siria Posted November 16, 2019 Share Posted November 16, 2019 jumper said: When the COMMAND.COM window is open, click the Properties toolbar button (or press Alt+space, P) and change Run: from Normal Window to Minimized. Thank you for this precious little tip!! After many years of struggling with those d*** DOS windows opening only in fullscreen mode, without any buttons or taskbar, no mouse or anything and no screenshots possible, finally got that thing showing up as normal "window" again! It had not bothered me enough to start extended web researching, but still was really annoying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wunderbar98 Posted November 17, 2019 Author Share Posted November 17, 2019 (edited) My Windows Explorer was intermittently sluggish a while ago, sometimes taking >15 seconds to navigate even small directories. It appears resolved after replacing the buggy network card, mentioned in earlier posts. Unsure, maybe a buggy adapter/driver unsuccessfully seeking non-existent network shares. Snappy fast again. Mentioned in case it helps someone troubleshoot a laggy Windows Explorer. Always got confused with Windows Explorer drag and drop for copy/paste, hold down Shift/control/whatever. Finally learned to right-click and drag then just select Move or Copy from the popup menu. Modifying the right-click Send to menu adds a lot of functionality. Ensuring DOS Edit, Notepad and WordPad are in the list makes it easy to open files that don't have a recognized extension, rather than holding shift, right-click and select Open with. Using the Windows Explorer File dropdown more to quick zoom to previously visited directories. Similarly, adding frequently accessed directories to Windows Explorer favourites helps. This old software is not given enough credit, still a blast to use and very functional. Windows 98 isn't the most stable OS i've ever experienced but it is lean, efficient and configurable. It's also hard to break, most everything is fixable. DOS with eye-candy. Reminds me of Tiny Core, Linux-land has also become bloated. All are welcome to share any favourite Windows 98 tips here, won't be considered a hijack. Edited November 17, 2019 by Wunderbar98 Typo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wunderbar98 Posted November 17, 2019 Author Share Posted November 17, 2019 Due to outdated security protocols vanilla Windows 98 can no longer connect to many websites, regardless of browser utilized. Fortunately numerous free proxy websites are available. Just bookmark a proxy that is able to successfully connect to your desired site. When encountering a site that won't load, open a tab and load the proxy site, then enter or paste the target URL to browse the inaccessible web page. Example, tested in Dillo and SeaMonkey: - Open browser and load an encrypted URL, such as https://openbsd.com, it will fail. - Open a new tab and load a proxy site, such as http://free-proxyserver.com. - Enter or paste the previously inaccessible URL into the proxy site. Note: - Find a web proxy that works with encrypted (https) sites. - The web proxy continues to work in the desired tab when clicking target site links. - Free web proxies have limits, such as timeouts, data utilization, file size download. - Beware proxy sites aren't inherently safe, yet another middle-man. - No appreciable load time increase and now you can visit the site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deomsh Posted November 17, 2019 Share Posted November 17, 2019 (edited) I am using http://proxycrime.com as last resort. See my post of april, 23 thread posted in next post by @Goodmaneuver Edited November 17, 2019 by deomsh Wrong thread mentioned Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goodmaneuver Posted November 17, 2019 Share Posted November 17, 2019 It was in this thread https://msfn.org/board/topic/178283-how-you-really-browse-the-web-on-98me-in-2019/page/3/#comments https://github.com/rn10950/RetroZilla/releases/tag/2.2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wunderbar98 Posted November 17, 2019 Author Share Posted November 17, 2019 (edited) Hi deomsh and Goodmaneuver. Thank-you for your responses, there's lots of crossover in these threads. Just wondering deomsh why you settled on this web proxy, any advantages? The ones i've tried, the biggest drawback is an ability to download even smallish software files (<20 MB). From the old RetroZilla thread, my understanding is rn10950 is no longer actively working on RetroZilla. IIRC roytam1 has also moved on to Windows XP browser development. Edited November 17, 2019 by Wunderbar98 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wunderbar98 Posted November 17, 2019 Author Share Posted November 17, 2019 Got a corrupt Reycle Bin after some crazy file management. Selecting Empty Recycle Bin would not fully empty the bin or reset the desktop icon. This was associated with an error popup. Deleting more files and re-emptying the bin did not work. Neither did emptying the bin from Safe Mode or running ScanDisk. The solution was simple, no reboot needed. Run COMMAND.COM and CD C:\RECLYCLED. Run DIR to check for rogue files or directories. Switches like DIR /AH (attribute hidden) may be useful, not required in my case. Run applicable DEL or DELTREE commands to purge the bin without mercy using the fiery power of DOS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deomsh Posted November 18, 2019 Share Posted November 18, 2019 (edited) On 11/18/2019 at 12:36 AM, Wunderbar98 said: Just wondering deomsh why you settled on this web proxy, any advantages? The ones i've tried, the biggest drawback is an ability to download even smallish software files (<20 MB). Advantages: 1) Changing User Agent, custom and with presets. 2) Sending real or custom referer (not tested). 3) Cookie Management (not tested). 4) No download problems (speed is not the highest). 5) Still available (in the first half of 2018 I did a speed test with NN 3.04: out of 8 "compatible" tested web proxies, proxycrime is the only one left. Edited November 19, 2019 by deomsh English language Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wunderbar98 Posted November 19, 2019 Author Share Posted November 19, 2019 Thanks for the information deomsh, your suggested proxy is fantastic. Now i won't have to reboot for file downloads. Lots of work-arounds to keep Windows 98 functional. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jumper Posted November 19, 2019 Share Posted November 19, 2019 > speedtest with NN 3.04If NN is Netscape Navigator, how did you speedtest with it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deomsh Posted November 19, 2019 Share Posted November 19, 2019 (edited) @jumper If you found my sentence hard to understand, see correction above. In case you are interested in the test, see: https://web.archive.org/web/2018*/http://win3x.conforums.com/index.cgi?board=net&num=1517876379&action=display&start=49 Edited November 19, 2019 by deomsh Correction web-address Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jumper Posted November 19, 2019 Share Posted November 19, 2019 Sentences were already good. Not seeing any edit re NN 3.04...what is it? Link doesn't connect or Google. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deomsh Posted November 19, 2019 Share Posted November 19, 2019 (edited) @jumper NN 3.04 is Netscape Navigator 3.04 (16-bit). Runs in Windows 98se too (but NOT with normal internet connection). Conforums is not on Google anymore. Try this one: https://web.archive.org/web/20180413181223/http://win3x.conforums.com/index.cgi?board=net&num=1517876379&action=display&start=49 Edited November 19, 2019 by deomsh Typo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deomsh Posted November 19, 2019 Share Posted November 19, 2019 (edited) I just remembered the speedtest was cited on Vogons (don't know why). https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=12102 One of the links should work. Edited November 19, 2019 by deomsh link directly pasted now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wunderbar98 Posted November 20, 2019 Author Share Posted November 20, 2019 (edited) Since the 56k dial-up days I have used Speed Guide TCP Optimizer (now v3.0.8) on Windows 98. Recently discovered i was doing it wrong for high speed ethernet. Quick selecting 'optimal' and applying changes results in improvement but is not comparable to the same hardware on a modern OS. For high speed connections recommend clicking optimal then adjusting the General Settings -> Connection Speed slider towards max. This is the key to triggering DefaultRvcWindow changes, a huge performance bottleneck. When adjusting the slider and applying changes, the confirmation table pop-up should indicate a significantly larger DefaultRvcWindow setting. So for modern broadband, if it goes to 10 set it for 11 :) Not a sophisticated benchmarker, just downloaded a large file to test and am now matching the ~750 KB/second speed this same hardware gets from my particular ISP on a more modern OS. Edited November 20, 2019 by Wunderbar98 Type: 750 MB/second would be truly amazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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