98SE Tips & Techniques

[EAT MY DUST]

Hey people, ok there's no secret here, you see my system, the most important thing is your bios settings, 80 wire-drive cable and ATA133.

Unless you have a fast IDE your not going anyfaster, I can run a old ATA mode 1 drive and it slows my machine down large.

My next step is getting a SATA drive and a Nforce2 MOBO, I got dual channel ram already and a good chip but I'm tapped for now.

You need lots of ram, and ditch your swap file and a few tweaks they have on this forum.

I don't bother with any "packs" unless I unzip them and grab the goodies but that,s it.

NOW as for flash player, ADOBE SUCKS!!, I hate adobe and now they own flash, and all macromedia versions became "a security risk".

Funny seems the other way around !!

I'm none too happy about it, also Yahoo Mess. uses Flash for all their animations including talking emotions and such.

So if you like white boxes with a red X everywhere then go uninstal it.

I'm hangin' in there until a windows compatible Linux OS comes out I hear there's one on the way.

Ther yah go... it's got to much control over your PC...

Ummm no, flash is junk now and the setting don't work, it did, but now it don't, that's not windows fault !

"I keep a copy of my drive, if things look funny I just format and copy the drive back, works everytime."

I've been wanting to do that for years... What's your formula?..

"I use this Data Lifeguard Tools 11.2 for Windows I don't think it checks for a WD disk."

Never tried DLT..? Please explain...

Get a spare harddrive and format it, make sure it's big enough.

Install the DLG and reboot, then select drive to drive copy.

copy you drive C to D or what ever drive is the new blank one.

It copies everything down to the dirt and it's an exact clone.

Now when you disk scews up, format it and do the reverse, forever.....

"I have reg mech. 2.01 and window washer 5.0(5.1.0.2) with custom plug-ins for flash."

I have RegMech and PConPoint, and CCleaner.. I dumped WW for good.. it was way too slow, and didn't take out all the crap that Uninstaller and CCleaner does...

"I have S&D too, I threw my ball mouse aross the parking lot a long time ago."

Are you talking "little rubber-ball mouse" or "big red marble-mouse"?..

Window washer has been on my system since I had a P133 and it is was slow, but not with a 2.2ghz cpu......., also I see it is removing kb's of data, CCleaner blanks out when deleting many files so who know where they went ?

And I use a laser mouse now with the lil scroll wheel, USB plugged.

I also broke my glass kitchen table slamming that lame a$$ ball mouse.

Edited June 18, 2006 by EAT MY DUST

[KingAuther]

"I don't use mozilla usually but I have it on my disk so I just ran it and ZA asked me whether I wanted to allow it to access the net or not. What's wrong there ?"

That's what a firewall is supposed to do... Try Tiny Personal Firewall... and block everything from connecting to the Net, configured to send up a popup when a rule is touched, and edit the rules as you go.. and set permissions to only that which you want to connect... I used Tiny Personal Firewall to block IE & OE permanently.. so I won't be plagued by all the insecurity holes... I use Mozilla Suite (SeaMonkey).. it has everything to make Interneting safe and comfy and fast...

"Why do you insist that people have got to wait for OS command to be processed before hitting the keyboard or mouse again otherwise it may lock up ? That's a problem I have personally seen arising only on very slow hardware. Or on extremely poorly maintained faster machines maybe."

For one, I'm running state of the art keyboard, mouse, monitor, and printer.. on an old tower... I go easy, and treat it with respect...

OK then, why did you beat-up your little mouse?.. or, What happens when an old PC running W98 is suddenly hit with 20 major commands?.. like by an out of control kid playing smack the keys with fists... It's obvious.. The PC locks up.. and each violent attack very likely causes a bit more cumulative damage to the OS, and very soon a format-C is the order of the day...

Patience is a somethingorother... I see it that these are computers, not jackhammers.. but a delicate piece of equipment... I find that the PC works best when I treat it gentle, giving it reasonable time to do what I told it to do... just like people, and cars, and lawnmowers, and power tools, and philips screwdrivers, and pets, and toothbrushes, and reading glasses, and pretty much everything... The thing is, with all the evolutions of softwares and hardwares these days that people are loading into old machines, they just don't know how much conflict there is in their PC's these days... Little glitches tell you that you've created a problem in the system, with excessive violence and/or incompatible addons and addins... Violence and computers don't mix... You can kill actually a computer's OS by treating it badly...

These old PC's aren't built to work on twenty simultaneous commands... It gets upset.. You gets upset... All you get is a big you emotion, and software and hardware Upset & Mess... Not good for you.. Not good for the computer... I Relax at the computer, like when I'm fly-tying and/or brown-trout fishing... That's when the human's most powerful thought processes activate.. making it east for you to go on a roll, and to create your best stuff....

The neighbor is Extremely high strung... Some days and nights I hear him screaming and cussing at his computer.. and pounding at the keys, and assaulting the little mouse so Hard that his windows and doors are trembling.. and every three or so years his old computer is at the curb with the greenbags, gutted.. and there he is pulling from his car, a new one in the box... Relax.. and get out and breathe some fresh-air... Do some full body exercises... Take some multi-vitamins and multi-minerals and multi-amino acids (that's what you're made of)... Is how I see it...

"I am sorry to tell you this but there is no blast of magnetic flux all over your face with a CRT monitor. Really there isn't any. If there was any, the screen would attract or repel iron but it does not AFAIK. All a CRT monitor emits is light and maybe a few electrons AFAIK. "

Read about the serious health risks and safety precautions for service people servicing CRT equipment.. the user gets some of those health risk dangerous emissions... And the user is about two feet from it for hours per day... What ever happened to all that talk and concern about cellphone microwaves?.. Did they make softer microwaves?.. In my electronics courses, the old military teacher told us about the first two guys who developed radar for the military in WW2... The first one to die was autopsied to find that his internal organs were all cooked brown, like meat in a microwave oven...

You sound way too high strung... Give your body a break and some respect... Try a $100 flatscreen from Wallmart, for a week.. then you can return it for a refund, and go back to your CRT monitor... You'll see...

"I am perfectly happy with the copy of DK lite I have installed. It does not and cannot slow down my OS at all as it is not running (nor has it any hidden file running all the time such as dlls or vxds) when I do not defragment. You could maybe explain how it does slow down your OS so much permanently that you need to uninstall it.'

Sure will... The moment I uninstalled DK, the PC was suddenly running much faster.. and the HD stopped waking every ten-minutes when at rest... Then I ran a search and destroy Regedit.. and that stopped the overly active unnecessary links and holes into my PC's OS... There were a LOT of DK links in the registry that had absolutely nothing to do with defragging-software, Lots!..

I found Power Defrag... It didn't load the system.. There aren't any weird links in its install.. It's honest.. It works fast and clean.. and it does four valuable tasks...

Hey!.. if DK works for you.. that's super... It's not good for my old machines...

Again, the whole point in all this is to get these W98 OS's running at tweak peak...

"Mine does. Well not really, as I have WinME it's WinME that's running super well and fast here."

Cool!.. I've read that ME is troublesome... Hey!.. if you've got yours running at peak.. then you is a computer wizard first class...

"By the way, if you get headaches with CRTs, it is due to a wrong (too low) refresh rate IMO."

The CRT flashes still pix at so many 100-screens per second... I don't get headaches.. I did when I was a TV repair tech, and at times I could even smell the excess ozone from the 35,000 volt HV flyback coils... I've read in photo-edit forums that those using the pen-mouse for duration sure get headaches, because their faces are so close to the screen for so long... The pen-mouse is the pits...

The marble mouse is the "cat's butt"... with it you can sit up to six-feet from the screen, with the remote keyboard on your lap...

The laser mouse is like pushing around a bar of hotel-soap on a piece of filthy draggy rug... With the marble mouse I can write my signature on the screen with two fingers on the big red ball.. and I can use the mouse even when it's cluttered with desk clutter... I never need to move the mouse.. and the filthy mouse-rug is long gone in the garbage where it belongs... With the marble mouse I never get an achy wrist.. not even after many hours of fine photo-editing...

My tips are for you and others to help you relax at the computer.. and help the computer relax around you... If you aren't experiencing any health and computer troubles and slow downs, then my posts aren't for you... If you've got ME running at peak, You the Man...

Edited June 18, 2006 by KingAuther

[eidenk]

Read about the serious health risks and safety precautions for service people servicing CRT equipment.. the user gets some of those health risk dangerous emissions...

What are they those risks ? I believe they are only related to high tension coils and condensators. Touching them may may kill you by electrocution. Even when power is off in the case of charged condensators.

And the user is about two feet from it for hours per day... What ever happened to all that talk and concern about cellphone microwaves?.. Did they make softer microwaves?.. In my electronics courses, the old military teacher told us about the first two guys who developed radar for the military in WW2... The first one to die was autopsied to find that his internal organs were all cooked brown, like meat in a microwave oven...

What has microwave or radar to see with a CRT monitor ?

The marble mouse is the "cat's butt"... with it you can sit up to six-feet from the screen, with the remote keyboard on your lap...

Yeah, and how do those wireless devices communicate with the computer ?

With either microwaves or radio waves, hence you spend hours a day with your cordless keyboard on your lap beaming strong electromagnetic signals in the direct vicinity of your genitals and hours a day with radio waves or microwaves beaming through your hand and body from your mouse.

A CRT monitor certainly generates at least 10.000 times less electromagnetic pollution than that and I am pretty sure 1 million or even 1 billion times less is closer to the truth.

[azagahl]

>>Quoting: "Here is a tip.. Steer clear of this software: UMBPCI, QDMA, and QCDROM."

>Is there tiny chance that the problems you experience in that, might just be software conflicts between those softwares and macromedia

No, I was booting in pure DOS mode with a vanilla 98 installation.

UMBPCI can work properly on my PC if I turning bus mastering off. The other solutions that the author suggested (enabling double buffering, or loading high from a ram disk) did not help. UMBPCI does save a lot of memory, but unfortunately does not provide EMS, which is needed by my SBLive! drivers (SBEINIT.COM).

I will try QDMA/QCDROM/QHIMEM with bus mastering turned off. I'm not very hopeful, though.

[Appleadameve]

Don't have System Restore in Win98SE? just backup all the "system.dat" , "classes.dat" & the "user.dat" files before any viruses invades your PC.

How to restore the backupped resistry files (in cases of virus attacks):

Run "msconfig.exe" & have your access to the System Configuration Utility. then click at the General tab, next at the "Extract File..." button. at the pop-up, browse to the 3 *.dat files quoted above.Located the "classes.dat" first, then once you clicked on the "Start" button … an even smaller window pops up, it has got 2 spaces & 2 buttons to the left, the upper button reads "Restore from" – this is where you should browse to the folder where you’ve stored the backupped "classes.dat" file. The lower button reads "Save file in" – in most cases it’s “C:\Windows” (you usually don’t have to mess with this one since it’s been filled out by window already). Next you need to click on the Ok then another smaller window pops-up & ask if you want to backup the to-be-replaced file or not, you shall click on the "Skip" button because the backup thing isn’t working most of the times… for it just gives the error message than a “Done”. do the same to the "system.dat" & "user.dat" files.

Finally exit the "System Configuration Utility" without rebooting your PC. next & run the "SCANREGW.EXE" to scan the registry for errors, after the scan there should be a no-error-found prompt, click at the "Yes" button to backup the registry. finally restart your PC when being prompted by Windows.

Your better install a program call "FileWatch" to track down any changed or newly created files that could be of an spyware & virus relevent file.

WinXp & WinME's System Restore isn't all perfect, it'll automatically erase your very old day restore points soon or later. System Restore will automatically create a restore point without asking you first! it'll keep creating files & wasting your HDD's space by backupping files over 1.5GB even if you've set the HDD space used for System Restore at 200MB.

[EAT MY DUST]

why not scanreg /restore ?

[galahs]

(pps: another sweet little tweak of his: shave off 20 secs of bootup time by gettin rid of registry references to tape controller/backup stuff... talk about really ancient... w98se spends 20 secs just lookin for old obsolete tape backup/controller stuff, every boot... I've got my boot down to 42 secs now! and that's using a lousy Celeron 1.8 ghz w/only 128kb bottle-neck cache and a cheap crappy 4-yr old Matsonic MS9327e+usb mobo )

I'm keen on learning more about this.

Where and how do you find what registry keys to delete?

[KingAuther]

"I'm keen on learning more about this. Where and how do you find what registry keys to delete?"

Yeah!.. That's exactly what I've been looking for too...

Problem is that everyones PC is loaded different, so their registry entries would be aliightly different... and when you think about it, most of those keys are in there because they are supposed to be, to make the computer run... but we do know that there's a lot of garbage in the registry... There are ugly keys you really do not want in your machine.. and that's what we want to remove from our PC's... Doesn't seem to be much on this topic out there in internet land...

Forsure delete every key labelled macromedia and shockwave... and all the flash keys that are macromedia related...

I do a regedit to delete all the ".com, .org, .net, .msn, .thht, " internet links, so my softwares don't slow the OS, nor spy on me... Sometimes I just delete a key to see what will happen... The worst one lost me my screen...

I'm usually careful, but sometimes I delete keys I really shouldn't have.. that's how we learn on our own... We make mistakes, and correct them, and hopefully we don't do them again...

Probably the best thing would be to get a scrap second PC from a garagesale for about 20-bucks... and mess it up learning what not to do... Some of my garagesale PC's even smoked bigtime while I was learning what not to do... One even blew the top off its pentium chip, exposing the gold wires and chip's inards, back when there were only 64 spyware trojans...

I'm thinking that where you and I are now in learning the computer, our next plan of attack option probably must be to put in a good honest effort to study how the Window's registry actually works...

It seems we need to run ourselves through a bit of an advanced computer course.. Or our messing in the registry will forever be like stabbing at an invisible beast in the dark, and only hurting ourselves...

But I really hate reading books... I love writing, but I can't stand reading other author's stuff.. I find myself forever correcting their messes... When I read a novel, I read the last page, then toss it... The last page tells me that I really don't want to read that author's garbage... and the weird thing is, I was given a library of 40 computer refference books, worth a grand...

Seems we all want to be "bottle & spoonfed"... We are growing lazier by the minute... I'm thinkin' I best be biting my lip, find a cozy chair, gather up some ellusive raw willpower, and open up a few of those very thick, extremely boring computer-books... oh sigh...

Then there are the 4 microsoft OE cache keys that Reg Mech deletes.. and after a reboot, they're back... That one is really bugging me...

Edited June 20, 2006 by KingAuther

[galahs]

I am one to mess around with my PC quite alot.

But I did a search for "tape" in my registry and it didn't reveal many entries. That's why I asked.

The removal of "url" addresses is a great tip though. Thanks.

[KingAuther]

If you really want to see what's running in your computer.. load BlackIce firewall, and go into "advanced protection settings"..

Take great caution to not make a mess in APS... or you'll be sorry... Modify only what you are sure about...

You might want to place a thick pillow on your chair.. you are probably gonna be there a long time...

[LLXX]

Lol, 98se doesn't need a firewall, especially if you're behind a NAT router.

[KingAuther]

Kindly delail the pluses in using a Nat...

..and where are best deals to purchase the best model Nat?..

[clintb]

Kindly delail the pluses in using a Nat...

..and where are best deals to purchase the best model Nat?..

Darned near every consumer level router is NAT based. NAT is generally thrown around as being a firewall technology, but it's just a way of using private, non-routable, addresses internally that are mapped to a single puiblic address. Go a step further and get a hardware router/firewall with SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection). It checks all the packets to see if they're, essentially, "legit".

The big question isn't whether everyone really needs a software firewall on your machine, it's whether you're installing software that would hit the Internet without your knowledge. A hardware firewall will never tell you about the traffic that originates from your PC...it could care less as the internal network is trusted. It's job is to keep the bad guys on the outside from coming inside...your locked front door, so to speak.

[RainyShadow]

If you experience sound skipping and/or modem problems, try adding this to your SYSTEM.INI

[Display]
busthrottle=1

Believed to work on systems with PCI video.

Could someone test this and provide some feedback?

[EAT MY DUST]

SPI Firewall

Can't block Java, Active X code & cookies

Edited June 26, 2006 by EAT MY DUST