Is there a fix for win-98 system slow-down or lock-up when copying, moving or deleting many files as part of the same operation?

Does that fix involve obtaining the IE 5.5 version of browseui.dll and browselc.dll? If not, what is the solution?

For reference: http://www.frankprovo.com/win98ie6filesproblem.htm

There is one rather long thread about that issue somewhere, perhaps you can find it if you look hard.

From what I can recall there was a shell32.dll patch posted to address this temporary total resource (can't recall if it's user or gdi) depletion issue which freezes explorer (probably you can find this patch on Mdgx's site as well) but I didn't find it satisfactory after testing it (can't exactly remember why, some unwanted side effect I think). Using IE 5.5 files is not a solution AFAIK since the problem also occurs on system using IE 5.5, I regard this "fix" as an "urban myth".

Aside from that using an alternate copy/move utility is a workaround or you can just use ctrl-alt-del when it occurs to kill the explorer process which will restart automatically immediately.

Also, avoiding to copy/move from/to open folders when copying/moving large amounts of small files will make this freeze unlikely to happen.

Edited April 30, 201115 yr by loblo

Is there a fix for win-98 system slow-down or lock-up when copying, moving or deleting many files as part of the same operation?

Yes.

Does that fix involve obtaining the IE 5.5 version of browseui.dll and browselc.dll?

Not anymore. Here's the best solution available at present:

Unofficial Win 9x Explorer Lockups With IE 5.xx/6.xx update (SHELL98), which installs Shell32.dll v. 4.72.3812.634, and the Unofficial Win 9x Stack Corruption, 98KRNLUP, which installs Krnl386.exe v. 04.10.00.2000, and, then, RLoew's Free Unofficial KERNEL32 2GiB Seek Bug Patch, which installs a patched Kernel32.dll v. 4.10.0.2225, is available from his site (at the Prerelease and Beta Software section), and superseeds the Anonymous Patcher's COPY2GB, available at MDGx's. All 3 patches are needed for good system stability. And if you use KernelEx, you should reinstall it at this point, having taken care to remove it before applying these updates. Adding the latest Windows Explorer available from MDGx's is also a good idea, although not mandatory, AFAIK.

Shell98 is part of the Unofficial Service Pack 3 beta 4 which I strongly recommand for those who still didn't updated their system.

http://www.htasoft.com/w98se_post_usp4.php

BTW xplorer2 free doesn't have this problem, even without patch.

CCtask.exe indicates that explorer.exe is the only running program making calls to browseui.dll and browselc.dll. Is it normal to NOT see any reference to those DLL's when explorer.exe is analyzed by dependency walker? Or to ask this another way - how exactly is explorer.exe making calls to those DLL's without seeing any embedded reference to them (by name) within it's code?

CCtask.exe indicates that explorer.exe is the only running program making calls to browseui.dll and browselc.dll. Is it normal to NOT see any reference to those DLL's when explorer.exe is analyzed by dependency walker? Or to ask this another way - how exactly is explorer.exe making calls to those DLL's without seeing any embedded reference to them (by name) within it's code?

BrowseLC is called by BrowseUI and contains all the localized resources, menus, dialogs and strings, needed by BROWSEUI.

BROWSEUI is an ActiveX/COM "plugin" and explorer.exe finds and loads it through the registry as it finds and loads other similar plugins such as shell extensions.