Win 98SE Walks the Plank??

[Wiz Feinberg]

Eric;
Have you tried downloading, installing and defaulting to Mozilla Firefox? Many of us here use it and it is easy to set it to be the default browser that launches from hyper links. The only abberation I see is if I click on a link to a .htm or .shtml file it still wants to open in IE 7. I could fix that if I cared to, but I don't right now.

Get Firefox here.

[Eric West]

Well Wiz, I tried Firefox some time ago but whenever I opened my bookmarks it froze solid. I "upgraded" it again later and it froze on that and different things.

It's not hard to choose opening any file without IE, as we know. Just a matter of choosing NS7.1 in my Preferences.

These particular programs: Taxcut06 and the HP installation disk, called SPECIFICALLY for IE. That's what blew a gasket in my program.

(On my Original Win98, I had IE5. (THIS IS SIDE ISSUE). It crashed hard a lot and was a flawed version. I myself had to find the cure, which was to open a CAB file in my Win98 disk (which I, by the way have copied to a partitioned D drive, and pointed to in my Registry for the "insert Win98 disk" command* reinstalled the particular corrupted IE file from the CAB file, and it was fixed until the next time I shut down IE5 with the least little thing loading. Incidentally I found the fix and posted it it for tons of others having similar problems and screwing up their puters trying to uninstall it before the upgrade to IE6 came out and lots of us used it. *THIS is what I want to do with the "connect to the internet for installation files" in whatever part of my registry it shows up in and "fool it" similarly.)

It doesnt' matter how many different Internet Browsers I have, from Netscape, or Firefox, to Opera, or any other I can think of.

( I have never had a problem with NS7.1 and don't have any intention of upgrading to a program that is designed to keep you downloading "fixes" and is susceptable to every virus and bug out there.)

These two NEW programs are calling for Internet Explorer 6.2 or higher, which is NOT available anywhere I can find or they ABORT INSTALLATION. REGARDLESS OF HOW I SET MY PREFERENCES.

IE 6.2 WILL and DOES run in Win98SE, but any place I can find it has been hunted down and turned off. This kind of surprised me.

To me, this goes much farther than forcing an unwanted IE onto me, or internet service, neither of which I objected to a lot, to demanding that I scrap a perfect OS, AND a computer that would run all my complicated and exacting Multimedia apps for a decade, and like I said, "upgrade" to a system like XP, that has been dumped like Win98SE for a version that expects me to turn my Computer into a High Speed/ High Def, Movie Theater in order to use Tax Preparation Software, or install a simple new HP Printer.

It's not like I am throwing a fit because my Commodore won't run Windows 3.11..

Anybody knowing of the way to address this problem, I'd appreciate information from.

Or anybody else trying to convince me that my computer and OS is obsolete, I guess you can try.

I'm going to keep it for music use even after I build a new system.

I want to find a way around this ridiculous "requirement" for installation of simple programs.

Thanks.

I needed the practice typing anyhow..



EJL

[Wiz Feinberg]

IE 6.2 WILL and DOES run in Win98SE, but any place I can find it has been hunted down and turned off.

Eric, try this file. No promises, no guarantees.

Good luck.

[C. Christofferson]

Again, this may or may not be relevant but just wanted to mention the 'compatibility' option (which is probly so obvious it needn't be said). Right click a program's icon on the desktop, then the compatibility tab. Allows you to run an older program that might not be compatible with a newer OS.

[Eric West]

Nothing like that in 98SE..

I'm coming up with a plan to build a new puter as mentioned, and side by side it with the old one transferring as much as I can with CDRs. XP Home I guess. I"m not sure what the "64 bit OS" thing is. Maybe somebody can "splain me".

It does dismay me that eventually XP will find itself on the same plank.

Well it's either that or the AG sues MS again and the NASDAQ crashes. (There's actually a legitimate case this time...)

No thanks. b0b would end up having to sell pottery in Monterey Bay...

I have found a few G5s on Craigslist that look interesting.

We'll see.

Also Wiz the "message says" I have to get "IEsp1"and install it to run your patch. I think I know what it is, so thanks. I'll see if I have time to download it from MS and try your patch.

At least I have a nice flatscreen thin monitor to use on whatever I come up with.

I wonder if an XP machine could be network connected to a 98SE machine.

Any thoughts?

Thanks so far, and for any more thoughts.

Things were so much simpler with my Commodore..



EJL

[Dave Potter]

It does dismay me that eventually XP will find itself on the same plank.

But, you have to realize that they ALL will - Mac OS X will, MS XP will, MS Vista will, whatever comes after Vista will, ... yada, yada. Only thing in the computer world that's constant is change.

I have found a few G5s on Craigslist that look interesting.

And doesn't it fascinate you wondering WHY they're selling them?

At least I have a nice flatscreen thin monitor to use on whatever I come up with.

Don't look now, but Bill Gates wants to blank out that monitor with his Vista DRM if it's not capable of handling *legal* premium content (and there's nothing on the market now that is).

Things were so much simpler with my Commodore..

But they were much more limited too.

[C. Christofferson]

Yeah Eric youre right. Compatibility mode isn't on 98 but on XP. I left out that after right clicking the program icon, then click properties , then the compatibility tab. It gives you the choice to run the program 'compatibly' as/with win95, 98, ME, NT, & 2000. Also on that tab is the option to run that program at 640 * 480 screen resolution, run at 256 colors, plus a couple other things. (i found that running at 640*480 at a lower color depth that it used quite a bit less CPU %, which increased the headroom enough to smoothly run a program i was using that would often top out at 100%, thus crippling responsiveness) FWIW.

[Dave Potter]

Also on that tab is the option to run that program at 640 * 480 screen resolution, run at 256 colors, plus a couple other things.

Ouch! Just, Ouch! It hurts to read that.

Anytime I have to run at less than the native resolution of my monitor, 1600 X 1200 32-bit, I start looking to find out what's wrong.

[Eric West]

I swung by the local Office Depot yesterday to check out what they're setting out.

I was pretty surprised to see ALL of their machines, "Emachines" "Gateway" and HPs running Vista.

What was really surprising is that most of them only had 1 gig of RAM. The Bare Minimum stated for Vista. A couple of them moved REAL slow. Reminded me of the old 166mhz machine my spouse plays solitaire and does email on.

I suppose it's early on, and they were forced to do it. There were spaces for "new machines" coming in on the shelf, but still.. Some of them had 3+ghz processors, but the most was 2gigs of RAM.

Myself, I have always thought that the least I would have is 3 times the minimum. U til now it's worked pretty good, even for recordng stuff.

I'm put off for a while till I see what the first big screwup with VIsta is, and then will have my local ENU place put one together. At least a 945 Dual Core with a bunch of USBs 2 HDDs, a couple 1394s a DVRW, and enough RAM to run a bunch of stuff. I should be able to get out of there for way under a grand. Maybe it won't be obsolete in two years...

We'll see.

I"m making backup CDs for data transfer in the future, hoping email apps will "import" to newer browsers..

Oi Vey...

EJL

[Wiz Feinberg]

Eric;
Is this a wrap or are you still pursuing a solution for your Windows 98 computer?

[Eric West]

Not at all Wiz. I could use this machine and OS for another year or so if there is a registry or other fix for this barring of 98SE form new software and hardware installation disks due to the demand of IE6+.

Did any info come to light?

I'm sure there are BBSes buzzing with it

I've just been leading a real busy life.

Thanks for any info and in general your help and concern.

Gotta run.



EJL

[Wiz Feinberg]

I do know that it is possible to edit your Windows Registry to change the user agent string reported by IE. I don't have access to a Windows 98 machine, but you could search your registry to find the existing user agent string, then edit the AB String value that is used to report it. That might fool the programs in question into thinking you have a later version, like tell it to report itself as 6.0.2800.1168

In my installation of XP Professional the main key for this is here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer

Inside that key is a string (AB) value labeled "version" which contains the User-Agent string. If I was going to spoof a User Agent for IE, that is where I would begin. I don't know if W98 has the User Agent in the same key.

I hope this helps.

[Eric West]

Well THANKS Wiz. It's along the line of things I'm going to try.

It's hard to relay how much knowledge a person has of puter stuff. Mine expands and contracts according to immediate needs and then I tend to forget things.

I started out on Win95 and have a couple solid years of crashing, formatting and etc things about once every couple months til I got to the point where I could deal with "DOS", restore things without formatting, and trying to save everything on 100m ZIp DIsks.

Win 98SE was the answer to my prayers with "reg restore" getting me out of more than one total lockup and crash.

I'll try fooling with it or "fooling it". Sometimes you can.

I've got a feeling that the code writers at MS are a little more sophisticated at their nefarious trades..

We'' see.

Thanks again! Maybe something will break and help a LOT of people.



EJL