Drugwash

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.

Probably by booting a Linux Live CD and copying the new file from a floppy, a secondary optical drive or a backup folder.

You'd be better off checking the processes that run at startup, in some way. Put a shortcut to WinTop, Codestuff Starter or other similar tool in the Startup folder or just open it manually as soon as you get the chance after boot, see if there's something there that shouldn't be. Could be some software performing auto-update. Also run some malware scan as it may be an internet-dependant process that's waiting for the NIC to be initialized. [EDIT] Oh and now that I recall, some options when enabled in TweakUI could cause such behavior. Especially those that clean traces at startup, in the Paranoia tab.

I'm looking at eMule's Statistics page and right now it says it's been up and running for 4 days 7 hours and 5 minutes. People around have been saying eMule wouldn't last more than 2-2.5 days without crashing the system - oh well, maybe I'm the lucky one? Haven't been doing much else besides that though, mostly browsing (SlimBrowser takes up quite some resources), chatting/testing with Miranda IM (also had a few crashes in user.exe during testing), copying/moving files around, editing some office files... Anyway, resources are quite scarse right now, with the browser open: 12% System and GDI, 38% User. Processes running: 18, including Codestuff Starter, DSClock, DU Meter, FreeRAM XP Pro, eMule. All these on a 400MHz Pentium II, 256MB PC133 SDRAM, MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 128M running in 1024x768 dual-view with Win98SE. Also wanted to mention that lately this is a record, since the new ISP that took over our old neighborhood network is so lame that it usually drops connection every other day. Power failures during thunderstorms are also regular here and I can't afford a UPS. And heck, when there's such power failure while I'm sleeping, I wake up right away when the fan hum stops.

If you got at least a P III at 450-500MHz, you can try GOM Player.

Has anyone tried this sidebar on a dual-view system? It never worked (system frozen) for me on my main Pentium II 400 system with an 128MB MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 set to dual-view, however it works fine on a HP Vectra Celeron III 633 with an 8MB Intel 815 videocard (single display). Both systems run Win98SE with Uberskin, no KernelEx.

Could you try dencorso's advice (only one copy of riched20.dll, located in System) with v5.50.x.x? I wonder if there's a conflict between simultaneously loaded versions of RichEdit or if v5.50.x.x has issues. Also if anyone else has such a combination of RichEdit on their system, please post about your experience.

I thought MS Office used its own copy of RichEdit... I just performed a search and indeed found one at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Office10\RICHED20.DLL Its version is 5.40.11.2220 and is most likely the original one installed by Office XP. On this occasion I found out that PhotoScape installs its own copy of riched20.dll in its main folder. Version is 5.30.23.1215. My system-wide RichEdit version (in the System folder) is 5.30.23.1221 and I chose that one due to some quirk with newer versions and the SpellChecker Miranda IM plug-in (issue that I've mentioned some time ago in these forums). At this time I wonder if RICHED9X replaces or not the original copy of riched20.dll in the Common Files folder and also if MS Office checks for a newer version of it in the System folder and chooses to use that one instead of the original copy in Common Files. With my current setup, I just checked and WINWORD.EXE loads the Common Files copy. Anyone who has a newer version of riched20.dll in System than the one in Common Files, could you check which version is loaded by Word on your system? (I've used Codestuff Starter for that)