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compaq presario m2000 with 98SE install


cov3rt

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so i have been experimenting with this laptop for some time now, i have done a fresh re-install of the operating system like 4 times with 98SE. the laptop modem is EC214UA#ABA. i noticed some interesting results here and there. at first, i couldn't get the ethernet or pci card modem drivers to even install, but now up to this point, the only thing that seems to not work is the pci card modem. 

the laptop may have other unknown issues or faulty functioning. normal setup with acpi enabled allows proper restart and shut down usually. there is a unknown device with a hardware id of "PNP0C14". i could not really locate a proper source inf file on the internet except for like one called oem3.enc with driver version of 5.1.2535.0 which i have been using so far but i think it COULD be causing problems in the system but i really don't know. 

i mostly made this thread to see if anyone can provide a driver for me either through upload or browsing online for the unknown device that is acpi related with hardware id of "PNP0C14". although the laptop installs with the default acpi installed and shown in device manager with several entries related to it, for some odd reason, the battery status meter is not shown, i was thinking it might be related to the unknown device inf? and perhaps that could also affect maybe the modem or other things? 

installing 6.11.02 for PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4378 works in that it doesn't throw any errors, but i have no way to find out if the pci card modem actually works. i am using smbus version 5.10.1000.7, the older 5.10.1000.4 apparently causes the system to malfunction or not operate properly, as i noticed the ethernet only worked when i used the newer smbus version. 

i encountered some other weird issues like firefox 9.01 not displaying pages properly for the first time related to security / certificates, but internet explorer 6 sp1 worked fine, i do not know if it was because of using the newest kernelex package and uninstalling / reinstalling, but i didn't have that issue before, it also wouldn't load google.com for some reason either, i tried using the old method i had with kernelex 4.5.2 initial package and then adding the updated files manually, which required me to do so in safe mode and then in command prompt for one file that couldn't be copied in windows at all, but no difference, firefox 9.01 still operated odd and also slower, like it wouldn't load everything and if it did, it would take forever. 

i tried to do the same in trying to get k-meleon 74 to run and it wouldn't work, it only worked that one time where i installed the full kernelex 4.5.2016.17 update but the problem with that update is that it gave that weird error i posted in the other thread on last version of software for windows 2000 mentioned below - 

 

it was able to launch k-meleon 74 with goanna 2.2, but wouldn't pass the homepage, trying to press enter or go into any url would just do nothing, same thing with firefox 9.01 but with internet explorer 6 sp1, for some strange reason, it didn't have that issue and worked fine, even though it is less functional than both of those other two browsers. 

 

Edited by cov3rt
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@cov3rt:
That security-error you mentioned for KMGoanna74 is related to the KernelEx version. With the basic old 4.5.2 I never had any probs for several years, but then I needed to update it for running KM74-Goanna, and since that update to KernelEx17 none of my Mozilla-browsers (except retrozilla2.1) can create anymore a "key3.db" file in new user profiles. The mystery is that KernelEx17 doesn't seem to break this for everyone, only for half the 98-KernelEx users. Not sure, but perhaps it's related to installation methods. As I've mentioned in several places already, for a temporary workaround you can copy all 3 *.db files from an old profile into the new ones. Then you can go online and browser httpS sites again (if you have web connection). It's been confirmed by 1-2 others too. Am a bit wary if there aren't possibly any side-effects of 'recycling' those files, but can't help it.
Also important, after such changes to delete the startupCache folder in the profile. It will get recreated automatically, with updated contents.

But KMG74 discussions are already shattered across far too many MSFN-threads, better to continue in one of those.
https://msfn.org/board/topic/177485-backporting-newer-browsers-to-win9x-with-kernelex/
(or in the K-Meleon forum, at least there's a dedicated thread for KMG74, but far less 98 users as here)

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7 hours ago, siria said:

@cov3rt:
That security-error you mentioned for KMGoanna74 is related to the KernelEx version. With the basic old 4.5.2 I never had any probs for several years, but then I needed to update it for running KM74-Goanna, and since that update to KernelEx17 none of my Mozilla-browsers (except retrozilla2.1) can create anymore a "key3.db" file in new user profiles. The mystery is that KernelEx17 doesn't seem to break this for everyone, only for half the 98-KernelEx users. Not sure, but perhaps it's related to installation methods. As I've mentioned in several places already, for a temporary workaround you can copy all 3 *.db files from an old profile into the new ones. Then you can go online and browser httpS sites again (if you have web connection). It's been confirmed by 1-2 others too. Am a bit wary if there aren't possibly any side-effects of 'recycling' those files, but can't help it.
Also important, after such changes to delete the startupCache folder in the profile. It will get recreated automatically, with updated contents.

But KMG74 discussions are already shattered across far too many MSFN-threads, better to continue in one of those.
https://msfn.org/board/topic/177485-backporting-newer-browsers-to-win9x-with-kernelex/
(or in the K-Meleon forum, at least there's a dedicated thread for KMG74, but far less 98 users as here)

thanks, this information will certainly help find out possible solutions, however, i was gonna just keep posting here, i don't think it would matter because if someone was google'ing the problem or searching the forums, they should be directed in the right area or solution, i think it may actually be better here because then people can take a look at specific hardware / software / driver factors, though i could comment back on one of the other forums to confirm a solution to at least make it easier to know what the problem is and the solution for it, at least in my case. 

i might probably start fresh again and install with acpi enabled, although i was hoping if anyone can find me a "Better" or "compatible" driver for the unknown device i was talking about before attempting a re-install again, but the kernelex part you mentioned definitively is relieving in a way at least, i sometimes feel like it could be related also to how i install the unofficial service pack, but seeing that the specific problems i've had only occurred recently and / or in relation to using the newer kernelex, i do not think it's because of the usp. 

also, where do i find the key3.db files from a old profile and what would be the new profile? 

Edited by cov3rt
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Forgot to mention, also important: KernelEx17 update also broke some of my older, native Win98 apps! My impression is that although the default-KernelEx setting was always set 'disabled' on this system, it's now active always and cannot be disabled any more, breaking some older apps... But just a theory, and perhaps I messed up the install somehow.

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You find the profile folder in the same place where your settings and bookmarks are stored, wherever that is. KMG74 is preconfigured portable, that means profiles are inside its program folder. My non-portable Firefox has profiles in c:/win/AnwenderDaten(en: appdata?)/Mozilla/Firefox
Important, you need to copy over not only this file, but 3 files, all of them extension *.db

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On 7/22/2018 at 9:57 AM, siria said:

You find the profile folder in the same place where your settings and bookmarks are stored, wherever that is. KMG74 is preconfigured portable, that means profiles are inside its program folder. My non-portable Firefox has profiles in c:/win/AnwenderDaten(en: appdata?)/Mozilla/Firefox
Important, you need to copy over not only this file, but 3 files, all of them extension *.db

oh, well that makes a difference, i thought it was only the key3.db file that i had to copy, i had given up on firefox 9.01 and kmg74, but the new information you gave me, makes me want to go back and see what can be done again through experimenting. so assuming i understand, you install kernelex 4.5.2 ( older one ), then install firefox 9.01 / or kmg74, launch the web browsers so those files get loaded into the profile area as i noticed it wouldn't load until i actually launched the web browsers, once you have those files copied to a seperate folder, one for firefox and the other for kmg74 i believe, then one could uninstall both browsers and kernelex older version and reinstall the newest, then reinstall the web browsers and copy over the older .db files? 

seems like a lot of work, but i will try to see if i can get some different working results, i would rather use kmg74 ( if ) it allows printing, apparently firefox 9.01 and older don't allow printing? i thought of using opera 12.02 if it allows printing, however, i probably won't use any firefox from 4 - 10, as all of them for some weird reason have character encoding issues, the characters look like some messed up language, it also happens when typing in youtube, the characters you type are different than what you actually type. 

i had this issue before on different systems / at different times and at one point, when i installed any of these firefox versions, it wouldn't have the problem but other times or builds, it did, weird..., also, i noticed installing service pack 3 for office xp does not allow booting into windows 98SE desktop, it just gets stuck at the "please wait while setup updates your configuration files. this may take a few minutes"

"completed updating files, continuing to load windows"

i tried to uninstall office xp or do a repair install and none of these worked last time or this time, so now i am forced to reinstall 98SE from scratch again just from one goddamn problem, so apparently im just gonna have to avoid sp3 until someone else can give me a 100 percent working solution or safe solution, because i certainly won't want to reinstall for the 6th time. 

 

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I feel I'm not the right person advising you, because my system belongs to that half of the users for whom this key-creation process is broken with KernelEx17. Not sure why yet, perhaps has to do with my KernelEx-update-procedure, perhaps with this update itself or whatever. But looks like you're getting deeper and deeper into confusion, so let me clear up that I (good or bad) never uninstalled my whole system (yikes!) and never started from scratch all over again.

All I did was notice that I can't get KM74-Goanna working with only basic KernelEx452. Without looking up old notes now, not quite sure anymore if it didn't start at all or was 'only' messy, as it still is.
Opera12.02, Firefox9 and KM1.6 were happy with basic KernelEx already, and were able to create fully working new profiles. But I need a newer K-Meleon too and need macros.

So my first attempt was to update KernelEx as little as possible, with some manual step-by-step method, but that was a complete disaster. Windows didn't even boot! Then tried to revert this again in DOS and do a full update to KernelEx16. Didn't want the newest version yet, because there were already a bunch of postings out there reporting that Kex17 had broken some older apps, even more as Kex16 or 15 updates had broken already. Unfortunately version 16 still wasn't sufficient to get KMG74 working right, so uninstalled the Kex16-update again and dared the Kex17-update. Sadly KMG74 still didn't work bearably, it crashes all the time and can't create this key3-db file in new profiles, producing this security-error and preventing to browse httpS websites. Switching the default skin to an older one reduced at least the toolbar crashes partly.

Perhaps should mention, of course KMG74 must be set to KernelEx compatiblity "Win2000" to even start at all.
And of course the StartupCache folder in the current profile should be deleted if there are probs after config changes.
And sadly noted that yes, Kernel17 destroys half my old Apps too :-(
Much later discovered, it even prevents now nearly all my good old browsers to create new profiles! They cannot produce new key3.db files either, it's not just KMG74.
But I absolutely need a newer K-Meleon for those stupid TLS1.2 cypher overlap errors...

Finally noticed that SSL/TLS1.2/httpS-sites start working in KMG74 after simply copying over 3 db-files from an older existing KM1.6 profile into the new KMG74 profile. I happen to have plenty of old KM-profiles to choose from, but perhaps the db-files from FF or other Mozilla browsers would have worked too, considering they are all very closely related.

But I certainly did NOT need to uninstall the whole system just to copy over those old existing files! Yikes...
Not even messed with KernelEx again just for copying those files, although I probably should try it some day, sigh.

Regarding printing capabilities: am afraid that's still a major prob with KernelEx, but have no printer anyway and not quite sure.

Regarding the messed characters: works okay for me. Probably just wrong encoding settings? Mozilla has tons of them as usual, confusing me too. In about:config I have this:
network.standard-url.encode-utf8 = true
And check K-Meleon menu View>Encoding (default for most websites today is UTF-8, if european languages)
Yet more in F2>PageDisplay>Languages (at bottom)
And a different setting available for each of various language GROUPS, here:
F2>PageDisplay>Language Group (at top)

And a KM7X bug: it can happen that fresh profiles don't fully realize they should be english, and instead think they are 'nothing'. This can be fixed by switching the GUI language to something else and back again (F2 > GUI > Language)

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20 hours ago, siria said:

I feel I'm not the right person advising you, because my system belongs to that half of the users for whom this key-creation process is broken with KernelEx17. Not sure why yet, perhaps has to do with my KernelEx-update-procedure, perhaps with this update itself or whatever. But looks like you're getting deeper and deeper into confusion, so let me clear up that I (good or bad) never uninstalled my whole system (yikes!) and never started from scratch all over again.

All I did was notice that I can't get KM74-Goanna working with only basic KernelEx452. Without looking up old notes now, not quite sure anymore if it didn't start at all or was 'only' messy, as it still is.
Opera12.02, Firefox9 and KM1.6 were happy with basic KernelEx already, and were able to create fully working new profiles. But I need a newer K-Meleon too and need macros.

So my first attempt was to update KernelEx as little as possible, with some manual step-by-step method, but that was a complete disaster. Windows didn't even boot! Then tried to revert this again in DOS and do a full update to KernelEx16. Didn't want the newest version yet, because there were already a bunch of postings out there reporting that Kex17 had broken some older apps, even more as Kex16 or 15 updates had broken already. Unfortunately version 16 still wasn't sufficient to get KMG74 working right, so uninstalled the Kex16-update again and dared the Kex17-update. Sadly KMG74 still didn't work bearably, it crashes all the time and can't create this key3-db file in new profiles, producing this security-error and preventing to browse httpS websites. Switching the default skin to an older one reduced at least the toolbar crashes partly.

Perhaps should mention, of course KMG74 must be set to KernelEx compatiblity "Win2000" to even start at all.
And of course the StartupCache folder in the current profile should be deleted if there are probs after config changes.
And sadly noted that yes, Kernel17 destroys half my old Apps too :-(
Much later discovered, it even prevents now nearly all my good old browsers to create new profiles! They cannot produce new key3.db files either, it's not just KMG74.
But I absolutely need a newer K-Meleon for those stupid TLS1.2 cypher overlap errors...

Finally noticed that SSL/TLS1.2/httpS-sites start working in KMG74 after simply copying over 3 db-files from an older existing KM1.6 profile into the new KMG74 profile. I happen to have plenty of old KM-profiles to choose from, but perhaps the db-files from FF or other Mozilla browsers would have worked too, considering they are all very closely related.

But I certainly did NOT need to uninstall the whole system just to copy over those old existing files! Yikes...
Not even messed with KernelEx again just for copying those files, although I probably should try it some day, sigh.

Regarding printing capabilities: am afraid that's still a major prob with KernelEx, but have no printer anyway and not quite sure.

Regarding the messed characters: works okay for me. Probably just wrong encoding settings? Mozilla has tons of them as usual, confusing me too. In about:config I have this:
network.standard-url.encode-utf8 = true
And check K-Meleon menu View>Encoding (default for most websites today is UTF-8, if european languages)
Yet more in F2>PageDisplay>Languages (at bottom)
And a different setting available for each of various language GROUPS, here:
F2>PageDisplay>Language Group (at top)

And a KM7X bug: it can happen that fresh profiles don't fully realize they should be english, and instead think they are 'nothing'. This can be fixed by switching the GUI language to something else and back again (F2 > GUI > Language)

wow, this is a lot of info, i wish i could experiment again with the same laptop but now i am deciding to try windows 2000 on it again due to a lot of stress with working with it on 98SE ( reinstalled like 6 times already ) and of course the kernelex related issues, everything worked fine ( aside from web browsers / kernelex ) until the last thing i wanted to do which was install office xp, restarted system and it hanged on the updating process, i have yet to find a solution online for it, one site said to delete the wininit.ini file but this didn't even exist on my system.

i was actually gonna ask if you knew how to configure the ati sb400 / rs480 chipset on windows 2000 with the mobility radeon x200 graphics. for some weird reason, i can get it to work on 98SE if using smbus driver version 5.10.1000.7 and using ati catalyst 6.2 and manually changing vga display adapter with have disk method and selecting ""ASUS Extreme AX300SE/T 128MB - Secondary" = RV370_ENU, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_5B70&SUBSYS_002B1043", however, using the same smbus driver version and using a official windows 2000 driver for the exact hardware id of the laptop's gpu causes a black screen upon restart. 

i know it should work, apparently one guy from another forum mentioned they got the same gpu ( without mentioning exact hardware id ) working on their laptop a while back, however, i have yet to come across any site that mentions what exactly they had to do to get the gpu to work, like what specific smbus driver, any other things they had to do, which driver version, etc. i do notice that the monitor in properties section is greyed out for the part mentioning hide modes the monitor can't display, perhaps one needs to manually install the monitor driver somehow before installing the gpu, at least for this specific laptop or similar configurations? 

however, i do not know how to do this, at least in the "right" way, driverscape shows a 1024x768 sony lcd monitor driver, so i thought that perhaps this is something that is needed to be installed manually before attempting gpu install. i do not remember the exact driver versions i used to get the same black screen problem upon reboot but i am hoping that the new one i found which happens that have the EXACT subsys may work if i just install the same way i did before, however, i am also scared it will just boot up to the black screen again, making it harder to fix. 

below is the exact hardware id of the laptop which i do not know if i tested yet, the driver version is 8.163.0.0 and specifically listed for windows 2000

 "ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M" = ati2mtag_RS480M, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_5955&SUBSYS_3091103C

Edited by cov3rt
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i am deciding to try windows 2000 on it again due to a lot of stress with working with it on 98SE ( reinstalled like 6 times already ) and of course the kernelex related issues, everything worked fine ( aside from web browsers / kernelex ) until the last thing i wanted to do which was install office xp



If you do fresh installs anyway and the system isn't crucial to you, by all means use Win2000! On Win98 KernelEx may help lots of old apps to run (especially a browser), but on Win2000 a LOT more are functioning. Most older apps even without needing compat modes. A lot less user stress and waste of time.

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On 7/26/2018 at 5:43 PM, siria said:



If you do fresh installs anyway and the system isn't crucial to you, by all means use Win2000! On Win98 KernelEx may help lots of old apps to run (especially a browser), but on Win2000 a LOT more are functioning. Most older apps even without needing compat modes. A lot less user stress and waste of time.

i was wondering for the kmeleon browser, did you use the one from kmeleonbrowser.org site or the one that mentions kmeleon74 with goanna 2.2 fix? because the one i was testing this whole time was with the goanna 2.2 version which is like 10 MB larger in size, i did not test the original one which has the filename of "k-meleon74.0.exe", also i checked firefox 9.01 and the encoding settings in about:config were correct and set to true but it still had the messed up characters ( i am currently experimenting with 98SE again ). 

Edited by cov3rt
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@cov3rt
Actually there are worlds between the official K-Meleon 74 (2014, Gecko24esr, KM-dev Dorian) and KM74-Goanna (2018, engine from PaleMoon26, by Roytam1, aimed at Win2000, KM-shell with lots of extensions and some fixes from Naruman's old KM74 fork)
If someone isn't very familiar with the KM history since years, it's quite misleading to see the same number "74" for so very different browsers.
But neither version is really usable in Win98 yet, and perhaps never will be!
KM74-gecko doesn't even start (initialization error) - at least on my current system, only partly modernised not extremely.
KM74-goanna is already a lot better, with KernelEx17 and compatmode Win2000 it can open and display pages, but unfortunately still crashes every few minutes or pageloads. Have a strong feeling that has to do with mouse movements, and crash reports often mention msvcrt. Or it freezes in half a minute when javascript is running (have 256MB RAM). And history doesn't work, cookies cannot be stored, bookmarks broken, etc. Don't know, perhaps it's only 1-2 little core bugs which cause everything else to crash down too, like that bug with the sqlite-version, but roytam has mentioned that debugging on Win98 with KernelEx is extremely difficult. The prob is that the debugging tools are confused by KernelEx. And his target system for this browser was Win2000 anyway, where it runs well already, not Win98.

That means my main KM-browser is still ancient KM1.6! (sibling of FF3.5) Wish it were at least KM1.7alpha2, but has a killer bug with macrolanguage injectJS. Perhaps other bugs too. And of course TLS1.2, nowadays 30% of pages give already cypher overlap errors.

Believe me, you're not going to be happy with Win98 today. It's a constant struggle, and for many purposes no proper tools available anymore. If you install a fresh system anyway and can just as easily use Win2000 instead, I strongly recommend to use this. Browsers are not the only prob, also lots of other apps too.

Edited by siria
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On 7/28/2018 at 3:25 AM, siria said:

@cov3rt
Actually there are worlds between the official K-Meleon 74 (2014, Gecko24esr, KM-dev Dorian) and KM74-Goanna (2018, engine from PaleMoon26, by Roytam1, aimed at Win2000, KM-shell with lots of extensions and some fixes from Naruman's old KM74 fork)
If someone isn't very familiar with the KM history since years, it's quite misleading to see the same number "74" for so very different browsers.
But neither version is really usable in Win98 yet, and perhaps never will be!
KM74-gecko doesn't even start (initialization error) - at least on my current system, only partly modernised not extremely.
KM74-goanna is already a lot better, with KernelEx17 and compatmode Win2000 it can open and display pages, but unfortunately still crashes every few minutes or pageloads. Have a strong feeling that has to do with mouse movements, and crash reports often mention msvcrt. Or it freezes in half a minute when javascript is running (have 256MB RAM). And history doesn't work, cookies cannot be stored, bookmarks broken, etc. Don't know, perhaps it's only 1-2 little core bugs which cause everything else to crash down too, like that bug with the sqlite-version, but roytam has mentioned that debugging on Win98 with KernelEx is extremely difficult. The prob is that the debugging tools are confused by KernelEx. And his target system for this browser was Win2000 anyway, where it runs well already, not Win98.

That means my main KM-browser is still ancient KM1.6! (sibling of FF3.5) Wish it were at least KM1.7alpha2, but has a killer bug with macrolanguage injectJS. Perhaps other bugs too. And of course TLS1.2, nowadays 30% of pages give already cypher overlap errors.

Believe me, you're not going to be happy with Win98 today. It's a constant struggle, and for many purposes no proper tools available anymore. If you install a fresh system anyway and can just as easily use Win2000 instead, I strongly recommend to use this. Browsers are not the only prob, also lots of other apps too.

thanks for the info, i WOULD put back windows 2000, however, as i mentioned before, i can't get the d*** thing to work with the gpu, it causes a black screen upon reboot after gpu driver install which i suspect has to NOT do with the gpu driver but a problem with detecting a monitor as the system does not have a monitor upon installation. the vbemp driver for windows 2000 works, but then the system is very limited in performance and functioning because vbemp is just a cosmetic solution. 

i have not found any solutions through google on how to fix this issue. the monitor in the properties section is greyed out for the list of modes and you can't change it, so the sony 1024x768 lcd monitor driver posted on the driver page for driverscape is useless if i can't actually change the monitor or install a monitor. 

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