Drugwash

Beats me... MS can do about whatever they want. We can only keep barking at the moon.

It's the "unusual tweaks and updates" that I was thinking about, when mentioning Gape's pack. DUN 1.4 is needed by other updates or upgrades (such as IE6 SP1 if I'm not mistaken) and I always install it after a vanilla 98SE setup.As for the ME GDI updates, curious as I am I manually extracted the files and ran the inf, which properly installed the two files. So far I haven't noticed any issue, except for the old accumulative effect on transparent pictures which is unavoidable.

What kind of s*** is this? The Internet is platform-agnostic! If you're talking about things like Flash, well, they're proprietary, and not in the spirit of the web. Tell that to the guys at VH1.com. I had a subscription to their site but have been visiting it very rarely. Recently when I tried to follow a link in one of their e-mails, I got a nice message saying "sorry but your operating system is no longer supported by our site" or something like that. I have no idea if it was about Media Player version or anything else, they just said my OS was bad. So I said "f*ck them" and sent an unsubscribe reply (as instructed). At least twice. They still send me those stupid news e-mails and I keep marking them as junk. As for Flash... that's funny, but I currently have installed v9.0.28 and it works fine. But I disabled it in my browser using Nir Sofer's TurnFlash, and enable it only when needed. And no, that was not the reason for the VH1.com rejection.

First of all, thanks for the link. Second, there's been some time since I replaced original 98SE gdi32.dll and msimg32.dll with the ME ones, as required by some Miranda IM modules in order to function on my 98SE system. If the 4.90.3000 build of gdi32.dll works, I see no reason why 4.90.3003 wouldn't. Will test it these days anyway. Third - different people, different needs. Personally I thought that as long as the Autopatcher aims to collecting most (if not all) updates into one big package, it might as well add those improvements found in Gape's pack as well as those in 98SE2ME. Of course, there have been complaints about the package size, but then there's the second possibility: just have a script that checks for the presence of USP and/or 98SE2ME (and possibly others, such as 98SE2XP) in the same folder and present the user with the choice of automating all the installs in one click. Call me lazy.

1. Ever heard of CD-RW (rewritable CD)? 2. I get TDK DVDs here for less than $1/pc. Jewel case included. CDs are about 5pc. for $1. 3. Crosslink cable is what you need for connecting both machines' NICs. Make sure you set IPs in the same class (i.e 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.2) and workgroup is identical on both.

Could you please provide a link to where this update could be discussed? If the WMF update is critical, I'd like to have a way of having the WinME GDI files patched rather than downgrading to 98SE files, reason being the project I'm involved with needs the ME files for at least one module to work under Win98SE (as I wrote in this post).soporific, everything sounds great so far. Haven't tried the package yet, gotta get myself a test machine, some spare time and the right mood, all at once. I'd have a few questions, though: • Which exactly are the components of IE6 SP1 that are installed (or present in the package)? You may remember my old question regarding additional languages and all other stuff, from the '7 years later' thread; • Will you include Visual C runtimes v6, v7.0, v7.1 and probably v8 (Visual C 2005) as well? • Could you tighten things up a bit, so that string of extra operations wouldn't be necessary - I mean "install DUN 1.4 manually, install Gape's USP, install Autopatcher, install 98SE2ME full version, install yada-yada..." ? It'd be nice (and useful for many) to have it all in one shot - either in one package (yours) or at least to have the user put all separate packs together in one folder and go through all operations from a single script, be it a batch or whatever else. Personally I'd rather have it all in one package, like 1. Install Gape's USP............is set to INSTALL 2. Install Autopatcher....[m]..is set to INSTALL/FORCED 3. Install 98SE2ME................is set to INSTALL and whatever else mentioned by users in the posts above. I hope you get the idea. Looking forward to v1.7. Keep up the good work!

1. Current hardware doesn't support Win9x anymore 2. Current commercial software doesn't support Win9x anymore (with few exceptions) 3. Open-source developers don't support Win9x anymore (also with few exceptions) 4. Online content started not to support Win9x anymore Conclusion: either join forces and create a Windows-compatible open-source OS with a light, fast and powerful kernel that will be compatible with current AND future hardware/software, or just drop the subject. I'm a Win98SE addict myself and it hurts to say, but Win9x's time is over. MS killed its children.

I just tried the zipped 1.4.2 version and it did work on my 98SE! At least for a couple of INNO Setup and 7Zip SFX that I tested with. Thank you very much for looking into 9x issue, your efforts are really appreciated!

@ MDGx: thank you for the fix and congratulations for the recent Mod assignment.

I don't think you need to be connected to a network to test the respective icon. Just right-click a folder, select Sharing > Shared as: , then click Apply and OK. If everything went fine, you should see a blue hand over the folder's icon, looking like it's offering the folder to someone (pretty suggestive, huh?). If the folder was correctly shared and the icon has not been changed, then the issue is valid and needs to be fixed.

Oh yes, my bad: it's not a fix, it's a workaround. However, it's a nice one. Worth having, IMHO. B)

Hey, MDGx. I noticed your recent IE922760 cumulative update installs PNGFILT.DLL. I happen to know there's an older version of that file floating around (in the RPLite thread, IIRC), patched by Tihiy, that fixes the "transparent PNGs" issue. Could you talk to Tihiy so he would patch this newer version too (and you re-release the package) or - alternatively - create a standalone patcher that could be used on any current (and hopefully future) version of PNGFILT.DLL? This way, both users that have/had the patched version and those that didn't, could benefit from it. It would really be nice if these fix/patch/update/etc activities would be a little better coordinated. Wishful thinking, I know...

That was quick. I have to apologize, I'm having a bad time currently, can't quite focus on anything. I see you added the backup option, but I have no machine to test on, right now. I'll try to build one these days, if I feel up to, and I'll let you know. Regarding font names, that might be a bit complicated, because I have installed OfficeXP and IE6 SP1 with all language display options, which added to the Fonts folder and it'd be hard to tell which is which. I would also need some directions regarding the specific registry keys to look for, as I'm not that familiar with it and some other users that use different regional settings and have problems with the fonts might wanna share in their experience and settings. I know, I'm not being very helpful right now, sorry for that. You're doing a great job, as always.

MDGx, at first sight everything's fine for me, except for one thing that's been bothering me ever since I first tried 98SE2ME: fonts always get back to Western after installing 98SE2ME. I have Win98SE English installed with Regional Settings set to Romanian at install time. That sets codepage, keyboard layout and all stuff. Apparently, 98SE2ME copies a different set of fonts from the ME CD, when installed, which makes all Romanian characters look weird. I have found a simple workaround that could be used by the installer: backup the FONTS folder in %windir% to FONTSBKP or whatever name, install whatever selected option in 98SE2ME, then restore the fonts folder, overwriting the newly copied fonts with the ones in the backup. A better solution would be to read the regional settings, figure out what fonts are needed and then copy the right ones from the ME CD. But the workaround above would do as well. Thank you for all your work.

I've been using SlimBrowser for years, I can't even remember how IE looks like. It works on every Win version except for Win95 (since recently, I think). Its only main issue is that - because of a bug in recent versions of explorer.exe - it's incompatible with the hidden taskbar option when a skin is applied (taskbar won't show up on mouse hover). However, in Win98SE it does work; at least for me it always did. There's another thread around the board regarding SlimBrowser, where I offered some tip.

First of all, thank you for attempting to fix Win9x issues. Using build 1.3.1, I managed to unpack FlashGet v1.73 and Yahoo! Messenger 8 (both Wise Installer) by using option 3 (the /x switch). However, extraction of SlimBrowser 4.08.105 NSIS package failed for some reason and the log is again 2 bytes long (0D 0A). Same thing happened with the Uniextract 1.3.1 package itself (Zip SFX), Win32 OpenSSL 0.9.8c (Zip SFX), MDGx's 98SE2ME package (Inno Setup) and some MS SFX Cabinet files also from MDGx's site. An improvement might be the option to remember (at least) last source folder when browsing for a package to extract, instead of always opening the bin folder where the Uniextract exe is. As an example, I use FlashGet to always download my files in E:\Downloads and that's where all source packages are, so it would spare a few mouse clicks having it always open the same folder after I used it once. One tiny problem that was there probably since the beginning is that the dropdown lists in the initial dialog don't show anything but a fine horizontal line when expanded. That is another known Win9x issue that happens in other applications too. Unfortunately, the exe cannot be reshacked as it is UPXed, so - although it's not that big of a problem as it can be worked around by using arrow keys to navigate through previous paths - it might be the last minor detail for you to fix, when and if possible. However, all these apart, I really appreciate the effort and there's clearly an improvement given that Wise Installer unpacking works. If/when you get some time, I'm sure you'll try to fix the remaining issues too. Thank you very much for all the work done so far!

That's bad news. Maybe actually building the main exe on a 9x system could fix things. No idea if AutoIt does work on 9x and currently I have no free HDD space to install and test. Could you test it, nitro322, maybe in a virtual machine or something?

Well, it depends on the meaning of "required"... A month or so ago, my neighbor came to me, desperate, saying he needed a monitor as his 15" IBM G54 started acting up - gone blank upon restart (that was an old issue we were expecting). I gave him my spare 15" Escort (LiteOn brand, apparently). He came back saying the image is desynchronized and he can't get it back to normal, so I went over and realized the videocard settings were giving a 85Hz vertical frequency, while my monitor could only accept 70 at most. Well, his XP had no driver for my monitor, I had no XP driver for it (could barely find a 98 one for my needs), couldn't get on the Internet to search for one and also couldn't change any display settings in safe mode (dunno why). So I would call this a case where a monitor driver was desperately required, as well as the ability for the OS to recognize the monitor and install the driver automatically. He ended up moving his huge and heavy 21" Nokia 445 monitor from his other machine and connecting it to the problematic one. Not to mention that XP did have the correct driver for it, but it failed to automatically recognize it, so a manual setup had to be done. Basically, a monitor driver would only be required to cap the maximum resolution and vertical refresh rate, so that accidents wouldn't happen (operating a monitor with a refresh rate - vertical, horizontal or both - higher than supported will eventually fry it). That's true at least for CRT monitors; LCDs are based on a different technology that I don't know, so I can't say what the risks are, if any.

Heh, the harm has already been done: I had Flash 8 already for some time and recently I put Flash 9 over it. Just for kicks (and for some animation that required it). Indeed, the 9 build is slower than the 8 one, but as I only have 64MB of RAM (4 x 16MB - can't find 32MB EDO RAM cards anywhere), it doesn't really matter too much - it's crawling anyway. This machine is already doing much more than it should, sometimes (did I mention the 98SE OS on it is about 22 months old?). Funny thing is that, when I went to the Adobe site for the update, it downloaded build 9, said everything went OK, but the verification box said "8.0.22.0 was installed succesfully". The same thing happened when I tried to upgrade from build 7 to build 8; apparently Adobe as many other software developers lately, try to rule out Win9x from the news. Well, I just went to the temporary internet files folder, extracted the files from the cab (or zip, whatever it was), right-clicked the inf and chose "Install". That did the trick with v8 and also with v9. I saved the archives on CD, so I would have them at hand if needed. Unfortunately I have no Sun Java installed currently (I only miss that and .NET to bloat my 98SE completely), so I can't give an opinion on the topic issue. But personally I wouldn't reinstall the whole stuff - OS included - just for this minor issue, considering a simple workaround is one click away.

Ah, that's it! Apparently there's a third file inside, a dll. My bad, I installed it a couple of months ago and forgot the details. Anyway, so much for the "no drivers needed for monitors" theory. I wonder how long until someone will create a driver for the Power button...

I tried to run Knoppix on a friend's Dell Optiplex (can't remember the model) and I got "unknown videocard" and "unknown soundcard", although they were both pretty popular. Obviously, Knoppix didn't run. Thing is some hardware manufacturers, for some weird reason known only to them, try to be fancy and "protect" or "hide" the hardware IDs in a way that no other software but theirs can detect and configure it properly. After (unsuccesfully) playing with Linux, I installed XP Pro on that box. Couldn't get any reference on the two either (not to mention about drivers) until I downloaded and installed specific drivers from Dell. Needless to say, I would never waste my money on such POS. You might be in a similar situation. Try installing your videocard in another box and run a live Linux CD on it, see if it gets detected. Oh and something on topic... I got 4 machines: a Pentium 166MHz, 2 x PentiumMMX 200MHz and one Pentium III 800MHz, all home made. Which one do you think would support Vista best?

I recently stumbled into a monitor called Horizon 7002D, obviously manufactured for the eastern-european market, that I wanted to install properly for a friend of mine. After a painful search I found only one link in a forum post that lead me to a hungarian web page that hosted the respective driver. I manage to download the zip, somehow, and inside I found two files: an inf and a sys. So I guess that's one of the (still) rare cases when monitor drivers are not simple inf files. Don't ask me for that link, because I didn't bookmark it on this machine and Google couldn't find it anymore.

Not as a solution but as a workaround for anybody that might have a similar issue and wouldn't have the time or will to mess with the registry and stuff, I would recommend Nir Sofer's TurnFlash 2.10 in one of its versions (GUI or command line) to quickly enable/disable the Flash on their system. I use it to temporarily enable Flash on sites that really require it, as there's no fun to watch my 200 MHz CPU crawling when there's some #%#%¤" Flash advertising on the pages I try to browse, so I usually keep it off. I hope somebody finds this helpful.

1. The eMule installer, the SlimBrowser installer... They're NSIS installers. 2. The result is the following, along with the &1 file in the source folder this time: 3. It says "Extracting file from zip archive", opens/closes a DOS box but nothing can be found in the destination folder. It appears that it calls PEiD 3 times (in this particular case; for other files it only calls it once or twice). After that, the error message box appears. Most likely it's a Win9x issue, as the Dependency Walker log reveals missing functions in some modules (log attached below).

I tried both 1.2.1 and 1.3 (no-install versions) and I can't seem to be able to extract (at least) NSIS packages. It appears to detect package type as NSIS, it opens a DOS box and then closes and creates a file called &1 with no extension and length zero in the destination folder. I'm running Win98SE with some upgrades (USP, KUP and others). What would you advise me to do?