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Auto-Patcher For Windows 98se (English)


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Thanks PROBLEMCHYLD, and that's what was done. Sorry for the long post that could confuse!

Yes 98SE2ME, 98SE2XP, 98SEMP10 in that order. With rebooting after each rebooted just to be sure. But the last 2 there was what screwed things up. As I said I'm now running without them. Just 98SE2ME, which was fine except for the My Computer icon staying with the old one on the desktop but the newer one somehow being the default choice in Display Properties, but not applying for some reason.

Drugwash,

I'll take a closer look at the Explorer.exe that is active and the other 2 in the MDGx backup files. I was too crazy from all the installing and updating to take a good careful look at things at the time.

And, soperific, no experimenting on this system at the moment as it looks like it may be able to stay. In that long post I did state that the problems were fixed after I managed to remove 98SE2XP and 98SEMP10.

Incidently, I fixed the MSINFO update caused error with the Internet Explorer information being blank in System Information by extracting that problem file using System File Checker. After a reboot all the information was back.

So, I do suggest that the unofficial MSINFO fix be taken out of Autopatcher until that file is set not to be replaced with the newer, buggy one in the update. Well, it's a choice. I guess you could leave it for now as the rest of the update is a security patch? And we'll deal with that problem file manually. Up to you!

No critisism's here. System was messed not by Autopatcher, but by some combination of Autopatcher and the 98SE2XP and 98SEMP10 programs. For some reason, when I had been using Gape's pack first then Autopatcher those updates hadn't caused the problems. I'll just live without those 2 until it can be figured out why it happened.

Extremely pleased with the progress of the Autopatcher! Even though I did install a few things first it saved a lot of time and the system's running fine so far. And that's the whole point. Make things GO!

Errr, I added the patch for Shell Icon Cache size increase myself. Did it before the Autopatcher ( I think. Starting to forget!). Was that thing included in the Autopatcher? I didn't notice it in the long list of stuff it installed.

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• Will you include Visual C runtimes v6, v7.0, v7.1 and probably v8 (Visual C 2005) as well?

Its coming in the next version ..

I've started investigating what to install with regard to visual basic runtime files and I want some feedback before going ahead with coding ....

Q1 -- is it worth offering v1-3 ?? I remember a very long time ago needing a vb3 file but that was in the last millenium it was that long ago.

Q2 -- should I offer the rest as an all-in-one package? Or should I split it up into their individual versions.

Q3 -- where can i see more info about v7 and above?

Any help much appreciated!

EDIT: well, I know its only been a few hours, but Ive gone ahead with coding the VBruntime 6 pack into AP --- I've decided to put it into the Critical & Recommended System Updates module. I suppose the alternatives would be: the Optional components module, or the system stability module. Any other suggestions or comments?

Edited by soporific
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I always stick vbrun 1, 2, and 3 into the system folder and usually use MDGx's vbrun6SP6 FULL to get that installed. There used to be a comctrl (?) update that also patched 2 files after SP6 but I think MDGx's latest already includes that.

I thought you had VB6 in the Autopatcher so I didn't install it myself this time. Am I missing out on anything? It's possible that programs that need it will include it in their program setup, but I do think it would be a good idea to include it.

Always getting confused between that and Visual Studio 6. Heh. I'd really rather not deal with those files myself.

Put 'em in. Get 'em patched. Make it all automagic like! I love it.

Soon it'll be as easy to get 98 set up as it is XP! For that I use RyanVM's stuff and make a new XP cd when he comes out with a new update. Don't always wind up using them but it's always nice to have a fresh XP cd with all the latest updates already integrated.

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I agree with having them all in one pack. After all, the files are not that big (around 1MB each or so) and there still are applications that do not provide them optionally. I'm thinking about gdiplus.dll being added, as it's needed by some newer applications (I know for sure some of Miranda IM's modules need it).

However, you will have to pay attention to VC2005, because that one is a lot different than the previous ones: it creates %windir%\winsxs with a few subfolders and installs its stuff there instead of %windir%\System. While VC6/7 can simply be dropped in the System folder even without registration, the VC2005 files will never work that way.

Also a good idea might be upgrading RichEdit (riched20.dll) to 5.30.23.1226, as it may be needed by recent applications. Personally I tried to use a more recent version of it (5.40.x.x and 5.50.x.x) but I found them to be faulty regarding a few functions while testing in Miranda IM, so I had to downgrade to 5.30.x.x, which is working fine for me.

Speaking for myself, I think the biggest, the supreme achievement for all 98SE users would be to have absolutely all possible updates/upgrades/patches/whatnot in one single pack - be it a modular or integrated one - and best of the best, integrated with the Unattended Boot Disk project, so that everything would be on one single CD, installable when selected in the UBD menu.

But that would require cooperation between certain wise people around here. Could that be achieved? I surely hope so. Because time is running away, and Win9x is dying a bit day by day...

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Also a good idea might be upgrading RichEdit (riched20.dll) to 5.30.23.1226, as it may be needed by recent applications. Personally I tried to use a more recent version of it (5.40.x.x and 5.50.x.x) but I found them to be faulty regarding a few functions while testing in Miranda IM, so I had to downgrade to 5.30.x.x, which is working fine for me.

Really? That's very bad, Riched20.dll 4.0 (5.40.x.x) is required for Metapad and many other programs to work with non-ASCII codepages, like East/Central European codepage 1250.

This topic was alaredy discussed here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=72448 and the conclusion was that it is safe to use riched20.dll version 5.40.11.2218 because it does not break anything.

Here you can see the difference:

Richedit 3.0 (all versions):

metapad-5.31.23.1224-fixedsys-easteu.gif

Richedit 4.0 (all versions):

metapad-5.40.11.2212-fixedsys-easteu.gif

This is also noted here: http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/faq.html#Q18

This problem si common for Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and even Windows Vista.

Therefore I have opened the incident # SRQ060526601424 with Microsoft and asked them to correct this bug but after several months of e-mailing and phone calls the result was:

After a long time with testing and conferencing with my colleagues from the US and also discussing this with our Unit Manager regarding this issue here I am to give you an update and some more info:

I regret to inform you that Peter Constable, Program Manager for Windows Globalization maintains that this is a “by design” behavior. Here’s some more info from Peter:

Please note some things regarding versions of the RichEdit control:

- When you see “5.30.23.1221”, ignore the initial “5.”; this is version 3.0.

- The system has never shipped version 5.0 of RichEdit. RichEdit is developed by Office, and they are currently developing version 6.x for Office 12. Version 5.0 would only have shipped with Office.

- Version 4.0 of riched20.dll has never been shipped by the system; it has only been shipped by Office. The system ships version 4.x of RichEdit using the file name msftedit.dll.

Furthermore we have discussed the possibility of msftedit.dll being used instead of riched20.dll when building a new application.

For this issue to be further pursued I will need you to send me a business impact plan so that Microsoft can decide whether this should be pursued or not.

I’ve already arranged to have a conference call with my manager to discuss this issue if you’d like and I’m also fully available and happy to help you with building the business impact plan if needed.

So Microsoft will not correct any bug without "business impact plan", even if you have paid for the support.
As agreed your existing support case SRQ060526601424 will now be closed. Customer Satisfaction is very important to us and we would like to be sure that you are very satisfied with the management of this case.

Therefore, if we can be of any further assistance on this case or if you have any suggestions for improving our service please do not hesitate to contact either myself or my manager Bruno Ribeiro on brunor@microsoft.com so we can ensure you receive our immediate attention.

As discussed with Bruno, I have forwarded the info and documentation regarding riched20.dll you provided, plus your workaround suggestion, to the program group in order for them to further study the issue and come up with a KB article. This, unfortunately, might take a couple of weeks.

As this case was related to a design issue, I have closed this case as non decrement for you.

It was a pleasure working with you. I only wished all our customers documented their cases as well as you did. Thank you!

Should you need any further assistance with this matter, please feel free to contact me directly and I will be happy to assist.

Very polite response - but nothing was done yet, even the bug was not documented in MSKB yet.

Back to RICHED20.DLL. Are you able to document your problems with Richedit 4.0 and Miranda? I don't use Miranda so I'd like to test them. The serious problem with Richedit 3.0 and 3.1 and Windows with default codepage 1250 (defualt in Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian versions of Windows 98) has to be solved some way. Maybe there is some other workaround? Or someone will be able to patch riched20.dll 3.0?

My understanding is so that Richedit does a test if the character is supported in the currently selected font. If it is missing, then it switches to different font that contains it - just to be able to display the character and not empty rectangle only. Unfortunately there is a bug in Richedit 3.0, 3.1 and even 5.0 that causes font switching even when the character is supported by the currently selected font.

Regards,

Petr

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Not being a programmer but merely a tester/user, I couldn't offer specific technical details, but during testing one of the plug-ins created for Miranda IM - namely spellchecker - I noticed that the wrong words that should have been marked with red wave, dotted, thick or other kind of underscore were only marked with thin line having the same color as the font. Replacing RichEdit v5.50 with v5.40 exhibited the same behavior. Downgrading to v5.30, the underscore immediately started to behave normally as selected in the plug-in's options. So this is not a problem of wrong characters being displayed, but rather one of missing/wrong features.

One other issue that I noticed was in the official eMule client: on the Servers page, at the bottom, there's a tab called "Server info". In there it's a link called "Click HERE to check for a new version" (or similar). With RichEdit v5.40 or 5.50 installed, the link was not clickable, there was only a line of simple text. Downgrading to RichEdit v5.30 fixed that issue too - the line became a link again, that would open the project's main page in the default browser.

Bottom line is that it may be possible to be a bad implementation of some features in certain applications, where programmers have used only RichEdit v5.30 (at most) to test them. But it may also be that RichEdit versions above v5.30 have different implementations of some functions (or even bugs, why not?) that make them slightly incompatible with previous ones. After all, if those versions would have been 100% safe and compatible, I suppose MS would have shipped them as system upgrades. Instead, they preferred to ship them only with the Office suite, which may offer a clue regarding their limited compatibility.

Anyway, this is just a supposition of mine, so if anyone knows better, please disregard my posts on the matter.

Petr: Miranda IM is open-source and so are it's plug-ins (with very few exceptions). You're welcome to test it in any combination you wish, to confirm or deny my allegations. Please note that some of the alpha-staged plug-ins can only be found in their dedicated forum threads. Personally I've used a nightly v0.7 build for testing, available from the Development page.

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Soporfic:

I downloaded and installed autopatcher 1.6 at least three 3 times all with the same result. When the dos window appeared it gives the message "bad command and or file". What am I doing wrong? Is it my machine? I followed the same procedure with autopatcher 1.0 and had no difficulty when installing your patch.

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I downloaded and installed autopatcher 1.6 at least three 3 times all with the same result. When the dos window appeared it gives the message "bad command and or file". What am I doing wrong? Is it my machine? I followed the same procedure with autopatcher 1.0 and had no difficulty when installing your patch.

You need to run 1.5 and then run 1.6 over it. Getting a 'bad command and or file' message tells me you are most likely trying to run 1.0 and then 1.6 over it. This won't work, sorry. If you have tried the above then i'm not sure why this is happening. If you ran 1.0 successfully then its certainly not your machine.

I am nearly finished with 1.7 and someone has kindly offered to host it for me so if you have no luck then I would wait until 1.7 is available.

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Soporific:

Thank your response - Let me say that I think that your autopatch system is a great idea. Not long ago I crashed my system and having a clean install I was working with autopatch 1.5 and 1.6. When I opened the 1.5 it apeared to install correctly but when the dos window appeared I received the bad command message. I think I will take your advise and wait until 1.7 is released. Again, this is a great idea it has all of the components and hotfixes needed for the 98 system. I await for autopatch 1.7. thank you

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Soporific:

Thank your response - Let me say that I think that your autopatch system is a great idea. Not long ago I crashed my system and having a clean install I was working with autopatch 1.5 and 1.6. When I opened the 1.5 it apeared to install correctly but when the dos window appeared I received the bad command message. I think I will take your advise and wait until 1.7 is released. Again, this is a great idea it has all of the components and hotfixes needed for the 98 system. I await for autopatch 1.7. thank you

Thanks for your reply and feedback about autopatcher, its been rather scarce...

Please confirm that you have tried the following:

1) run the autopatcher 1.5 file

2) exit out of an error messages you get and exit out of all DOS boxes

3) run the autopatcher 1.6 file

- the program should now open and run correctly.

version 1.7 will be out very soon and so you can always try that one -- I will release a 1.7 update and also the full file now that I have a hoster so there should be a solution soon!

regarding MS Agent 2.0:

Should I include this in autopatcher?

Edited by soporific
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Soporific:

Thank you for your interest and response. Since my system last crashed I haven't downloaded autopatcher 1.5 and 1.6. I will download and follow your instructions. Will let you know how things work out.

bayou 75

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@ Soporific: it's possible to localize autopatcher personalizing, or better, remove some updates in this pack?

Naturally AutoPatcher for windows 98 SE, if you give me permission, will contain all updates localized by me in italian and ufficial patches/components from microsoft.

Unfortunately, some updates aren't in my language and I've necessity to reduce the pack, also for my requirement.

For all testing I've a real machine with 98SE.

Let me know.

Max

Edited by Max_04
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