SPX Posted October 17, 2008 Share Posted October 17, 2008 I'm a computer technician by trade, but some of what I read here indicates a level of knowledge regarding Win9X that goes far beyond what I've learned in school and in my time in the field. I'm often impressed by the degree of understanding when it comes to the OS's system files and other workings under the hood. So my question for these advanced users is: How did you build your knowledge up into what it is today? A lot of what I read seems to be things that one might know if they come from a programming/development background . . . and perhaps that's what makes the difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whatever420 Posted October 18, 2008 Share Posted October 18, 2008 (edited) How did you build your knowledge up into what it is today?Hmmm...Mostly by:Trial and ErrorExperimentingBacking up and restoring files and my registryFormatting and reinstalling my OSIn addition, I was an very early Axcel216 (now known as MDGX) convert/follower...His site introduced me to tweaking... and I've never looked back .I also use:Filemon (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinte...s/bb896642.aspx)Regmon (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysintern...ies/regmon.html)Regshot (http://sourceforge.net/projects/regshot)which are indispensable apps for tracking down problems/errors...HTH Edited October 18, 2008 by whatever420 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenoitRen Posted October 18, 2008 Share Posted October 18, 2008 Mostly experimentation, and some online reading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcyphure Posted October 19, 2008 Share Posted October 19, 2008 same as previously mentioned for me and on a daily basis spanning many, many years. constantly tinkering, tweaking, trying and testing and of course reading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dencorso Posted October 19, 2008 Share Posted October 19, 2008 (edited) whatever420, BenoitRen and dcyphure have put it very well. I've been doing the same, and also spending long hours trying to make sense of the results obtained from disassemblers, debuggers and hexeditors, and also by reading "between the lines" of whatever documentation I happen to find, be it on paper or online (very often what is not explicitly asserted turns out to be the truly important info). Edited October 19, 2008 by dencorso Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cannie Posted October 20, 2008 Share Posted October 20, 2008 (edited) Windows 98 and its precedents 9x were designed only for individual users or to work in common: It was never a network OS, because in these years NT was the OS specially designed for networks. The internet was not an essential part of the OS, but one more of the apps that you might run.For that very reason it is transparent, simple, small and easy to manage. In that time it meant something like now Linux, when compared with Windows NT.If you used it every day having a small computing knowledge, in a short time you learnt the purpose of almost every program and every driver. This way you got caught by it: I remember the passion and the illusion I had trying new ways for doing things, i.e. cloning the OS into several drives to boot indistinctively any of them, and even creating my own personalized programs and drivers.Most things were learned by experience and common sense, taking into account that there are no secret files, no hidden parts and no backdoors at all. Now I keep using it every day almost for all purposes, and it is my best friend to keep healthy and restore from scratch XP from a .rar file without reinstalling, using double boot. Edited October 20, 2008 by cannie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dencorso Posted October 20, 2008 Share Posted October 20, 2008 (edited) Now I keep using it every day almost for all purposes, and it is my best friend to keep healthy and restore from scratch XP from a .rar file without reinstalling, using double boot.Yes, I double-boot Win 98SE (w/98SE2ME) and Win XP SP3, too. I have a third bootable partition to use as a sandbox, where I can destroy an image of either of my OSes, without causing any real damage to either. And I've used unix for a long time on workstations, SunOS, Solaris, Irix, even FreeBSD and Linux on PCs. And I've used CP/M, of course, but never happened to use OS/2. All in all, I remain believing that Win 9x rules! Edited October 20, 2008 by dencorso Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Multibooter Posted October 20, 2008 Share Posted October 20, 2008 (edited) And I've used CP/M, of course, but never happened to use OS/2.Hey, me too. I used the MS Basic Compiler under CP/M quite a bit What CP/M computer did you have? Edited October 20, 2008 by Multibooter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dencorso Posted October 21, 2008 Share Posted October 21, 2008 And I've used CP/M, of course, but never happened to use OS/2.Hey, me too. I used the MS Basic Compiler under CP/M quite a bit What CP/M computer did you have?It was a MSX, the Gradiente Expert XP-800, a brazilian clone of the National CF-3000. MS Basic, Turbo Pascal, Wordstar and VisiCalc... Those were great days... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sysdll Posted October 21, 2008 Share Posted October 21, 2008 (edited) but never happened to use OS/2.You're lucky I was a beta tester Maybe that's why I don't think Windows ME is so bad. Edited October 21, 2008 by Sysdll Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glenn9999 Posted October 21, 2008 Share Posted October 21, 2008 It depends on how deep you can get, I guess. It's really a challenge, sometimes, to find good descriptions of things. To wit, I've tried to start studying assembly, and found a real good technical description of how computers work. It's very fascinating in fact. It's perhaps a good testament of design that its so transparent to most when it happens. I know I've gone 15 years since I've used computers and 13 years since writing my first program, and I still learned a few things from it.Any kind of knowledge really involves knowing the right places to dig, and the effort to learn it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
useroone Posted October 22, 2008 Share Posted October 22, 2008 Google. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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