Drugwash

First off, try to find if there's a BIOS upgrade available for that machine - it may accept a Pentium III as many P II machines do. Some boards have an automatic position for the dip-switch and that, in conjunction with a BIOS update, may allow you to run a better CPU such as the P III. But you do need to read a detailed manual for your board to see if such option is available. EDIT: Also please take into account that the slot adapter may be defective. I have a slotket adapter (socket 370 to Slot 1) that fried me a few CPUs before I realised it, so…

From everything I read here and in linked articles, Windows 10 is nothing but a personalised and evil Microsoft's view of a Linux operating system. These last days I've been searching hard for a Linux distribution that could succesfully replace the XP that currently acts as ICS and DHCP for my local computers. I've tried a few distros and read documentation on many others, downloaded a few (and depleted my 5GB monthly download quota) and still have others to download and test. But a common denominator for all these Linux builds are: - (un)guided opaque installations of desired/required applications/drivers - constant system updates - opaque access to various system tweaks In view of the above, an Internet access appears to be mandatory at least for the first installation and configuration. One would think downloading a full CD (or DVD, for certain distros) would allow them to install and configure a readily usable system. Unfortunately that is not the case, because many features - some actually critical such as local networking - may not work partially or at all. Now, Windows 10 appears to be merely a network (read 'cloud') terminal, where updates are constantly required, where Internet access is mandatory for certain apps/functions, where system changes/tweaks are hard or impossible to perform, where most applications are delivered through opaque installers and some probably even not allowed to install/run. I see a pattern here: the users shouldn't know what's going on with their systems - "THEY" know better, everything's automated and the users should ONLY obey - it's "in their best interest" anyway. Let me ask a multiple-facet question now: if the Windows sources were available, how many people out there would be able to actually build themselves the whole OS? How many would even think of doing that? And the applications… How many people would build themselves the Firefox browser, as open-source as it is? How many people would build themselves Adobe Photoshop? Or any other heavy applications which require specific SDKs, DDKs, building environments, hardware, OS etc? Yeah, similarly, a lot of people are using various Linux distros and asociated applications but a negligible part of them actually have the time, knowledge and drive to actually build EVERYTHING from scratch. So Windows could actually contain anything, Linux could actually contain anything and almost nobody would care. People use things as they are because they either don't have the knowledge, hardware, software, time or any combination thereof to pull their own VERIFIED versions of the software. So now the final question is: if most of us are unable to find/understand/build the best working/entertainment environment and there's no way to customize the existing (scarce) options to our own desire, what the heck are we to do?! Solutions: - Accept Windows/Linux as they are and trust them (more or less) blindly - Build our own revolutionary operating system(s) and applications - Give up computers completely and forever P.S. The way I see it, Windows Defender means 'a defender of Windows' (as in 'THE operating system'), not at all the defender of the user that operates the machine and their valuable data.

And how can you tell them apart…? Hooray, new jobs for an increasedly large world population! Home Appliances Network Auditor - best job in the 21st century! Don't they need some credible reasons to "visit" our homes every now and then, see if there's any "abnormal" activity, snoop around, maybe place some extra "bugs" if the national security requires it (as if using Win10 wouldn't be enough)…?

Oh, it's fine by me.

Well, I agree with Paul Brian's point of view except for one thing - and if I'm wrong please correct me: the screen of a Sinclair Spectrum Z80 computer was white, not black.

FS Image Viewer v5.5 has been released. Unfortunately same issues as before: - 'Save as' dialog won't appear unless KernelEx is specifically set to 98SE/ME compatibility (may work with 2000/XP too - haven't checked) - Saving as different image type won't allow 'Options' (greyed out button) unless an extension is manually specified for the output file It's sad that they couldn't (wouldn't?) fix such trivial (IMHO) issues. But hey, it still (mostly) works, with workarounds. (I've only tried the portable zip version)

The IE6 requirement is misleading - it's not IE as 'the browser' that is needed but a few (updated) system files that come with the IE package and cannot (usually) be found/installed otherwise. I vaguely remembered this issue popped up in the past and stepping on my pride and using the search - Google is banned from my computers - I found one of my replies that seems to be related to the missing chevron issue as reported by jds back then: link However there may still be something else to tweak/update to get it fixed. Unfortunately I don't know what that is. Installing IE6 (a bare minimum installation may be enough) could fix it.

I didn't say the files would necessarily cause trouble, just that some people may want/need specific versions on their systems and overwriting them without prompt may upset them. Theoretically, anyway. Apparently only WRAP.EXE needs the VC7 runtime. I'll see if it can be compiled with VC6 to avoid these requirements as soon as I figure out how to deal with the openssl code that's linked to. But that may take some time.

Thanks for your efforts but the ge.tt link won't work at all, throws an XML error. Could be some issue with my browser's add-ons, but it doesn't matter - I ultimately managed to download from the primary location. Looking through the main batch file I see the installer forces the installation of MFC70 and MSVCR70 in the %SYSTEM% folder. Some systems may have their own assortment of files that work best and such update may not be beneficial. Have you tested the package with other versions of the aforementioned runtime libraries, would it work correctly? If the current versions are not mandatory then it may be best to skip updating the runtime libraries when existing. Omitting the /Y parameter for EXTRACT.EXE will prompt the user to overwrite. Not promising anything but someday I may try to build a downsized alternative installer.

Thing is, EVERYTHING in terms of communications eventually lands in the US. I'm far away in eastern Europe and still looking at the small flag in browser's address bar (courtesy of the FlagFox add-on for Firefox) all the e-mail providers, blogs, news sites show up as physically being located in the US, despite of the domain names. This is one of the biggest Internet scams, in my opinion. Moreover, domain redirections add to the confusion. For example, I open a link to somebody.blogspot.com found on a page and my browser automatically goes to somebody.blogspot.ro (since I'm living in Romania and they automatically detect my IP). However, the flag is still 'stars and stripes', meaning the actual server hosting the respective blog resides in the US. This is a MAJOR issue with everyone thinking they can express themselves freely according to LOCAL laws. And of course only few people know about FlagFox and its importance.

I really don't think they're in control (anymore). Higher quarters might be demanding things and M$ are trying hard to comply in order to survive. Of course I may also be dead wrong. But who can prove either version…? And… does it really matter, at the end of the day, for the regular user?

Please find yourself another repository that actually allows RESUME and does not TIMEOUT the connections. The guy at htasoft does not care about us having last-century dial-up 14kB/s connections. I can't download that stupid 2.7MB file because there's no resume and my flaky GPRS connection drops randomly. And please avoid Google and Microsoft at all costs. Maybe try CloudMe for us europeans.

My take on the matter: - devices are getting smarter - humans are getting dumber (by consequence AND by [lack of] education) Therefore: - dumb people will never be able to (fully) understand the output of smart devices - dumb people will actually die looking dumbly at smart devices' screens - many other people (dumb or not at all) will die because other (dumb or actualy smart) people will push certain buttons that allow smart devices to perform certain actions - the guys who carved into The Georgia Guidestones "Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 [...]" will rejoice …

I feel Microsoft's in a deep coma and someone, for some reason, is keeping them on life support. My opinion is that Microsoft's time on Earth has ended and they should be left to go into the light.

Custom resolutions might not be available until you install a proper driver for the monitor. You may use Monitor Asset Manager from loblo's links to build an inf for the monitor if the modified one won't work. Completely disconnecting the PC unit from power will drain the BIOS battery rather quickly and you might find yourself with the BIOS default settings at some point, which may cause hardware redetection and possible conflicts in Device Manager or even lockup. That's a worst case scenario, of course, but it's best to be aware of this.

It's precisely because of the non-working Phoenix tool that I stepped up to create my CROWE. Phoenix just freezes in my 98SE when trying to get the data from registry (no matter which KernelEx compatibility I set it to) so it's practically useless on a 9x system. As for edid-rw, that would eventually be useful for EDID data correction and reflash, but who would go to the lengths of installing and configuring a Linux/Ubuntu machine, then reading EDID data, editing with a hex editor - wouldn't it be better doing it directly in a humanly-readable interface? - and finally writing it back to the monitor on the I2C interface? Anyway, your efforts are deeply appreciated and it's for good reason that you're entitled as The Finder.

@ Foxbat: It's just a hunch but the monitor may use EDID extensions which may not be recognized by the 98 driver. I have a very raw and incomplete script that reads EDID data from the registry and another one that dumps the registry data to text files. Comparing the registry data between 98 and 7 might shed some light (or not). I could compile and upload these if you want. Done, check my repository, the EDID folder. What exactly did not work with modified drivers: wouldn't install at all or got installed but wouldn't make any difference? Overriding EDID with custom resolutions is a bit different in 9x than in NT-based Windows. I couldn't fully understand it myself and didn't pursue the matter further after resolving the issue with Hanns-G. Thing is, if EDID extensions are the problem you may never get to fix it under 9x unless you find a driver that can cope with them.

Of course manual setting will be available, no doubt about that. But good software comes with best defaults and that's what I'm trying to accomplish. I mean, whoever dares not tamper with the registry may as well have no idea what values to try and when there's no optimized defaults wrong choice can lead to shutdown hang, corrupt files due to incomplete cache flush and who-knows-what other issues. Therefore I'm trying to always find the best default value for the current system the patcher would be run on. Further tweaking will be users' responsibility.

Yeah, I've bumped into that CreateFile() brick wall already. I knew about the vwin32 trick (as mentioned above) but couldn't find relevant info on enumerating physical disks. Wasted the day trying with QueryDosDevice() (and obviously failing), now struggling with cfgmgr32 CM_* APIs - found out I already had built an incomplete wrapper for those APIs. Dunno if I'm going anywhere with that either. Turns out I have an incomplete/outdated environment which misses definition for PPNP_VETO_TYPE referred in cfgmgr32.h so I can't modify/build a demo code found on CodeProject. It's been a long bitter day. See y'all tomorrow (according to my timezone). Thanks for all the help so far!

Thank you but what I need is physical drives not partitions and all the above are dealing with partitions. I mean, user may have three HDDs mounted with a total of ten partitions. I need to detect three physical drives, total capacity of each of them, then match the partitions to their respective physical drives in order to determine total free space on each physical drive from their respective cumulated partitions. In fact all I need is the largest physical drive with the lowest free space. There may additionally be a problem with removable USB drives if somehow cache writing is enabled for them. But that is something that will have to wait, for now. I've been looking at vwin32 and various VWIN32_DIOC_DOS_* parameters but haven't found a solution yet. Still working on it though. Any idea why the SetupDi* APis fail under 9x?

To test: 1. Modify original monitor driver and install. Reboot. 2. Create and apply custom resolution(s) such as 1920x1199 (one pixel difference) that can override the EDID. Reboot. 3. Replace the monitor with a more resiliant one. Enjoy.

@Mikl: Any and all possible tests would be great, hoping to narrow down the cause(s) and maybe establish a few ideal combinations. If we find out the newer VXD has no fault then it will only be a matter of cache delay value. Otherwise file version detection would be required and specific cache values based on version. Add to this the various possible HDD size ranges and here's the big picture. @everyone: I'm having trouble getting SetupDiEnumDeviceInfo() and SetupDiEnumDeviceInterfaces() to return anything other than error 259 (ERROR_NO_MORE_ITEMS) in my 98SE (works in XP but that doesn't help). Does anyone know any other safe way to detect all attached fixed physical drives under Win9x? That would be required for an automatic (default) setting of an optimal cache value on a per-machine basis.

Well, I'll look for the best way to add this feature then. Everybody has the right to be happy and yet almost nobody cares for the few that just need something different. Now, I'm not sure where the newer VXD comes from originally and what are its actual changes as compared to the known official version. Ideally a few tests should be performed on your system with the official 4.10.2225 and a cache value of 2000ms and observe if the unwanted behavior continues to occur or not (unless you already did that). This should make it clear whether the newer version is somehow faulty in regard to shutdown or not. BTW, how large are the HDDs on the faulty machine?

That's an interesting find but it may well be an isolated case. I suppose you already found this topic and these details. Is the hotfix installed on your system (System\VMM32\IFSMGR.VXD v4.10.2225)? Not sure if issuing a _flushall() CRT call from within the video driver on shutdown would be a good idea and even if it were, certain driver versions may not have enough free space for the code. But this is probably nonsense anyway. Would it make sense adding a cache delay choice in the patcher? Obviously it would only work for in-place patching and apparently only 98SE and ME would benefit. (added link to MSDN article for _flushall API)

I had an OSR2 on a CD. My first PC (which I still own and hopefully still works) is a 486 IBM PS/ValuePoint that originally ran at 25MHz, which I later on modified to run a 66MHz DXII CPU. The BIOS wouldn't take a HDD larger than 524MB which I felt was too little for my needs so I bought and installed an ESS1869 sound card with a built-in IDE controller to which I attached a 1.2GB Quantum HDD. Windows 95 was installed on the smaller HDD and with the whopping amount of 32MB of RAM it was simply flying! Ugly as it was the GUI - and I'm only saying this compared to the Mauve Royale mod skin I'm using with RP9 in my 9 year old 98SE - it was looking much better than Windows 3.1 that I had run on the same machine previously. It was Windows 95 that made me realise how much a GUI matters, how options that otherwise layed only in the help files or a specialist's mind could nicely be put together on a single sheet at radio buttons, checkboxes, dropdown lists and so on. Win3.1 had not convinced me at all, previously. I have installed that 95 version many times back then. Be it for the sake of learning how the process goes with different settings, be it because of destructive viruses that made a restore impossible. In the process I learned that I could change a few settings and make it compatible with my native language although it wasn't the Pan-European version that I would normally need. Hardest thing was to extract the whole set of fonts from a Pan-European Win95 and transfer it to the installed system. A few lines in config.sys and autoexec.bat and here I was enjoying my native language in keyboard layout, menus, documents and so on. Sadly it's been fifteen years and a bunch of Windows versions in-between, all much more easier to set up correctly in terms of regional settings, but many - better said, most - of my conationals still can't set up their systems and can't type in the language that nature chose for us. And since we've come to this, I should probably make it clear why this nickname I've been using for so many years now. It has nothing to do with drugs. Back then in the earliest Internet days (on our side of the world) I tried to sign up to different groups/forums/email providers/etc using my real name. Unfortunately it contains one special character that can't be found in the standard Western alphabet and since Unicode was not that widespread and Win95 couldn't cope with it I just reshaped my name into an English spelling. So if an English-speaking person would call me on the street using this nickname I'd surely turn my head. Drugwash is just the English spelling for Dragoş - something that was not accepted by the web forms of the last century… And the rest is history.