer would be accessible at any time without the need for another computer to be driving it. That is precisely why I searched and chose such model. Belated thanks (see reason above). Alive but not actually living, if you understand what I mean. Just surviving, depending on a couple strangers for food and bills. Not sure how helpful it is but I remember Imagine by Chun Sejin as it has always been embedded with the omonimous Total Commander viewer extension. While working on a Cinnamon applet for Linux Mint I noticed xgamma was disconnected with the xrandr settings. After changing values through xrandr, xgamma still showed default values. When the system does use xrandr it would be best to use it to adjust brightness and gamma/color temperature. It's only a personal opinion, of course. xrandr --help and xrandr --dryrun should offer the necessary usage details. Most likely the video card contains DVI circuitry internally and uses an internal converter to output D-SUB (VGA) signal. Either the driver detects the original DVI circuitry or the card's BIOS has not been properly configured to advertise the VGA output. This can happen when manufacturers build multiple-output boards and then decide to release them as single-output. Possibly newer drivers work around known hardware bugs or just use different commands that do not produce those glitches. Personally I believe the card is at fault not the drivers, but may always be wrong. Same from me though hopefully this won't happen, if only to preserve history that newer generations would never know about. Personally I've already forgotten most of the things I knew (and posted) about Windows 9x, due to bad and worsening memory. If it would be for me to still live some time it'd be nice to have this place to revisit old memories.

It may just have been pulled from a machine that had a hidden recovery area. Many manufacturers employed this trick of having part of the HDD turned into hidden area unreachable from the OS, where a copy of the original system was placed for full recovery when needed. The BIOS usually provided such recovery option hotkey at the POST screen. I had one such drive too, also 40GB (and may even have been a Maxtor like yours), and found it hard to believe the sticker saying 20GB while the original drive label said 40GB, so I searched the web and found details about the issue along with a free application that could restore the drive to its full capacity. For the life of me I can't remember the exact name of that application but searching for "HDD capacity restore" could provide useful results. It would be a pity to scrap a usable drive for only this reason, or even work with partial capacity when it can be restored to its full glory. A network-capable printer would be more suitable to a multi-computer environment. A few years ago when I still had money I bought a used Lexmark e352dn (printer only, no scanner) and hooked it to a local network hub, so both the XP and the 98SE machines were able to access it. Another advantage, crucial in certain cases, is that the device can be placed at long distance from any of the computers, even in a separate room, while USB and COM/LPT cables usually are limited in length, not to mention one LAN cable versus two means less clutter. Having it connected to a router with Wi-Fi capability would allow access to it from any machine with Wi-Fi capability.

I'm in the middle of the city, hardly any wildlife here. With dozens of cats around mice and rats have no chance. Either my own cats brought the fleas from the vicinities or someone infested the area on purpose. There's a small barrel near the house where rainwater accumulates, I use that water for the few plants that survived in the house. In the summer there's also enough vegetation in the garden to harbour all kinds of insects. Main problem here is the world - what it has become and where it's heading to. After extrapolating I came to the conclusion this is not the world I've been dreaming of as a child and it sure doesn't fit my views, neither in the short term nor in the long term. So it's best we part ways sooner rather than later.

Haven't heard back from my ex yet. Probably busy with her own life, she has an autistic daughter that needs constant supervision. I've had fleas for the last three years, thousands of them. More than 30 cats, mostly kittens at 2-4 months have been killed by fleas last year in only a couple of weeks, either by too much blood sucking or by certain disease passed on from one to another - including corona variants known to be common amongst felines. Believe me, this house would better be blown up and rebuilt, because cleaning it up - including dependencies around - would be impossible.