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Help with games in Windows 98SE gaming pc.


ugooconnell

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10 hours ago, rloew said:

I have found numerous examples of these issues while examining their code.
The third one is particularly egregious and is definitely not good programming practice since they could have easily added more Exports.

Not to mention the sometimes misleading (or completely lacking) information in older versions of MSDN that used to account for 9x compatiblity.
For example in MSDN 2005 they say GetInterfaceInfo() in iphlpapi.dll returns WCHAR for Name in the array of IP_ADAPTER_INDEX_MAP structures within the IP_INTERFACE_INFO structure. Well, not so much in Win9x (tested in 98SE with iphlpapi.dll v5.0.17171.2) - it always returns CHAR (ANSI string). Now, if one would trust the docs and always perform a WideCharToMultiByte conversion when the result is required in ANSI format…

Calling arbitrary code in other libraries could be their attempt at protecting some delicate operations or just an ugly hack performed in the last minute before shipping the product. Either way it's bad, very bad, because it can break a whole line of products on an occasional upgrade (be it official or not).

17 hours ago, ugooconnell said:

[…] new downloads got corrupted immediatly, looks like scandisk just found some errors […]

Have you replaced/upgraded any system files after installing uSP3? Installed drivers or (older) software that could have replaced system files without notifying the user? There may be a mismatch somewhere leading to such errors, try to reinstall uSP3 if such errors continue to pop up. If uSP3 asks for downgrading certain system files, allow it to do so - sometimes there are good reasons to use older files. Let us know if there's any more problems.
Oh and don't forget to back up any valuable data before further fiddling with the system. ;)

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Don't know what happened, but i had to restore the registry with WinRescue and reinstall some drivers afterwards, i had a lot of troubles with the usb ports to work again and now im testing new downloads, looks everything cool now.

Btw what is better Ap2007+Ap2008up or U98sesp3, because this last one is smaller.
 

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To restore registry one can do the following:
- (re)boot to plain DOS
- at the command prompt type scanreg /restore and press Enter
A selection of registry backups should be presented to choose from, according to the saved dates. Upon selecting (usually the most recent that worked) and choosing 'Restore', a reboot should bring the machine back to the state it was at that date.
When the machine appears to work correctly for a few sessions you may invoke scanreg /backup at a command prompt to save current registry as a backup. This command can be added to startup to be performed automatically each boot, on a healthy system.

In regard to the choice above the logical answer would be the latter, because it contains many recent updated files that do not exist in AP, considering AP development halted in 2008 while uSP3 is still being worked on AFAIK. For a (relatively) modern hardware uSP3 would be preferrable over AP. Make sure you read the documentation carefully and follow the directions. If you have the possibility, take a backup image of your system partition now and store it somewhere safe (on another HDD partition, preferrably, to have it handy in case it has to be restored, since at some point the USB may not be available for restoration if you save it on a Flash drive).
Oh and whatever you do, do not mix AP2007/2008 with uSP3.
Good luck! :)

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6 hours ago, Drugwash said:

To restore registry one can do the following:
- (re)boot to plain DOS
- at the command prompt type scanreg /restore and press Enter
A selection of registry backups should be presented to choose from, according to the saved dates. Upon selecting (usually the most recent that worked) and choosing 'Restore', a reboot should bring the machine back to the state it was at that date.
When the machine appears to work correctly for a few sessions you may invoke scanreg /backup at a command prompt to save current registry as a backup. This command can be added to startup to be performed automatically each boot, on a healthy system.

In regard to the choice above the logical answer would be the latter, because it contains many recent updated files that do not exist in AP, considering AP development halted in 2008 while uSP3 is still being worked on AFAIK. For a (relatively) modern hardware uSP3 would be preferrable over AP. Make sure you read the documentation carefully and follow the directions. If you have the possibility, take a backup image of your system partition now and store it somewhere safe (on another HDD partition, preferrably, to have it handy in case it has to be restored, since at some point the USB may not be available for restoration if you save it on a Flash drive).
Oh and whatever you do, do not mix AP2007/2008 with uSP3.
Good luck! :)

I couldn't, the backups with scanreg were damaged (weird), but WinRescue worked great! And thanks again for the info, so only usp3 for now on.

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I used to use AutoPatcher a long time ago but that's pretty much irrelevant these days. Before Microsoft got after them, I thought it was a pretty dang nice patching utility that I mainly used for Windows XP (and 2000 when I permanently switched back to it). But then MS basically got after them and served them with a cease and desist notice and I don't think their Windows Update fetcher really caught on which for me, before I had the internet at my own house, I loved AP and would download it and stick it on a flashdrive to take home with me.

But now we live in the age of contributed projects here on MSFN, which I feel FAR outshine AP. AP was a fine product for its time of course. As for USP3.x, I swear by it and use it on all of my Windows 98 machines. I believe a few people on here don't use it for specific reasons which if they want to chime in on this thread, then they're more than welcome to. But as far as I know, it contains all the main update files that you'll need even if that's the only thing from it that you use. But whenever I install Windows 98, I usually go by installing the OS first, install the main drivers, install USP3.x's main updates, reboot, and then relaunch USP3.x and install any other components that you want, then optionally install KernelEx. One thing to note is that if you use rloew's RAM patch, you'll need to reinstall the patch after you install USP3.x because the files get overwritten and will cause trouble. I always keep the patch on the root C: drive so it's extremely easy from DOS to repatch the system if and when necessary.

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Not sure if soporific here which maintained the 98 version of the AP was a member of the 2000/XP AP team but that doesn't matter now anyway. He did do a great job with AP98 though, for those times.
I also have AP installed on my main machine but that's for a reason: system was installed in 2006 and AP was being actively developed when I got here. I also got involved a little, at some point. It was probably a random choice, maybe biased by the fact that it also contained a great deal of drivers that made it easier for many people.
In time I've manually updated a lot of system files while installing separate packages such as NUSB and others, then KernelEx. At this point my system is probably very similar to what latest uSP3 does to a vanilla system. So I'll just stick with "if it ain't broken, don't fix it". :) For a vanilla install I'd surely go with uSP3 now.

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