Drugwash

Theoretically speaking, there may be a way to detect DOS mode. However, we still have a problem with interrupts, where text messages (thus forcibly switching to text mode) break the graphical mode. And Windows going in DOS mode does display a lot of text messages. If you wanna check, install my version of WLL (if you have it or is still available at the above link, which I doubt), install some application that needs a reboot to finish the installation and you'll see that when the system would display 'Updating system files...', WLL will bail out saying 'LOGO.SYS missing/mismatch. Press a key [...]'. That's bad interrupt handling and I'm afraid it's a bit too much for me to fix. As for zipped logos... what would the advantage be? Saving a few dozen HDD kB versus potential issues with unzipping utility and memory usage? Maybe I don't get the whole picture so if there's more to it, please elaborate. Regardless, thank you for the interest.

The new HOSTS files return 404 (file not found).

Tried it in 98SE and it froze Explorer here, together with everything else. Dunno if it has anything to do with UberSkin 8.2.8 already installed.

I have easily 'connected' two XP machines on a switched home network, that would not want to see each-other otherwise, through the use of HFS (HTTP File Server) by rejetto. Always using the beta (can be found in the support > forums section of his site). However you'd have to find a way to send the link to the other machine(s); in my case both machines had separate internet access and used an instant messenger to send links. A rather complicated solution would be to set up a local Jabber/XMPP server and use Jabber/XMPP-aware IM software on all machines (might also be useful for chat if the machines are located in different rooms).

Classic 98SE shutdown: %windir%\RUNDLL.EXE shell32.dll,SHExitWindowsEx 1 Classic 98SE restart: %windir%\RUNDLL.EXE shell32.dll,SHExitWindowsEx 2 Has anyone tried to use the above? I don't have RP7/KernelEx/RainMeter installed currently.

Wow, I see a lot of smart guys around here that consider mounting a V12 engine on a bicycle as perfectly normal. I'll show myself out of this talk now, thank you.

Why would you need a 625W PSU on that system, then? Don't tell me it came with the case...

I see file description on download page specifies Win2000 only. If this is the case, then please edit first post and remove Win98 references as they would be misguiding.

A couple old AT PSUs crapped out on me few years ago, most likely of age, but one of them probably due to repeated blackouts (5-6 in a 10 minutes' time); replaced them and everything went on smoothly. Those were the times of 486DX2/66MHz (IBM) and PI MMX/200MHz (unknown manufacturer). This year, there's been a blackout - my neighbor's PSU went down in smoke (3 capacitors literally exploded) and took the mobo with it - Gigabyte GA-7VA. I've been working in electronics for about 25 years of my life - cross my heart, nowadays' hardware is extremely bad quality. And someone show me mobos built entirely on solid capacitors, coz I'm yet to see any such things over 100µF while on-board multipliers use 1000-1500µF ones typically.

Why would they use your already-old-and-not-so-green hardware when they could buy themselves newer, greener, etc. hardware, huh?It all looks exactly the same to me: my neighbor has a good job (while I'm unemployed, BTW) and when he buys himself a new computer, he gives the old one to me instead of dumping it. So why bashing the people that are unfortunate enough not to afford a shiny new x-core machine, for using whatever they can get? Anyway, going down the 'energy saving' path, the way I see things is manufacturers have no intention whatsoever to produce longstanding pieces of hardware, because the competition (I'm not gonna debate what kind of competition this is) would drive them to bankrupcy. So they keep producing cr*p that many times doesn't even reach (not to mention exceed) the warranty period. Along this line, people that cannot afford new hardware every x months/years would be much happier with older but more reliable hardware that would hold for years, than being able to use newer hardware for a limited amount of time and then suddenly find themselves with just a pile of rubbish on their desks. For I've seen too many modern mobos with gonflated capacitors (I've replaced a few myself), while a couple 286 boards (probably 15-20 years old) that I keep around were still working a few months ago when I tested them just for kicks. In my opinion, the amount of energy, resources and everything wasted in this manufacturing process is way higher than whatever the end user could potentially save by using these 'new' products. As for Linux, all Knoppix mirrors I've checked at the time were only providing DVD versions of the 5.3.1 - the rest was 5.1.1 which I've already downloaded but have not yet burnt to disk. And to be honest, the only time I couldn't install Windows (XP) was a Tualatin CPU that wasn't well supported by the mobo although the manual said it should; Win98SE installed and ran just fine though. On the other hand I already had multiple failures at installing/running different versions of Linux, incidentally (or not???) on branded machines such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard. I think nobody can blame me for not trying...

Uhm, no, I wasn't talking about online/offline installers. I always download & use the offline full package. What I meant was that if I manually unpack the offline package (using InstallExplorer or any other similar tool) and install the .msi within (right-click > Install), it installs fine. The wrapper installer is the one dependant on .NET. Alternative way - described in an earlier post - is to launch the offline installer, wait until it bails out with the error, go to the %temp% folder, find the unpacked .msi and launch it manually (right-click > Install).

I vaguely remember having a similar problem some time ago in 98SE and if I'm not mistaken it was explorer.exe. I updated to the 256 color-patched version and the issue went away. One may try FreeRAM XP Pro 1.52 (freeware), which - I believe - shows the correct CPU, system and RAM load. It's also a good RAM manager and it runs here full time. Been using it for many years, especially on older systems with limited amount of RAM (32/64MB). Also WinTop can show detailed CPU consumption by process and there is an idle thread shown there (Win98SE).

Ah, you're too flattering; re-read the first post: I'm no programmer, just playin' around trying to do something good. Let's hope the real geniuses like Tihiy and PassingBy will keep offering their help. Personally I don't like unstable behavior either so I'll do my best trying to fix the issues; I'm afraid it's quite a bit over my head though. However, users' help describing their systems' setups in detail, providing all possible details regarding the problems encountered and testing interim versions would be extremely helpful in fighting the bugs.

No, I have no idea. If there were any details supporting the affirmation...Personally I haven't run a thorough optical media check on my entire collection so I couldn't offer any numbers but on a random review when I needed some old file, I haven't had any noticeable problems. That first CD of mine has a backed-up Win95 on it together with Office 97 and I've been running it pretty intensely at the time, learning how to install and configure an OS while also swapping motherboards and performing all kinds of testing. Once I manage to build a rig dedicated to DOS games (see the Ultimate DOS Gaming Boot Disk thread) I'll test some of the other old disks too. Some are Gold series, some are Metal series. Somewhere I should have a statistics of disks/manufacturers that needs updated; I may post it at some point if it's not in violation of any rules here.

Please take into accout that there may be some extreme settings particularly related to your system that make WLL behave this way. I can say that my version of WLL works fine (apart from the 'bullet' jump in the first bank, sometimes) on my secondary Celeron III 633 MHz machine equipped with an Intel815 8MB integrated videocard. And it also used to work fine on my primary machine (Pentium II 400 MHz, MSI GeForce 4 Ti4200VTD8X 128MB) before I started having random BSOD at startup that hindered my WLL testing and - indirectly - development. The main idea of this project was to allow animation at any screen position (user-defined coordinates), which has been achieved. Also, if possible, we should've got ridden of certain bugs and I believe WBL has already overcome some of them while adding new features such as the fading effect. So overall I think we're on the right track and even if the project has somehow stalled for some time, it's not forgotten. Let's hope for the best.

Not true. I run Nero 7.0.0.0 on Win98SE without a problem and the last known version working on 9x would be 7.2.7.0 which was still availble from Ahead's page some time ago (haven't checked lately).As for CD/DVD burning quality, first thing would be to use quality blanks, not any cheap stuff. My first CD dates around year 2000 and is also manufactured Tayio Yuden (branded TDK). It still reads fine. Most of my optical media (CD/DVD) are branded TDK, but recently some of the DVDs checked with DVD Identifier reveal that they're manufactured by Moser Baer India; previously they were marked as TDK Corp. Honestly I don't trust them much, but it's gonna be time to tell their quality on a long term. However, out of my old disks, I only had problems with one of them, where the reflective layer has a flaw as mentioned by Multibooter in post #20. And they were almost all burnt in Win98SE with a Teac CD burner and lately with my Samsung (TSST Corp) SH-S182D DVD burner.

I created LogoTool2 specially for WBL. Once you designed your bitmap, type down the coordinates of the animation somewhere in a text file, flip the bitmap vertically using an editor of your choice, then start LogoTool2 and enter the animation values - it will save the file automatically as SPLASH.SYS. Unfortunately I don't have any recent ATi card to test with (not to mention spare time), so this will have to wait for PassingBy to resume his work on WBL, when/if possible. If there's anything else you need, don't hesitate to ask.

There's already a thread dedicated to running Win9x on new hardware. Please search for it and you'll find some information on this topic.

NCH Swift have a range of products (freeware and paid) which include answering machine and call recording functions. They provide trial versions for the paid software.

LMAO!!!!! Yeah, it's pretty tough, but not for them - for the smart guys that have to put up with such species. Thanks for sharing.

The file I've tested is jre-6u7-windows-i586-p-s.exe. I believe that's the runtime, not the SDK. It installed fine on my primary machine that has .NET 1.1 and 2.0 installed but failed on my secondary machine after unpacking the .msi, just as it was reported by someone else a few days ago. The .msi installs fine if manually run, on either machine.

Dunno where you guys pick up all that spyware and whatnot coz I don't even remember how that looks like. Best advice I may give to you is install Spyware Blaster, update it manually (or donate to get automatic updates feature), enable all protection and be happy. I've been using Spyware Blaster for many years and every once in a blue moon when I remember to run Ad-Aware, it finds absolutely nothing. And this is without any firewall or anti-virus whatsoever in the last 7-8 years. Before any smarta$$ comes in to suggest looking into task manager: I do that daily, using Codestuff Starter - nothing runs without me knowing about it. Many sites use Adobe Flash to render their advertising. Nir Sofer's tiny little tool called TurnFlash is simple and efficient: a single click on its icon disables/enables Flash system-wide, so whenever you feel overwhelmed by such intrusive sh!t, just click it away. I keep it disabled by default. Oh and just for completeness' sake: I use SlimBrowser as a front-end to IE6-SP1, due to some nice features that I got used to, in time.

Tomb Raider 1 to 6 (Angel of Darkness) run fine natively in Win98SE, although I've had trouble with refresh rate zero in Angel of Darkness on my old mobo (Jetway 630CF with SiS630 chipset) and had to run it under Win2003 instead (bad video driver probably). Haven't had a chance to try Legend or Anniversary (is there any newer one?) because minimum hardware requirements largely exceed my possibilities. Too bad, because the TR series is by far my favorite.

@ MDGx: • Please fix your 'top of this topic' link; it leads to the root of the board instead of first post in this thread. • Please check dependencies for Sun Java 6 update 7 - the official package only installs on machines with .NET installed. There have already been reports of failed installation as well as the workaround. The main Java 6u7 installer depends on mscoree.dll and several other libraries. The extracted msi can be installed without problems though, regardless of .NET presence.

Ah yes, I remember having such problem with file attributes in WLL Installer. Got around it pretty quickly though.