I just re-installed Windows 98 SE and...

[tish beta2]

[list=1] [*] PD 5.30 installed fine just by clicking the setup.exe file. Last time I had to manually update the G400 Max' drivers.[*] I can suddenly use the fourth button and the wheel on my logitech mouseman in Descent 3.[*] PD 5.30 defaults the refreshrate in games to 85hz or as much as the monitor can handle again.[*] Descent 3 seems to be a little smoother...[*] System Shock 2 don't have that horrible control lag any more.[*] My score with q3demo1 at normal settings in 800x600 went from 60.5 to 65.3 FPS.[*] The mousepointer don't pause when the HDs are heavy accessed.[*] Explorer don't seem to "miss" some of my double-clicks any more. [*] The PowerDesk tabs in display properties instantly appears, instead of kinda wait for a sec.[/list=a]

In addition to this I just wanto say that last time I reinstalled win98se was last week, and all I did since then was installing the PD 5.25 drivers, a few games and yesterday the EZ cd creator.

So, if you feel something is not quite right, got for it!


Thanks + Best Regards
Fish

[DuRaNgO]

nice going!
jim

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PIII-500mhz @ 620!
Abit BE6 mobo
128mb pc-100
Mill G400(YAHOO!!!) 32mb @ 120%)
PD 5.30
Maxtor 13.2 gb Uata66 hdd
SB Live!
Winblows 98se
DX7
THREE BIG FANS, six little ones and a case that sounds like a turbine engine...doh!

[Mark F]

nice to hear some good news

glad your system running better

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD

[tish beta2]

Yeah, it was a very pleasant experience, but it gave me this impression of windows 98 (or the 9x kernel in general):


<center> - - - The Pyramid OS - - - </center>

When windows98 boots up, it's like when you build a pyramid of cards ( /\/\/\ ach you know what I imagine ). Now you know how careful you must be and pray after each card you add on that everything don't fall apart. Well eventually, if you got a new deck of cards, it's "pretty" easy to finish the pyramid. And so it is with windows98, after a fresh install, you're pretty sure it'll boot nicely up after the first couple of days.

However. Since we usually add new cards to this pyramid (install new programs, and run them simoultaneously), it get's more unstable (because of the weight of the new cards) so we must be careful. We won't be lucky all the time, so sooner or later one of those cards we add "crash". And then, depending on where that card was in the pyramid, the pyramid either falls completely down, or just a side-row, or lastly only three at the top.

Let's say it wasn't a card in the middle, rather one at the top. Then we don't have to start all over again (reboot), and can hopefully just add another card where that other card falled down. What's bad here is that when the other card crashed, we couldn't remove it. So we had to put other cards atop of that horizontal card.

And anyone who has ever tried that with a real deck of cards know it's a hard task to continue. It will probably rage the hole pyramid because of the different weight and the other card get a little higher etc. Ok, let's try to remove it. Then well either crash the hole pyramid or maybe it will actually work!

Ok this is all terrible, but what about windowsNT, win2k, linux, solaris etc etc?

Well, they are a hole different story. Imagine now a completely horizontale 4x4 set of boxes. These boxes, as you easily can imagine, are very fair to set-up. Just put them down on the ground, nicely side by side, and you're done! So what about if you wanto add more boxes (run/install applications/drivers/aips)? Well that's no-problemo! just stack them up side by side with the other boxes so it will eventually become a horizontal 4x5, 5x5, 5x6 etc.

And if any of these rolls over (crashes), it's because some other box was nasty or the box that rolled over wasn't really a quadric box. Also, it usually won't disturb any of the other boxes, at least not the important 4x4 set in the middle. And lastly, you can just replace that box any time it falls over (crashes).


I'm very melodramatic here, but this is what I feel about the win9x kernel vs. the winNT kernel / linux kernel after lived through dos-win311-win95-winNT-win98-win2k.

[SCompRacer]

If the System File Checker,located in Accessories/System Tools/System Information, is used in Win 98 regularly so that you keep it updated, you will see any files that get changed after adding software/updates. For full features, enable the check for changed/check for deleted files under settings.

The VCUMI, or Version Conflict Manager, will list backed up and current files. This is located in the Windows folder, make a shortcut to desktop and you can choose to swap the replaced/backed up file with the current version.

Installing the reskit found in the tools folder on the Win 98 CD loads another useful utility called Microsoft File Information. This allows you to select file by name or extension to get details of what the file is, what it does, which cab folder it's in and where it should be.

Using these utilities has allowed me to keep from a dreaded re install.

I also use PowerQuest Drive image to back up my entire system in event of disaster. 20 minutes later, I am back in the world of the living with all my software, updates and tweaks. I use this to load my current system on another SCSI drive for "what if" experiments.

Win 98 SE may not be the best op system, but at least it has included tools that allow you to monitor it to keep it healthy.

[Brent]

Hey, can I use that card story- great stuff.
SCompRacer-
Can you give me your opinion on this?
If the system file checker and version conflict manager are put to use as intended, how do you select the right file to restore? Where I am coming from is that sometimes a newer file is a good thing and sometimes not. Also, 98 looks at the date of a file to establish its newness and sometimes a bad software or driver publisher/manufacturer uses an bad old file and gives it a date newer than a current good 98 file. I would love to use these two tools but feel that a lot of time I would be guessing. Do you have a solution to this?

[DoctorH]

Windows 98 SE has been running fine for a full 3 days straight since i've installed 5.30. (When I say 3 days, I mean 3 days without a single reboot!) I've run shitloads of programs, even doing the "unheard of" ALT-Tabbing out of Quake3a. Internet, games, word processing, email, overclocking my G200, nothing crashes this thing. I'm still at 80% resources.

3 days, isn't that some sort of record for Win98???

[SCompRacer]

Hi Brent, for the most part I leave well enough alone if everything works. At present I have 8 files in VCMUI with older versions replacing newer ones that I left alone.

The most interesting files in Windows are the older dates with newer version numbers, especially when they are smaller in size. Someone playing with file numbers? Who knows.

You are right about one thing, you are guessing at times when you make a change. I only change things when I start experiencing problems, then work with my app's normally to see if they are OK. Those problems usually start after updates or new software are installed. So I will keep a record of files changed before updating SFC as it may take time before you get to a program that it will have a negative effect on.

For instance, installing Win 98 SE over Win 98 with all my app's and their respective updates changed 36 files as reported by SFC. Then I started having problems with Adaptec EZ CD Creator. SFC reported the aspi layer files had changed to older files, so I reverted back to the Adaptec patch to correct that. After installing Office 2000, my Diamond control panel for my VooDoo II cards was scrambled. (Don't worry, they left when MAX moved in.) Using SFC reported the riched.dll files were changed. I expanded the Diamond drivers and found the original riched.dll and used it, problem solved.

Alot of trial and error, along with documenting, but I have alot of software and hardware that get along well together while others have problems with less.

But if you do not update SFC after each software install/patch/update, you have to wade through alot of files and may not be able to identify which is the offending one. And if you do not keep track of what got changed when, it's hard to know where you are at.

Just use caution, don't change anything if it works OK, and document the changes you make so you can go back if you have too.

[Ricardo]

Hi Fish,

Did you had DX7 installed before ? I also lost some fps in Quake3 and had lots of problems with my force feedback wheel after installing DX7. Reinstalling win98SE solved all this problems.

Regards,
Ricardo

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P3-500, Shuttle HOT-661/P, 512Meg HSDRAM,WD Expert 18GB, Segate Medalist 6GB, AOpen 40X CDROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, G400 MAX, SB Live Value, 3Com 10/100 (3C905B-TX) , Sony F400 19"

[tish beta2]

If I was using windows98 a little more I might have tried gettin in to that stuff... Now I stay as much as I can in windows2000, until I wanto play a game that don't work there

guess I'm too lazy to do it and what about the registry...?


Thank You + Yours Sencerily
Fish