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SP 2.0 RC3


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Hi,

posted some stuff here a while ago, maybe more soon,

anyway onto my point -

Coders like Tihiy should be encouraged, however, imo Gape's service pack would be a lot better when it hits final if it didn't contain any hacked files, as it is just now there are some that are optional and are hacked for icons and icon color support as i understand (i don't know why the icons aren't just done through registry entrys and say an .icl but i but i digress) to give you an example of why i think this should be, my brother is an IT guy who deals with alot of computers with 98se installed, my mom is responsable for a small school office which is full of 98se PCs. they are not currently using the service pack, but they would like to have the option (although i did show them it when it was at 1.6.2) the reason ? the hacks, it's that simple, they won't trust them, and, in a way, they can't trust them, not in a place of work. there are many computer users that understand things like using reshacker or experimenting with something like Me Defrag or the Me user.exe & user32.dll and suchlike and so will appreciate something like Tihiy's work. but there are many more who won't touch stuff they don't trust, and they don't trust file hacks, especially to windows system files (and i'm talking about many individual users here as well). windows 98se is still supported (and it's been extended a few times) because it still has a huge user base, a lot of whom are in small business or setups like my moms. these people don't have the money to upgrade all their software (or hardware) and so would love the easy solution to upgrades/patches Gape's pack might supply, and if it comes out like i hope it does when it hits final, i expect it to be posted at IT sites across the net and downloaded by millions.

Tihiy's stuff is cool, but should stay separate and optional (you should also get a hompage Tihiy)

all the above is just my opinion.

hope i haven't offended anyone, love all your work.

:thumbup

miko.

PS. 891711 is usually uninstallable from Add/Remove Programs, why not just keep that, then everyone could be happy, those that don't want it could uninstall it and use Tihiy's...

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fair enough, but i know plenty of "customer systems" in the emulation community (DOS still has its uses) and others who thought this was a great thing, tried it and promptly done an about turn and reinstalled windows when they found out mydocs explorer and shell32 were all hacked for as they put it 'for no desernable reason', it somewhat ruins the point for me and the packs got a bad rap because of it, if you want cosmetic system hacks there's http://wint.virtualplastic.net/ & http://www.virtualplastic.net/ it's not a new thing, where as Gapes work (and stated aim) was unique and initially well received. as for your "corporate environment" & "Mission Critical systems" remarks neither is Win 98SE, why do you people want the pack full of more and more hacks ? kudos ? it's supposed to be (as far as i can see) a replacement for a MS service pack because one was never made (a noble cause), not a showcase for 1337 h4x0rs...

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miko

but i know plenty of "customer systems" in the emulation community (DOS still has its uses) and others who thought this was a great thing, tried it and promptly done an about turn and reinstalled windows when they found out mydocs explorer and shell32 were all hacked

They, as well as your friends and your mom, were wrong.

These files are not hacked. Tell them they are modified, edited, improved by specialists, re-written, fixed, corrected for errors, etc.

After all, how do you excpect to have something better if it's not modified? :o HUH?!

Who said they were hacked?

Once downloaded and installed and tested by a few thousands users without any mass uproar, Sp2.0 will be safe to install on any place such as schools, small companies, worry-momy's PC etc

The SP is also supposed to be safer, thus more fit for "Mission Critical" system.

Not using it, and keep your system vulnerable to random crash risks is more dangerous.

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These files are not hacked. Tell them they are modified, edited, improved by specialists, re-written, fixed, corrected for errors, etc.

After all, how do you excpect to have something better if it's not modified?  :o HUH?!

Who said they were hacked?

Once downloaded and installed and tested by a few thousands users without any mass uproar, Sp2.0 will be safe to install on any place such as schools, small companies, worry-momy's PC etc

The SP is also supposed to be safer, thus more fit for "Mission Critical" system.

Not using it, and keep your system vulnerable to random crash risks is more dangerous.

EXACTLY! YOU SAID IT, Fredledingue! The files are modified, NOT hacked! Sometimes Microsoft doesn't do a good job modifying or fixing those files and may require those non-MS specialists to clean up the mess MS caused.

I did get a chance to test out Tihiy's 891711 patch. It turned out to be a double-edged sword. had it's pros & cons. worked perfectly on my old Win98 SE computer my aunt now has but it caused a few blue screen crashes on my neighbor's Win98 FE computer. And it refused to install under WinME. oh i nearly forgot, Tihiy's patch is a Win98-only patch.

Reason why I like the official Microsoft patches better is because they cover ALL 98/ME systems. so MS has the 891711 updates for Win98 FE, Win98 SE and WinME.

hopefully Tihiy can make a WinME version of his 891711 fix so I can test it out on my HP computer that has WinME on it.

As for some remaining 98 se hotfixes like Q265528 & Q329128, lets save those for version 2.01 or 2.10 of Gape's SP as those aren't offered by MS right now. may have to try again in late May or early June to get those.

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Hi,

I got this strange problem; blue screen..alright I know 20rc3 is designed to fix this but let me explained more;

It sounded starnge because last nite I want to install a software application. When I right clicked and went into a window, normally the "have disk" and a blank column. So I clicked the "have disk", a few sec of clicking sound will heard from floppy dr. If the dr can't find any floppy it'll prompted to browse. So I can look for other drivers for the installation. This for normal operation. My problem is when clicked "have disk", after the floppy drive read and it went into a blue screen. I tried a few times for the same method to other softwares but no luck. :angry: Resort to reboot my win98se. :realmad:

I attached a captured image of the error message.

post-25494-1114823311_thumb.jpg

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well gee, when the most popular tool for doing icon and bmp replacements inside PE files is called Resource Hacker, i've been doing them myself privately with various tools since '96, and most of the people i'm talking about can check with a hex compare against the original versions, i call them a hack.

whats more, none of these files really need to be hacked to achive most of the effects wished, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Shell Icons

could easily be changed with a reg file to alter almost all the system icons with no effect on resource use and 98SE can go up to 24bit color icons without the need for any file editing.

for the more advanced stuff open source software like tclock2 will allow you to change the start menu banner & start button graphics, 32bit icons and suchlike can be found in many explorer alternatives like those featured on sites like http://www.shellfront.org/ and http://www.desktopsidebar.com/ can even make your desktop look a little like Longhorn, all without altering any system files at all.

in reference to 891711 i will only refer to what i said before about it being uninstallable and therefore easily optional.

as for Dr. Hoiby's explorer hack, when you eventually start having that repeating explorer crash that you can't exit from try reverting to an unhacked version of the same explorer version.

some people still use the pack, but just drop in the original unhacked versions after install, they don't want files fiddled with by someone other than Microsoft, it's that simple, that is what they expect from a 'service pack', and it's also what Gape's site suggests as there is no mention of the fact that any system files are 'altered'.

it's just a pity that you would rather have me lie to people who already know what their dealing with rather than accept that such things should be, at least, optional addons rather than included in such a pack.

whatever you may say these files are hacked and i very much doubt a couple of Russian coders know more than the staff at the Microsoft campus and the owners of the source code, whatever loyaltys you may have to your friends i am not alone in the assumption.

i used my brother and mother simply as example users but don't try to patronise me, you have no idea who i may be, the simple fact is the distribution of hacked windows files is illegal, the redistribution of previously released MS patches is not. a fact that could very easily lead to the pack being removed from most mirrors and further action taken by Redmond.

i expect something to be better if it is an updated file supplied and supported my Microsoft and your attitude confirms my suspicions about what has happened to this projects original goals, it's now clouded in a sea of egos and i only hope Gape can see through it, as the final pack will be checked against the original Microsoft versions of the files included before posting on Slashdot begins.

goodnight gentlemen.

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***miko***

your cosmetic system hacks url has a Trojan

http://www.virtualplastic.net/navigation/parasite.js probably modified trojan JS/Minor.A

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"when you eventually start having that repeating explorer crash" I have it and is a pain in the a**

-----------------------------------

plus a vdd.vxd issue with my video card, making me having to reinstall the drivers over and over

I will switch back to an untampered EXPLORER.EXE and see if these 2 stop

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some people still use the pack, but just drop in the original unhacked versions after install, they don't want files fiddled with by someone other than Microsoft, it's that simple, that is what they expect from a 'service pack', and it's also what Gape's site suggests as there is no mention of the fact that any system files are 'altered'.

it's just a pity that you would rather have me lie to people who already know what their dealing with rather than accept that such things should be, at least, optional addons rather than included in such a pack.

That is easily solved. Dont use the unofficial service pack, and just stick to windowsupdate. There is no need to come posting temper tantrums on the forums...it accomplishes nothing except making an a** of yourself.

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posting temper tantrums on the forums.

everyone has their right to an opinion, but i did not resort to name calling or deformation of anyone's character,

you may not like the look of a 'longer' posts, but i consider all the points i raised fair...

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***miko***

your cosmetic system hacks url has a Trojan

:lol: BWAAHAHAHA!
whatever you may say these files are hacked and i very much doubt a couple of Russian coders know more than the staff at the Microsoft campus and the owners of the source code

M$'s Windows Operating System is open source. Everybody can freely crack it, hijack the code and do a pirated version (hmm such sweet words!) without any problem with the US law.

, you have no idea who i may be, the simple fact is the distribution of hacked windows files is illegal, the redistribution of previously released MS patches is not. a fact that could very easily lead to the pack being removed from most mirrors and further action taken by Redmond.
If I'm not mistaken, unofficial modified versions of windows files can even be distributed on the internet, to the condition it's not sold for money and that the modified codes remain open source too.

But if they are Russians, they even have not to think about such aspects.

i expect something to be better if it is an updated file supplied and supported my Microsoft

It remember me the time I bought a new vacuum cleaner. It was a 300$ expensive one, thinking is a known brand, I will have no problem, I invest long term.

At about the same time I bought an old, used one, at flea market for 20 bucks.

Guess what, the brand new one was already dead after 3 years, and the old used one, that I used for dirty cleaning is still working.

It's a little bit the same with your supertition on M$ -original- labeled software updates.

Also you are explaining that cosmetic stuffs can be changed without hacking the softwares... No explain me by which respect, modifying a registry key is less a hack than modifying another type of binary data such as dll codes...

Also SP is not about cosmetic stuffs. these stuffs are maybe only 5% of the pack.

The goal of the pack is to make w98 more stable.

and most of the people i'm talking about can check with a hex compare against the original versions,

Why are they losing theyr time doing that? If I download an unofficial SP, I excpect it to be different than the official updates. Knowing that Gape is merely compiling updates from M$ website sounds quite like a disapointment to me. Fortunately he's doing more than that and I congratulate him.

Now if you and your friends think that you will be damned if you use a version that are not bit-by-bit identical to the reasuring M$ release, then that's up to you.

But I have a computer that works better after the SP and that's what matters to me.

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this sp is great the rc3 of 2.0,these files are improved by people who want a more stable system,they are not hacked files they are official files(the hotfixes n such)some files are made by others but that does not make them hacked files.

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To the topic of changed resources in shell32.dll and explorer.exe files - my preference is to have original look, I don't like changed icons, and I believe it would be no problem to add the possibility not to change them during the install.

If needed, I will make the patch files for on demand patching.

And really it may be better way to use HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Shell Icons\17

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Shell Icons\31

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Shell Icons\32

HKCR\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\DefaultIcon\

and other necessary registry entries to change the icons.

What do you think Gape?

Does anybody know if really all icons can be changed this way? I have not succeeded with the small icon in the right bottom corner of "Control Panels" or "My computer" windows, and with the desktop icon in the Quick launch toolbar.

Changed resources does not mean changed functionality in any way, so there is really no problem.

Petr

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this sp is great the rc3 of 2.0,these files are improved by people who want a more stable system,they are not hacked files they are official files(the hotfixes n such)some files are made by others but that does not make them hacked files.

I'd like to point out that in SE SP 2.0 RC3 are only two files that are not original Microsoft files - SHELL32.DLL and EXPLORER.EXE, and the only difference between these files and original files are changed resourecs - icons and bitmaps.

Then there is NOTEPAD.EXE separate patch that just adds some shortcuts and REGEDIT patch that is not needed for Windows 98 and will be removed in the final release.

Maybe Gape will add my changed UPDATE.SYS, but again - there is absolutely no change in Microsoft code, just the table with Intel CPU microcodes was updated.

So no worry that there are "hacked" files in the SE SP.

I did really careful check of all files and compared them to the files available from Microsoft - because I wanted to have the right source for localization - and there seems to be no other differences.

Petr

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