Firefox 24 - 52 for ME and 98

[schwups]

Correction: Apparently I had only tested NewMoon version 28.1 with skia. 28.8 and 28.9 work with "gfx.content.azure.backends" skia.

Edited October 6, 2021 by schwups

[oerg866]

Hello, i'm sorry to ask this but can someone actually summarize what is and what isn't possible on Windows 98 as of now? It's never quite understandable from pages and pages of context-based chatter

What can I and can't I run?

[NotHereToPlayGames]

24 minutes ago, oerg866 said:

Hello, i'm sorry to ask this but can someone actually summarize what is and what isn't possible on Windows 98 as of now?

You can't be serious!
If you have a real interest in running 98, then reading this thread in its entirety should not be too hard to follow.
Certainly a better solution then some sort of (paraphrasing), "I don't have the time to follow this thread, can somebody spend a dozen hours or so and compile a summary for me?".

 

~ Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

[oerg866]

I'm sorry, you're telling me I should read 23 pages of discussion instead of asking for a simple two-line summary for what's the latest browsers I can run and what I need to install for them?

I read most of the thread and I have absolutely no idea what's going on q.q

PS: Not a fan of cliché philosophy quotes.

Edited October 9, 2021 by oerg866

[NotHereToPlayGames]

I don't think it's going to be a "two-line summary" but I'll wait for other Win 98 users to chime in.  Best of luck.

[ojt_1998]

Modern browsers work on Windows 98 as per the first post. Read the hard work put in by other members to find out how to do it.

[schwups]

Hallo oerg866, it depends on hardware, software (directx, grahics driver), RM, VM, ... what works and what doesn't. Firefox 52.9, MyPal 29.3, Centaury 0.17, NewMoon 28.9, RT's 45.9.33 run here in my opinion quite usable or even good on my ME machines. There are several issues on 98/ME of which most are solvable here. Not solved for example, the ten years old issues "bookmarks and recently visited addresses aren't saved". https://sourceforge.net/p/kernelex/feature-requests/7/  

K-Meleon 76.x.x: The submenus are largely unreadable. The usefulness of this browser is therefore questionable.

Meanwhile, the use of YouTube on my oldest computer Pentium 4c (SSE2),VIA PT880Ultra, 2GB, NV GF5900XT is no longer possible. The CPU is probably too weak for such a bloated Site. In general, these browsers are quite sluggish on this machine.

I keep the fist post up to date. Everything important is summarised with links to the associated posts. I don't see a possibility for a simple two-line summary. This is too complex. I recommend to proceed step by step, run the improved Firefox 31.8 for 98/ME, then try to get 45.9 running and finally 52.9 to keep error possibilities lower.

[zzzmod]

I managed to run FF52 and mypal after I cleared all the contents of the dependentlibs.list file except xul.dll.

I also managed to run Chrome 5, but it is very unstable and unusable. It does not open any websites and crashes with secur32.dll error on almost any action. https://imgur.com/a/vMiTY86

 

Edited October 10, 2021 by zzzmod

[schwups]

28 minutes ago, zzzmod said:

I managed to run FF52 and mypal

Thanks for the confirmation. What system specs do you have? Hardware, graphics driver, VM(what kind, which) or RM, directX,... . The more testers participate here with different systems , so that better insights and knowledge we obtained.

 

42 minutes ago, zzzmod said:

I also managed to run Chrome 5, but it is very unstable and unusable.

What steps did you take (e.g. BCW ChromeTool?)? Which exact version is that? Where can I catch it?

[mina7601]

33 minutes ago, schwups said:

Which exact version is that? Where can I catch it?

I think he got it from OldVersion, because that's the site that offered very old google chrome versions afaik.

[zzzmod]

57 minutes ago, schwups said:

Thanks for the confirmation. What system specs do you have? Hardware, graphics driver, VM(what kind, which) or RM, directX,... . The more testers participate here with different systems , so that better insights and knowledge we obtained.

My configuration:

• VMware VM
• Xeon processor E5-2667
• 512 MB of RAM
• DX 9.0c installed

I followed the instructions, put firefox and xul.dll in XP SP3 compatibility mode, but it still gave the "couldn't load XPCOM" error. Then I deleted all entries except xul.dll from dependentlibs.list and the browser started working.

1 hour ago, schwups said:

What steps did you take (e.g. BCW ChromeTool?)? Which exact version is that? Where can I catch it?

I downloaded the offline chrome installers and unpacked them, then copied the executable to the browser libraries folder, set it to XP compatibility mode and ran. Not even sure if I used Blackwingcat's Chrome Tool.

I've tested very early Chrome versions up to 5.0.307.1. Later ones did not start. 

You can download them from Oldversion.

[schwups]

Thanks. And do you have stability or other browser problems on 98SE in your VM? Are Firefox 52 or MyPal e.g. sluggish?

[schwups]

52 minutes ago, zzzmod said:

I've tested very early Chrome versions up to 5.0.307.1. Later ones did not start. 

does not work at the moment

http://www.oldversion.com/windows/download/google-chrome-5-0-307-1

504 Gateway Time-out

I've 6.0.453.1 here.

Error in secur32.dll: QuerySecurityContextToken seems suspicious to me. It's not supported by KernelEx. I've it in the stubs.ini.

InitializeSecurityContextW, EnumerateSecurityPackagesW, AcquireCredentialsHandleW, QueryCredentialsAttributesW are supported by Kexbasen.

Nothing happened on 6.0 start here. Debug.log: [1010/200038:ERROR:client_util.cc(266)] Could not find exported function RelaunchChromeBrowserWithNewCommandLineIfNeeded

Edited October 10, 2021 by schwups

[zzzmod]

35 minutes ago, schwups said:

Thanks. And do you have stability or other browser problems on 98SE in your VM? Are Firefox 52 or MyPal e.g. sluggish?

Yes, they are a little slow, but they work stably. I even managed to watch a video on youtube in 1080p quality. It seems to me that this is a good result for a 20-year-old system.

 

15 minutes ago, schwups said:

does not work at the moment

https://www.mediafire.com/file/gyxrwqlenqgggcy/chrome.7z/file download

[mina7601]

16 minutes ago, zzzmod said:

I even managed to watch a video on youtube in 1080p quality.

Does the sound work though? 

Also, when you said Firefox 52, do you mean the normal version 52.0 or 52 ESR?