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98SE2ME = Killer Replacements: ME -> 98 SE


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Hey MDGx, i wonder if you could help me with some issues i have with 98SE2ME.

It's extremely unstable, but hey, it's 98. I have yet to find a pattern for the instability, so i'll leave that for later. Right now i'm confronted with the following issues:

TeamViewer locks the system up a few seconds after opening it.

Unicode text display errors, such as below:

textbugccleanerzc5.th.png

textbugwinampwi2.th.png

My system locale is set to Romanian. Can that be the problem? I have no problem switching to US English, just that i can't get used to the AM/PM clock.

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Hey MDGx, i wonder if you could help me with some issues i have with 98SE2ME.

It's extremely unstable, but hey, it's 98. I have yet to find a pattern for the instability, so i'll leave that for later. Right now i'm confronted with the following issues:

TeamViewer locks the system up a few seconds after opening it.

Unicode text display errors, such as below:

textbugccleanerzc5.th.png

textbugwinampwi2.th.png

My system locale is set to Romanian. Can that be the problem? I have no problem switching to US English, just that i can't get used to the AM/PM clock.

1. 98SE2ME is built upon Windows 98 SE + ME English versions only.

I have not tested it with any other languages.

Complete details in ReadMe 1st:

http://www.mdgx.com/9s2m/read1st.php

2. Windows 9x OSes may not recognize/work properly with Unicode applications.

MS introduced full Unicode support only in Windows NTx OSes: 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008.

3. The AM/PM clock can be tweaked to your liking, independent of language:

http://www.youthtech.com/techstuff/explore...pregionset1.htm

HTH

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I notice that 98SE2ME has not been updated or improved since early December. Will there be any more or has it reached the end of the line?
Just because I haven't posted any updates since Dec 2007, that doesn't mean 98SE2ME is at an end.

As I said in other posts here at MSFN, I had a computer crash a while back, after which I had to build a new 1 from scratch.

So I'm still testing the new PC with Win98 SE [unstable right now]. And please don't tell me to use virtualization, it's not the same.

I've also been busy lately, so my computer projects are going at a much slower pace now.

I'll post a new version soon.

If I ever decide to end this project, I'll post the news here 1st.

Best wishes.

HTH

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I was trying to find an unmodded copy of EXPLORER.EXE 4.72.3612.1710 which is said to have come from the IE4SHL95.CAB that shipped with IE4.01 SP2. I have two copies of the official Win 98 SP1 on different magazine discs and and the IE4SHL95.CAB with that release of IE4.01 SP2 contains EXPLORER.EXE 4.72.3612.1700. I have also found IE4.01 SP2 on a few servers on the net and their IE4SHL95 cabs also contain 4.72.3612.1700. If anyone knows where I can find the intact IE4SHL95.CAB file with 4.72.3612.1710 please point me to it.
This is a question for erpdude8, he found it and then sent me the modded one.

HTH

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1. 98SE2ME is built upon Windows 98 SE + ME English versions only.

I have not tested it with any other languages.

Complete details in ReadMe 1st:

http://www.mdgx.com/9s2m/read1st.php

2. Windows 9x OSes may not recognize/work properly with Unicode applications.

MS introduced full Unicode support only in Windows NTx OSes: 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008.

3. The AM/PM clock can be tweaked to your liking, independent of language:

http://www.youthtech.com/techstuff/explore...pregionset1.htm

HTH

Only the regional settings are set to Romanian, every bit of the OS is in english. I'll try switching them and see what happens, but thing is that those programs work perfectly in another computer running a "clean" version of windoze 98, and only exhibit themselves on my laptop with 98SE2ME installed. Or maybe it's RP7 at fault?

I'll make a backup and reinstall the OS then the packs one by one, testing to see what causes the error. Then i'll post the results.

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Only the regional settings are set to Romanian, every bit of the OS is in english. I'll try switching them and see what happens, but thing is that those programs work perfectly in another computer running a "clean" version of windoze 98, and only exhibit themselves on my laptop with 98SE2ME installed. Or maybe it's RP7 at fault?

I'll make a backup and reinstall the OS then the packs one by one, testing to see what causes the error. Then i'll post the results.

To my knowledge RP7 installs different "localized" [language specific] USER.EXE + SYSDM.CPL files for a bunch of other languages besides English.

You'll have to ask Tihiy which languages are included in RP7.

98SE2ME contains + installs only English files.

HTH

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Make sure your theme fonts (Display > Properties > Appearance) are still the original ones (should be Central European if you installed the OS from the very beginning with regional settings Romanian). AFAIK, RP7 installs its themes with Cyrillic font encoding and that may be the issue.

RP7 also has a Compatibility option in file properties, if I'm not mistaken (haven't run it in a while). You may wanna try setting it to 'Windows98' for the affected applications, see if it helps.

There's also a tiny quirk in 98SE2ME that MDGx worked around by adding an option to keep/restore the fonts folder. In my experience, with a similar system (English with regional settings Romanian), I had to back up the original Fonts folder in Windows, install 98SE2ME, then restore the fonts folder. Otherwise the CE fonts were replaced by Western ones. This should now be possible from 98SE2ME options.

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Make sure your theme fonts (Display > Properties > Appearance) are still the original ones (should be Central European if you installed the OS from the very beginning with regional settings Romanian). AFAIK, RP7 installs its themes with Cyrillic font encoding and that may be the issue.

RP7 also has a Compatibility option in file properties, if I'm not mistaken (haven't run it in a while). You may wanna try setting it to 'Windows98' for the affected applications, see if it helps.

There's also a tiny quirk in 98SE2ME that MDGx worked around by adding an option to keep/restore the fonts folder. In my experience, with a similar system (English with regional settings Romanian), I had to back up the original Fonts folder in Windows, install 98SE2ME, then restore the fonts folder. Otherwise the CE fonts were replaced by Western ones. This should now be possible from 98SE2ME options.

The themes' font gets set to Western, and i can switch them back to CE but then it's bye bye colorful theme. :) And the text in the aforementioned programs is still messed up. I don't see a option to restore my fonts in 98SE2ME options, but right now i don't care as i'm confronted with much more serious hardware issues. I hate toshiba!!!! I think i'm going to throw this laptop out the window as it already wasted a lot more of my time fixing it rather than using it.

More details here.

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I'm afraid we're going off-topic here... :blushing:

You won't lose the theme if you save it first, after changing fonts. Tihiy mentioned that in the RP thread.

Anyway, I really don't think this is a 98SE2ME issue, but more like RP7 one. And for such tests, I think that toy can still be of good help. ;)

So please try that 'Compatibility' suggestion for starters. And if won't work, reinstall 98SE with regional settings Romanian from the very setup, install 98SE2ME carefully looking for fonts backup option (and if it's not there anymore, just back'em up manually), restore fonts, install RP7 and look around for Unicode capabilities (I think it was Run > rpconfig at some time) and 'Compatibility' tab in applications' Properties page.

Good luck! :hello:

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You won't lose the theme if you save it first, after changing fonts. Tihiy mentioned that in the RP thread.

Anyway, I really don't think this is a 98SE2ME issue, but more like RP7 one. And for such tests, I think that toy can still be of good help. ;)

So please try that 'Compatibility' suggestion for starters. And if won't work, reinstall 98SE with regional settings Romanian from the very setup, install 98SE2ME carefully looking for fonts backup option (and if it's not there anymore, just back'em up manually), restore fonts, install RP7 and look around for Unicode capabilities (I think it was Run > rpconfig at some time) and 'Compatibility' tab in applications' Properties page.

Good luck! :hello:

I know that i won't lose the theme forever, but i do lose it if i want to keep those fonts.

Anyway, you just saved my a**. Checking the "Force LAMESkin to use compatible skinning mode" option fixed the problem! :thumbup Thought you meant the KernelEx compatibility settings, just now i've noticed that RP7 itself has some too.

Thanks again!

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I'm a little bit unclear here and suspect that there may be others on here in the same boat. First of all, your work is outstanding and deeply appreciated. I was working with 98SE2ME back when you first put it on your site and 98SE was still the norm. I'm clear where its roots come from and how it progressed. What I'm not totally clear about is how 98SE2XP and 98MP10 relate to 98SE2ME. I see that your last release of 98SE2ME was after your release of 98MP10, so I suspect that these two packages accomplish different goals.

Was the aim of 98SE2XP similar to that of 98SE2ME in implementing as many of the goodies as possible from XP into 98 just like 98SE2ME did with ME, or was 98SE2XP primarily in support of getting MP10 to run? Does installing 98SE2ME and 98MP10 give us the latest and greatest, or is there some redundancy/conflicts there? To me it's obvious that we would all want as many goodies from all three OS's as possible, so I'm just getting my head on straight here.

On a different note, are you aware of what the differences are between the ME shell swap and the updated shell in autopatcher and SP3Beta? All three projects are pretty new, so I was wondering if you had looked at the others?

Thanks and here's a big "Hoah" for drivin' on!

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Hi MDGx,

I have an interesting one with 98SE2ME.

I updated my network card driver and Windows reinstalled the networking files...

The following files got back-dated to 98SE versions:

\WINDOWS

ARP.EXE

TRACERT.EXE

FTP.EXE

NETSTAT.EXE

PING.EXE

ROUTE.EXE

INETMIB1.DLL

\WINDOWS\SYSTEM

LOCPROXY.EXE

LOCPRXY2.EXE

ROUTETAB.DLL

QOSNAME.DLL

RPCLTC3.DLL

RPCLTS3.DLL

DHCPCSVC.DLL

ICMP.DLL

IPCFGDLL.DLL

NDISWMI.SYS

I replaced these files with the Me versions again.

Now the question here is if it is possible to avoid this?

Gape's uSP uses a SP2.CAB file that is referenced first when Windows wants to reinstall files.

Is it possible to do something similar with 98SE2ME?

Even if it is dynamically created when 98SE2ME is installed.

Something to ponder.

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The driver manager didn't put up questions like this file is an older version? It is recommended that you keep the newer file, with the choice available to click?

Theoretically it's supposed to do that.

I recall that sometimes that sp2 cab would confuse some driver installs, opening a box saying it couldn't find files that had me browsing all over the place for things it finds fine if that sp2 cab isn't on the system. So I didn't like that method.

Tough to find a perfect way to handle this.

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