Drugwash

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone, here at MSFN and around the World! May we all live in peace, including - or mostly - peace of mind!

Unfortunately. Long story. OK.. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts... X-Mas coming...

We live - we learn. I just wish (certain) people would understand and live by the saying "live and let live". That is, stop pulling 9x-related software and drivers from the Internet, let us live the way we choose. But that's just another story. Let us prepare ourselves for the holidays and we'll see what comes next. Now that the end of the world seems to have been delayed for a while...

Yes, you are wise. And yes, you do have a temper. It's native for Leos, nothing you can do about it. Others have to understand that and learn how to deal with the fact, rather than stick a label to your forehead and walk away. But not everyone can do it so it's not gonna be peachy all the time. Thing is, time goes by either way. Shouldn't be wasted time.

Thank you so much, I'm honoured. The most important wealth for mankind is knowledge and love, everything else is less important. I'm already wealthy with such good people around.

Definitely, those of us that do have the guts to endeavour on a journey to a definite purpose on an unknown route, are most worthy to be praised. But as I said, not all people are alike, that's just the way it is. we all serve to a purpose in life, which may or may not be the one we ourselves or others expect. I bow down before you and everyone else that had the power to do something good for the community, facing any adversity, in time. Myself I've tried and still trying to create good things for the people. Because it's much too easy to do wrong, bad things, it's almost natural. but to build, it's much harder and it needs a strong will and drive for that. And we should all be thankful to all these people that brought us good things through their efforts. Thank you all!

Well, some people can do certain things, others can't. Either they don't know how, they lack spare time, they're afraid or just can't afford to do it. We can't blame them for that, it's their life, their prerogative. Let's hope we do find someone who can. I try to take every person as they are, with their good and bad. We're not all alike and we should understand that and be a little more resiliant to each-other, as long as we all have the same goal. And beyond that, we can learn things even from an angry person's testimony, putting bad words aside and taking only what we need to help us fix or improve our work. Words are words, facts are more important. I've learned that, in time. We'll see what future brings us. If only we stick together...

It's been discussed before. The problem itself is not as much as which driver files to use with a particular controller/hub, but how to allow different controllers to coexist on a given system, when their respective driver files are identically named. Detection of an existing controller is relatively easy to perform at install time, through a small application or by the installer itself - something I promised I'd build but I still don't have enough information to start with (and spare time). But when a new controller is added and drivers are needed, that's when the "fun" begins. The installation inf should contain specific sections, one for each controller brand that does not play well with the generic MS drivers and their filenames must all be different from one-another, so that whenever a new controller is installed, the new files would not overwrite the existing ones, leading to lock-ups, BSOD and such. If files need to be renamed, we rename them. If internal calls/dependencies must be renamed, we (try to) do that too. But what we need most is a testbed, one or more persons that do have different controllers and spare machines to test on. Unfortunately, I don't. All my spare machines are Pentium I or II, with USB 1.1 at most and they lack either hard drive, RAM, videocard, PSU or other components. The only USB 2.0 add-on card I have is mounted in my day-to-day 98SE machine that never gets shut down. I already offered details on my experience with that machine and the two VIA controllers in it (the one on-board 1.1 and the 2.0 PCI add-on). You may remove USB support in the Service Pack if you feel it creates difficulties, but more than that I guess people should become aware of the possible issues and start acting rationally, understand what they're doing, take preemptive measures such as back-up data and all and assume any risks coming from installing a package that - at least at this time - cannot be universally fit for each and every system out in the world. Either way, when/if we come up with a (near) perfect solution, we can put back USB drivers in the package. But if so many people that would otherwise have no such issues, would not be able to benefit from the USB enhancement, I feel this may be a step down for the Service Pack. Now that is my personal opinion and nothing more, stated here for the record. PROBLEMCHYLD, you alone decide what to do. I wish everybody here Happy Winter Holidays in good health! (minor typos, eh...)

Thank you very much, most kind of you to volunteer for this task. We may want to wait a little more, maybe there's someone else willing to help too, as we may need to split tasks and/or have a backup. Meanwhile, anybody that had any major or minor issues installing the Service Pack and they were able to fix them, please write down the complete procedure as detailed as possible, so we could analyze, extract and format the most important information. Known incompatibilities (even former ones with earlier versions of the SP), known tips and tricks, anything that may be useful to someone that never used the SP before - please write them down and keep it ready to be sent to our keeper(s). People trying the SP would want to have that information at hand, before running into any of those issues during or after installation.

WANTED Volunteer(s) to gather and put together bits and pieces of information pertaining to installation of Windows 98 Second Edition Unofficial Service Pack Personal knowledge and experience is most welcome. Once we find a keeper, we start pushing information towards him. Most important things first, then details and rare events. Get ready with an empty PM box and/or a public e-mail address.

That'd be the starting point. Someone who has enough spare time to put together pieces of information. Each of us may know a few things, somemoderators may already have links to relevant posts, you're the one who knows most, especially change logs. Those would be great for pointers. For the rest, there's this loooooooooong thread to comb and find whatever small oddity that may rise from installing the Service Pack. If nobody else offers, I could try to build it, but that would definitely hinder my other projects. Let's see what we got, wait a reasonable amount of time for some volunteers and we'll take it from there.

Much better than saying "use the search". Believe me, I've had my behind kicked one too many times by the so-called search function and I'm not talking about this board but generally, over the web. Try searching for short words or acronyms such as SP or SP3, you'll see what I mean. A search function is only useful when you know what to search and where. Many people come from foreign countries (such as myself) and they may not know the correct terms for whatever they're searching for. Some may land on the last page from a link on some other site out there, many may not know even what we consider the basic rule of having all important info in post #1. Frustration accumulates and may overflow in a not-so-nice manner. Whereas a simple link or the phrase "please read post #1" would be just enough to point them in the right direction.Anyway, "ideal" is a nice word for "impossible", but I do believe such FAQ would get us much closer to it. Then, if they don't go there, they're on their own. But we got our back covered (and mouths wide shut ). (no matter how careful, there's always a typo...)

When that happens, get a magazine and start reading. Even most troubled waters settle at some point.

Let's not judge, nobody ever knows the whole truth and we may later on be sorry for our misjudgments. Having such important information all gathered in first post would give us an anchor to point to, instead of asking people to read hundreds of posts. They may lack spare time, they may have bad sight (back at the Miranda IM forums we had a couple of visually impaired users - that is, blind, for those unfamiliar with the term - who were trying to use the application; tell them to "read" hundreds of posts...) or they may have a lot of other valid reasons for being unable to follow a huge discussion. Remember not all people are alike. Besides, discussions on "why did you", "why didn't you" and so on, are moot and just wasting web space and our own time; let's do something constructive instead, for time is not our ally.

- I am just saying that I hope that these things should be optional. - It is optional. When you install Windows Millennium Edition/Windows 2000 Theme option, this is when you get the updated start banner and WinME icons. Well, the above would've been just about enough. I was wondering, maybe we should put up a (small) Q & A section, answering the most common doubts someone may have, such as the one above. For whatever reason, people may not be able to read through the huge thread to find certain details or they may just not grasp them, but let's not shoot them for that; instead, let's try to make it easier for both them and us. Any question coming up that's been answered to, will just get a link to first post where all the answers would be (moderators agreeing and helping, of course). Let's begin gathering: Q: Older versions of the Service Pack used to change Start Menu banner and Desktop icons. I want to keep the originals. How can I do that? A: Starting with v3.6, these changes are optional and will only get installed by selecting Windows Millenium Edition/Windows 2000 Theme option.

Oh, Happy belated Birthday to your little kiddo! Bad thing is, I am "celebrating" this year's "winter holiday toothache", which happens to me every darn year, so I may not be able to do much, if anything, until/if I get rid of it. But we do have talented members here, you may get your X-Mas present from someone anyway. Meanwhile, I can offer a small handy tool that can quickly change display resolution for those whose videocard driver does not offer hotkeys (or they have that feature disabled). It's great for testing how their artwork looks like in 16/256 colors (4-8bpp) versus 32bpp. Download QuickSwitcher. Please note it uses a few global hotkeys that may interfere with other applications, so do use it only when needed. The 'About' tray menu show what the hotkeys are. And for those with multiple videocards/displays, please note there may be a confusion between display outputs - will try to fix this when possible.

Which side? I think that 'unofficial' is already looking kinda aggressively at me for moving it all around.

Would this do?

No worries, that was just a proof of concept. It wouls still be best to outline the 'unofficial' bit, just in case someone would take it for granted and then run into - knock on wood! -troubles. Say a color and I'll use it. The font I used for 'Service Pack' is FreeSans, 12, BoldOblique and - whaddaya know? - it's the same I used for 'Microsoft', just that it's italicized, exactly as it is in the original file. Compare the two, see the differences are minor. I'll see if I can find a 3.0 version of the SP somewhere, to look at the installer. Also, for the future, please put together a list of options and suboptions for the new installer that may (or may not) come to life. I'll also need the direct dependencies from one-another and the amount of RAM required by each of them (or only by the most memory-hungry), so I could add checks and warnings as appropriate.

May be nitpicking, but still, 'Windows 98' is Microsoft's product, so I don't think we should replace 'Microsoft' with 'Unofficial'. The approach below is not ideal but to me it sounds a bit better. The ideal approach would be: Unofficial Service Pack 3 for Microsoft Windows98 Second Edition and the Plus! logo might get its rightful place in there somewhere too. One question is bothering me: why use an AVI - which is 128 kB and only has one frame, so it's utterly useless in this format - when a 8bpp BMP would be 40kB and acceptable by the Windows API? The installer should be modified to display a BMP, IMHO. However, I could not find the above AVI in the SP3 installer, so there may be a catch I'm not aware of. Anyone care to fill me in (no hurry, though)? EDIT: This connection is killing me! That installer would have to wait for a while, otherwise I have no idea how to handle all the open projects I'm working on. Right now I'm trying hard to build that NE editor I promised. It's harder than I thought and is gonna take a lot more time toget to a usable version. After that, I may think of an installer. I can (theoretically) get rid of ResHacker, Touch and maybe other third-party tools and do everything from the installer, but this has to be thought of carefully. As I said so many times, I'm slow and lots of real-life issues draw me back. There's will so there must be a way, it's just that there's not much time left ahead.

I thought the version number didn't sound right, but USBHUB.SYS should be 4.90.3002 on a 98SE system with the current updates, unless some Win2K USB1 stack files have been added... EDIT: I remember now, some discussion was made earlier about using the Win2K USB1.1 stack. Not a matter of universal agreement as I recall. It's usbhub.sys alright, not 2.0. Can't remember when and how it got installed - either through a NUSB update, or by my manual fiddling with driver files. It's been a while though since I let this system settle, as the other one decided to die on me (HDD developed 4000+ bad sectors) and I need it for my programming hobby. However, in the past I used to replace all kinds of system files from whatever OS was needed, when some newer application cried for missing APIs. My Windows folder is currently 1.72GB, complete with .NET 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0.

A small tool could automatically detect the presence of a VIA controller/hub. Remember not everyone using 9x may be computer-literate enough to know what hardware they're operating.Unfortunately, the tools I can build are all quite large to be used for a single operation. I promised myself I'd try to create a SP installer from scratch, complete with full memory detection, hardware detection, files patching (Explorer icons and all) and other necessary features, but I'm not sure I'll get to see this dream come true, due to the strong heartaches I've been having since yesterday. In the mean time, if those BSOD errors are recoverable, there could be a fair warning about this possiblity at install time and just let it be until we manage to come up with a reasonable solution. Personally I have no such external USB 2.0 HUB to test with; the only external hub on my main machine is the one created by the Lexmark by the name of Generic USB Hub, which is driven by usbhub.sys 5.00.2195.6689 and USBCCGP.SYS 5.1.2600.5585 (just like the other USB 1.1 Root Hubs from the on-board chipset) and is connected to one of the VIA USB 2.0 ports.

So if i understood correctly, the only issue would be "BSOD's on removing (hot-deplugging) USB 2.0 HUBs", as per dencorso's quote above. I'm not quite sure if "unplugging USB 2.0 HUBS" is the accurate statement, or if it's about USB 2.0 DEVICES. Truth be told, I never unplug any USB device without first ejecting it from the systray icon, especially to make sure any possible cache has been flushed, in order to avoid corrupt files. However, if that's the only issue, then we may be better off trying to fix it using this particular file set through patches of some kind, instead of going around looking for harder-to-implement solutions.

Guys, what exactly is the problem with MS' usbhub20.sys and Win98SE? I forgot and finding that info in such long topic isn't easy. Besides, I'm looking at my VIA VT6202 USB 2.0 Hub driver details panel and it says usbhub20.sys 5.00.2195.6891 (Microsoft). The controller also uses a MS driver usbehci.sys 5.00.2195.6882, with USBPORT.SYS 5.00.2195.5652. My Lexmark X1150 printer/scanner works fine (used to, cartriges are now dry), the CSR Bluetooth dongle is also active and running fine and whatever USB Flash stick I plug into the only free outlet, works without any issue. So, again, what seems to be the problem with that driver and VIA USB chipsets...?

I have a VIA VT6202 USB 2.0 PCI adapter on my main 98ESE machine. If I weren't using it daily, I could very well pull it and plug it into another machine's PCI slot, where would coexist with its native USB controller, or - if I had any money - I could buy another PCI to USB adapter from another maker and plug it along the on-board USB 1.1 controller and the VIA 2.0 adapter. Incidentally, both the 1.1 and the PCI 2.0 USB controllers are manufactured by VIA, but it could've well been otherwise. And I've posted details about my not-so-good installation somewhere earlier in this topic, if I recall correctly. I don't think the filename matters, as long as there are no others in the package to depend on it. Since the system registers the driver with the name it's being presented in the inf, whatever filename would do, as long as it doesn't clash with an already existing file in the same location. But of course, that is to be proven practically.