Drugwash

You may try CloudMe (see my signature). Dunno how performant it is (my connection sucks big time), but my files are still there, unlike other hosts that wipe out your files after one month without explicitly saying that when creating an account.

There is still something fishy about this. According to my own detection tool (based on manufacturer/device database info available on the web), your card is Intel Pro/1000 EB. The last bit (EB) is most important because Intel does not even list such card model on their site and does not come up on a search in their driver database. They say (somewhere) that driver must be obtained from motherboard producer so we're back to the Supermicro site. The CD contents pointed to by submix8c above might just not be the right one for your particular model so I've searched based on mobo model and they came up with this direct link. (81201kB !!!) While searching the web I've found at Softpedia a driver apparently for that particular model but this one is also huge for my 14kB/s connection (61.2MB) so I can't vouch it does at least contain the desired VEN/DEV information in its inf, let alone the slim chance of having Win9x-compatible driver. EDIT: Checked the one at Softpedia, doesn't have the desired VEN/DEV. EDIT2: Well, good news is I found it. In the large 81MB package on manufacturer's site, mentioned above. Listed as: "Intel® PRO/1000 EB Network Connection with I/O Acceleration" Bad news is there's no driver even for Win2000/XP/2003. Only Win7 and above. Or DOS, Linux, WinCE... There is a cNet download here that lists an older version 9.3.28.0 but it leads back to Intel's site and doesn't appear to retrieve anything (useful). Or maybe it's just my connection. Maybe if anyone had that older version archived somewhere, it may work. Emphasis on may. :/

By looking closely at the readme file in the v10.4 folder one can clearly see that the line mentioning Win9x/ME/NT support is just a section name, which is located below and says: Therefore my understanding is that there is no specific Win9x/ME/NT driver in that package, unless the omission of "and drivers" in the first statement regarding Windows 98 can be considered as a slight possibility. Which I highly doubt. But my Internet connection is crawling as always so I won't be able to check the contents of that folder anytime soon anyway. EDIT : OK,I managed to download the entire v10.4 folder. There are indeed Win98SE drivers for Pro100 and Pro1000 (which matches the statement "does not contain software for Microsoft Windows 98" if we look at 'Windows 98' strictly as Gold/First Edition), however there are no such drivers for the ProxGB. The DOCS folder contains the same file called drivers.htm for all Pro cards, which does not mention ProxGB as supported in Windows 98SE, but only Pro100 and Pro1000. The drivers for Windows 2000 and above mention NDIS 5 or NDIS 5.1 în their VersionInfo sections.

Internet connection speed may be lower on the faulty computer and it always times out before finishing the upload (go to a connection speed measuring site with both computers and compare the results) or TCP/IP connection values may have been optimized on the good computer but not on the other (use TZ Connection Booster and/or TCP Optimizer and/or other similar software to improve connection parameters) or Network-related system files may differ in version and operating parameters from one computer to the other (this depends on connection type - dial-up, broadband etc. - and (un)official updates installed to the systems) or There is a firewall or otherwise network/Internet-active application that cuts connection on a timer (check background services and applications, close anything not vital for the current session) or Someone else knows other valid reasons.

Well, there's no saying you didn't try. Good luck on your next challenge!

You may be better off with a flash drive (or more) that sports a hardware write protection switch. Unfortunately such thing may be hard to find nowadays. I do have an old 2GB flash drive with such switch and it's most useful when working with possibly infected machines. Some drives may be available - please check this list. I also found this small application but haven't tested it: USB Write Protect 2.0. It says XP and later but only appears to depend on VB6 runtime so it may work in 9x too.

Please find the zip version of the Starter application - the installer is apparently incompatible with the 9x systems, I've experienced that myself ever since v5.6.2.9. I should've mentioned that before, my apologies. If you can't find it, then install Starter on a 2000/XP/+ system and then just copy its folder to the 9x machine. I'm thinking there is a slight possibility that your Windows Scandisk may have mixed files. Please unpack the 'scanfrag' package separately in a new folder using a compatible archiver and then compare file version/size (and even a binary compare, if possible) of each file against those installed in the system. If you find any discrepancies, then please try reinstalling the package, even in Safe Mode if it throws any errors.

If it was an AGP card you wouldn't have had any problems, I suppose. But with PCIe... Well, you did your best, it's an experience that may help you in the future. Keep your head up!

If the videocard has more than 256MB (or was it 128MB?) of RAM, you're toast! Additionally there may be some other subtle incompatibility in BIOS that Win9x/ME can't handle through the driver. Few years ago I had found a site (and forgot the link in the mean time) which provided lots of nVidia video BIOS packages and some flashing applications but I have no idea if your particular videocard's BIOS can be flashed, which are the proper tools, where to find a BIOS file and whether it could be modified to report less memory than the actual value, if that turned out to be the issue.

Oops, I had indeed missed the MBR part. Well, if that's the case then burning that rescue CD and booting from it to completely remove GoBack would indeed be the best solution. Hopefully the sick machine can boot from optical drive.

Yes, you could do that, provided the writing is clearly distinguishable. We need to know which items pertain to that dreaded software so we can disable them all at once. What I'm afraid of is that there could be more of them options also in System.ini and/or Win.ini which would require switching to corresponding tabs in msconfig, expanding some sections, getting screenshots of them too... Anyway, you do what you can and maybe someone who has experience with that software could chime in with their knowledge in the mean time. Otherwise it'll be trial and error. Teleportation surely would've come in handy...

Images can be transferred through USB stick, floppy disk, can be burnt on (re)writable CD/DVDs or the respective HDD can be moved and connected to the working computer where the images can be copied and the possibly faulty HDD can be checked for hardware/software problems. It all depends on the existing hardware/media and of course the corresponding level of knowledge. Images can be attached to comments by using the [More reply options] button at the bottom-right of the page; alternatively they can be posted to online image hosts and then linked to them here. If you really can't get the screenshots posted, you may bite the bullet and disable anything in msconfig related to the assumingly faulty software namely GoBack. It may be enough at least to let you restart in normal mode and perform additional tasks such as uninstalling the software, checking for faults using Scandisk etc. I'd really like a confirmation from submix8c whether disabling startup items related to GoBack would be safe and could help in fixing the issue. Thank you. Oh and don't mind the jokes - I'm sure the doctor was just trying to help the best he could with the tools at hand.

That must've been a pet doctor! In safe mode, an OS doesn't load all the drivers/services/startup apps/etc but only the bare minimum required to run diagnose, debug and repair. If your computer runs fine in safe mode then it's definitely a software issue and it lays in one of the additional pieces of software enumerated earlier. The easiest way to find out which one is to disable all of the additionals in safe mode, reboot in normal mode and if it works fine in normal mode, at that point you can start reenabling the disabled items one by one, reboot in normal mode after each enabled item and when it breaks you'll know the latest enabled item is the culprit. Disabling items can be done by running msconfig from Start > Run > type 'msconfig' > press [ENTER]. Do that in safe mode. Go to the 'Startup' tab, enlarge the window to show all items fully, take a screenshot and attach it here in a comment so we can take a look and tell you what is safe to disable. Basically first thing to disable would be 'Go back' but there may be others, even malware. Since you say you're not familiar with computers, please do not try to disable anything by yourself at this point. You may also switch to the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat tabs and take screenshots of those as well, as they may contain commands to load drivers or applications. To take a screenshot, press Left Alt and PrtScrn (Print Screen) simultaneously while the System Configuration Utility (msconfig) window is focused, then open MS Paint, press Ctrl and V to paste the image and then save it to a handy location (Desktop, My Documents or wherever you can find it quicky afterwards). If you have another image-manipulation application that works in safe mode and can convert images to JPG or PNG then save the screenshots as BMP and then convert them to either JPG or PNG - whichever gets the smallest file size (since there's a limit on total attachment size here on the boards). Otherwise save the screenshots directly from MS Paint as JPG. I'd recommend FastStone Image Viewer (freeware) for image manipulation, but there are others too.

Some more ideas came to mind: - defective HDD (bad/unstable sectors) --> run HDAT2 or other similar tool that can check and fix bad sectors - defective or badly plugged-in IDE cable --> remove and reinsert the IDE cable firmly at both ends (careful not to bend or break any pins!) One certain way to kill Explorer without having it restart itself is through CodeStuff Starter. That tool is also useful to check all startup items and enable/disable them at will (but careful not to disable critical system components!) Cmmpu might be related to the C-Media soundcard, an MPU driver. Shouldn't be a problem, I have a C-Media card myself and Scandisk runs just fine.

You're on thin ice, mate. May the Force be with you!

Good luck with that! If the floppy unit won't get recognized, your only chance would be a hot swap and reflash the BIOS on a similar/compatible board, only when the chips have same capacity and only if they're not soldered directly on board. For details on BIOS modding/flashing try looking through all the sections here. But be careful, there be dragons!

Heh, years ago when I visited Wim's BIOS forum I found a guy's signature which said "never assume anything". That thing got burnt in my mind and I usually try to follow that advice. Therefore any and all proper advices should be offered and hopefully one of them will pay off. Besides, there may be other people in similar situation in time, where the solution may be in one of the other advices. It's good to have them all in one place, easy to choose from. Dunno how things go in that part of the world but here we can still call friends or colleagues and ask to borrow a floppy, a CD, a PSU or even a whole computer if necessary. So-called doctors may just try to pump up the bill sometimes. Besides, it's fun trying to fix something by yourself - one gets to learn things, not to mention the satisfaction when they succeed.

Dunno if it can be of any help but do try 'Quick switcher' from the repository in my signature. See if it correctly detects the display, set up three hotkeys with different resolutions (also check the resolutions list, see if you can get some different vertical refresh rates) and use the hotkeys one at a time, see what happens. Keep the external monitor on for feedback, there should be a brief OSD message at top-left on each resolution change. Can't tell much about the registry, I'm having difficulties myself finding all the necessary data for Quick Switcher.

There may still be a hardware issue. Look carefully for gonflated/leaky capacitors on the mainboard - if any, that may be the source of lockups. Such bad capacitors could also be inside the power source unit, so if you can get a compatible one for testing purposes, do replace the current PSU and see if the issue persists. Also please manually check the CPU cooler temperature, see if it's too cold or too hot. It's possible that someone might have fitted the cooler the other way around and it's not touching the CPU heatsink, causing CPU overheating. This may also be a malware issue. Can you check the running processes, the startup items? If so, try to build a list and post it here. You may also try to boot from a live CD (if the BIOS allows it) but you'd need some old & lite Linux or something that can run on those hardware specs. Maybe a 4.x version of Knoppix would do. If the lockup does not occur, then you'd know for sure it's a software issue such as malware/bad driver/etc. If it works, you can transfer the data to an USB drive, to the other HDD or to another computer through network, if available.

Funny, I just killed spool32.exe from within CodeStuff Starter (not that it matters) and restarted it instantly seconds later through Start > Run > spool32 > [ENTER]. Actually it was also from within Starter, through right-cick in Processes list > New, which opens the Run dialog, so it's pretty much the same. I have a short AHK (AutoHotkey Basic) script that kills the Lexmark drivers and spool32 on every boot to save memory. Some applications have the bad habit of restarting the printer drivers so I keep a shortcut to that script on the desktop and use it when needed. I'm not a Batch fan at all. An AHK script could start the spool32 process without problems using the 'Run' command (just tested a minute ago): Run spool32.exe

You are absolutely right: looking at the raw code I see the RTF tags. While something is better than nothing, we could still call this a hoax I guess...

Guys, the installer I got from one of the official links is exactly 1,128,916 bytes. I unpacked it with Inno Setup Unpacker Explorer v1.0 by Richard Santaella rather than running it as is - I usually do whatever I can to avoid running installers. The unpacker provided me with 5 files in the {app} folder: pdf2word.exe pdfinfo.exe options.ini Emerald.ssk help.url Launching pdf2word.exe presented me instantly with the GUI, I selected a PDF document created by myself and converted it. However, when I tried to open the converted document, Office XP took quite a long time (around 30 seconds, roughly). First unpleasant thing noticed was that the application only offered a choice of Times New Roman and Arial for default font but it didn't take into account the regional settings for the system/user, which in my case are Romanian, therefore the text in the .doc document showed up in English encoding instead of Central European which should have been the default (for both original PDF and System). Other than that the text seems to be fine. There are no images in that PDF so I can't tell how it handles those. But at least we know the application itself works, at least on my 98SE machine. And KernelEx is installed but left in Default mode, no tampering with it. I have never tried to launch the installer for this application. EDIT: I'm talking about Free PDF to Word Doc Converter from hellopdf.com (schwups' link).

Temporarily disable any screensaver and monitor stand-by mode in Display properties. Kill the Explorer process (with Scandisk already launched) and try running Scandisk again. If it succeeds then there's something hooked to your Explorer and that may be bad news. If it behaves exactly as before then there may be some driver's fault, running in debug mode, writing to a log, stdout or something. Launch msconfig and see what you can (temporarily) disable without losing essential functionality, then try Scandisk again. Let us know what you did and what was the outcome. Good luck!

Apparently everything stopped. Sorry.

nrusef, it's just an idea but please try to contact blackwingcat which is also a japanese member active here at MSFN, as he might offer some hints related to modifying system files. Admittedly there is a certain language barrier between English and Nihongo so we may not always understand (correctly) your desires. Gomennasai!