WINDOWS 98/ME: S.O.S.!
I knew it was coming, because upgrading Internet Explorer has been required in the past, to maintain Internet access: the Death of Windows 98/ME.
And now, it seems that "The Time Has Come": For the second time, "Internet Explorer has encountered an error and needs to close" has been followed by a "Upgrade to IE 7 required" Microsoft web page IE restart, accompanied by a "Sorry IE7 is unavailable for your operating system" message. IS THIS THE LONG DREADED START OF THE 'DEATH THROES' OF WINDOWS 98 + ME??? SAVE OUR SHIP!

After doing a "Internet Explorer 7" MSFN search, it appears no one has undertaken to graft Internet Explorer 7 onto Windows 98 + ME. I hope I'm wrong in sounding this S.O.S., but unless this gets done - AND SOON - Internet access using Windows 98 / ME will be denied on an ever increasing number of websites, sounding the final death knell for Win98/ME.

Yes, the use of a third party browser may be a short term interim fix, but I have found that a third party browser vastly increases total system complexity, greatly decreases system reliability (as Internet Explorer cannot be uninstalled), and thus obviates the advantages of staying with Windows 98 / ME.

Can Internet Explorer 7 be installed somehow, under Windows 98/ME, to keep it alive, without unduly compromising system reliability?

well part of the problem with the ie7 installation is that every file init has an evil check for windows version.
ie can be removed with 98lite
i wouldnt think that Third party browsers would be that complicated because there not intergrated with the os

Why is this a problem? You shouldn't use that piece of s*** in the first place. The amount of IE-only sites is always dwindling, and there really aren't enough of them to worry about it. Besides, you can spoof your user agent string to pretend you're IE with any alternative web browser if necessary.

This actually sounds a lot like IE4 for Windows 95. I call FUD.

Firefox -- aka Firefox 3 -- is what we should be worrying about not that piece of sw.

As was said, you can easily spoof winXP IE6 if need be. (Use PrefBar with firefox.)

you can always use opera if firefox 3 isnt an option

Or User Agent Switcher.

There's a thread (somewhere) on FF3 but I thought i'd just post on this comment from awergh.

Of course, you're right to a point. But what if one doesn't like Opera? I'm not sure that it has all the plug-ins and emulations possible with FF. I use TrackMeNot and a number of add-on goodies with FF that I've simply not seen with Opera. Bottom line: FF is definitely preferred.

SO here's hoping FF3 will be available with win98 with the help of the project?

As for IE, I think it's a non-issue. Best not use at all IMO.

Excuse me, sir, no offense, but you are a moron who obviously made opinions about things you have no clue whatsoever
Almost every sentence of your post is wrong or at best uninformed wrong assumption.

What a hilarious post and subject

A browser retruns such error when a sophisticated, non-standard internet content cannot be opened with this browser. The "Upgrade to IE 7 required" is BS. Most of the time upgrading will not solve the problem.

The best reaction is to write to the webmaster (once you get to the website) and complain that his website cannot be viewed under normal conditions.

It's a huge mistake to create a website which depends on a certain browser type and version or from a certain OS. Because the 17% of internet users who don't use XP and the even higher number of those who don't use IE at all won't have access to this website. And more and more poeple are switching to alternative OSes and Browsers.

Finaly, I would be extremely cautious about visiting a website which forces me to use a specific software on a specific OS. Because the only reason a webmaster would like to do so is to infect your computer. So in fact such error means that your system is protected against potential threats.

IE's user agent strings can be changed in the registry. The information here doesn't give user agent info for IE 7 but points you in the right direction:

http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/799/

I have used this "trick" in the past for sites that "required" Windows XP.

Just a guess but on that page use MSIE 7.0 (instead of MSIE 5.5), and I would use Windows NT 5.1; (R1 1.1) for Platform (instead of Windows NT 5.0)

I agree with others, designing sites like this is just stupid.

I have left my platform as Windows XP on my 98 partion, the only drawback that I have found is WindowsUpdate site doesn't function properly.

You should be able to put this registry change into a .REG file for both cases, and double-click the proper one for which user-agent string you want.

There is no stupidity here just Microsoft's greed at work IMO. When you've got 80 billion dollars in the pocket like Bill Gates has you can push many levers and enforce many such diktats. Seems obvious to me.

Microsoft never enforced or encouraged this. It's a relic of the late nineties when sites would only work properly in one of the two dominating browsers... because they designed for one of the two.

I agree. M$ can't control all the websites and html is a worldwide standard which hasn't changed since IE4.0.

My opinion is that the only reason to require XP is to introduce a virus in your machine. I mean the only intentional reason because it can be simply poor prorgaming in some script. That's why I recommand to write to the webmaster about that. He may be unaware of this bug.

You seem to forget netscape, firefox is not to far behind its destiny (nobody seems to learn) i choose to give the opera guys a go

Ur in the confidence of Bill Gates maybe ?

For one this happens as a mean to force people to upgrade to a newer OS and enrich MS I believe and for two you certainly can catch as many viruses, if not more, through IE with a 9x system than you can with an XP one. The advantage is that most won't execute on 9x once they are on your machine because they target NT specific stuff. But some do execute on 9x, including certain rootkits for which there is absolutely no removal tools unlike for the NT platform. I can pass you on some of them. I knew I had catched something but could not detect anything. Finally I scanned the memory for exes and dlls and found the path of two exes in my win dir. I could not see them with explorer nor with any third party tool including the tools I use to scan my dirs for new files or changes. They were in the run keys but I could only find them by opening the .dat files. Regedit or any other third party registry editor could not see their entries. Had to reboot with a startup disk and delete them with DOS. On reboot their run keys were then visible in regedit.

I think oscardog is right to consider ditching any version of IE alltogether if that's what he means. Opera is pretty good but for some reason I don't manage to switch fully to it because I find my customized IE 5.5 perfect (besides not having tabs).

What the hell?

Absolutely not. But not everything is M$' fault, you know. As I said, this is a relic of '98 which resulted because of webmaster stupidity and ignorance. Web standards weren't widely known back then, so people designed for one of the two dominating web browsers, and that was that. Some people today still don't get it and look at their website like an application they have to provide support for on different platforms, hence the "requires at least IE5.x" and "requires Windows XP" lines.

IE 5.x is a web developer's nightmare. Wrong box model, no support for things like margin: auto; to center blocks, float bugs, etc. You may like your browser, but remember its web standards support is horrible.

What web-page were you trying to view when you got that error message?

No need to go offensive, if he's uninformed, then inform him!

Anyway, no, installing a new browser like firefox/opera does not increase system complexity since It doesn't replace or conflict with IE. You only run it as any regular program when you want to surf the web and close it when you're done. And if you really like IE, then follow the technics given to you on previous post to spoof your "user-agent" (browser ID) and pretend you use IE7.

But I'll back up 98 Guy: what site says it "requires" IE7?

First off, that sounds like Windows Update just F-ing up!

It sounds like Windows Update discovered a newer version of Internet Explorer and thus attempted to install it!

I have two reg files one puts the necessary info in and the other just removes it, I haven't used the one to remove, in a long time, because I have found no need to.

Well. You said there is no tool for spyware removal. You are wrong. DOS is a perfect tool for removing spyware. No windows based spyware can escape a DOS based and clean DOS running AV scanner.

Also, it is possible to check registry keys in DOS without GUI. I do have a script checking the registry "run" keys for new entries, every time compuer is booting, on every 9x based computer I'm using.

As for the IE 5.5. This application should be considered as useless for internet browsing activity. It is much too unsafe. I found many web sites do have spyware downloaders attached, this year. I do believe someone found a way to automaticaly infect numerous poorly protected web sites. All of them were fitted with a java based downloader. I found, it is not possible to patch the IE 5.5 against those downloaders. IE 6 is also affected, but installation of all available patches solves the problem.

The question about which websites triggered the problem is excellent, and deserves the research from me to come up with answers. It's my negligence for not retrieving this info while it was fresh, I apologize. I have my MS History, and will keep it to answer the question.
The history is now 2 weeks old, so it's grouped only by week. I know the dates, 9/17 and 9/19. Is there a way to get MS History to display by order visited after the current day? Or how to correlate MS History files from another boot drive with the websites visited? I notice some pages I remember visiting not appearing. Notably, the MS update web page appearing after the errors is absent. I fear the same error that caused IE to close may also have caused the history function to fail. I've revisited every web page in the history for that week, without triggering any errors.

Granted if they are not zero day and the scanner is good enough.


Can you share it please ?


Do you know which IE6 patch exactly offers protection against that and when it was issued ?

Because MS was not able to tell me when I contacted them about that. But maybe it was before they fixed it.

BTW can you tell me if this chm file wants to go on the internet with your fully patched IE6 runtime ?

Well the script is much more complicated, but the change detection part is like that:

where the HLM_run.reg file is a saved for future reference registry key.

Unfortunatelly, I do not know which particular update did the trick. I just installed all available at the microsoft update site, and it worked.

As for the .CHM file. When I'm clicking the link the IE asks what I want to do with it (open, save, cancel or more information).

Thanks I'll look into it. It's interesting.


Maybe you have an example, an infected webpage you did download or something like that ? Or a link to webpage on which you you'd get infected if you hadn't those updates installed.


Obviously that's what IE asks you when you try to download a file.

But what happens when you run this file from your HDD was my question. Does HH.EXE try to connect on the Internet after you execute it ?

According to my router log, the CHM file makes a TCP connection with 81.95.146.98.

As for an infected site: http: // userjs.org /

At the end of the page code there is an IFrame link:



The trojan downloader code was downloaded from sunyiu.com by a link to adv522.htm file on some other server.

So everything was hidden as an advertisement. But, I saw other versions with a JS code added directly at the bottom of a page code.

Bingo ! If you extract the CHM file you'll see that it contains one single html with the following javascript exploit code :


It seems you are vulnerable despite your IE6 updates. It seems also that MS did nothing to fix it. I forwarded this code to them in march of this year.

I am gonna have a look a look at your exploit now and see if I am vulnerable to it.

I was sure the internet browsing over a known servers is safe. But, by an accident my computer was infected through a local page. I called the admin (as I know him personaly). He was very surprised and unaware of the page infection. The page was corrected, but the conclusion remained: browsing through the Internet is not as safe as we think.

When I encountered more pages with the same or alike infection system, I decided to change the IE 5.5 to a safer browser, as the JS infection system is too common to keep the IE 5.5 running, any longer.

I have been cited a forum rules violation because of above quoted post
I guess its because of using a word "moron"?
Lets see:

Well, although I do not think of legacykeeper as 'mildly retarded' or a 'very stupid person' since I don't know him at all, I do believe his post contained completely foolish and stupid misinformations.
Let me explain to you mister legacykeeper:
Windows 98/ME is 'officially dead' for long time, thus 'officially' you can't 'keep it alive' anymore, sir. Its a zombie at best
Also, even if someone was able to "graft IE7 onto Win 98/ME", it would immediately call for adapting those 50 or so patches related to IE7 as well for Win 98/ME; you wouldn't want to install IE7 and keep your system "updated" with its sleuth of new holes and exploits "grafted onto your system" in the same time, right? SO youre not asking for way(s) of "grafting IE7 onto WIn 98/ME" but youre actually asking for the whole support that Microsoft himself abandoned years ago, if you come to think about it...
Furthermore Windows 98 as it is can work *great* with other browsers (my best example is K-Meleon on 98).
And if you read just this board, you'll find there are ways to get rid of IE from Win 9x...
Thus announcing "death of Win 98/ME" just on a basis of lack of/inability to use latest Microsoft's browser is in my opinion very foolish announcement, if not outright stupid.
And as I pointed out in my earlier reply, and showed you in this extended reply: Almost every sentence of your post is wrong or at best uninformed wrong assumption.

I don't know you, legacykeeper, thus I agree I had no right to generalize in my previous reply, and I apologize for not specifyng that I meant your post - not you as a person - was stupid (in my opinion).


edit:
I quoted theasurus definition of term "moron" because I was surprised to learn it is considered offensive.
In my area this term is a part of common language (ie "don't be a moron" and such) and its more akin to "are you kiddin me" or "quit fooling".
Hence I was surprised to receive PM from board admin citing forum rules violation.
Again: I didn't mean any personal insult, but the merit of legacykeeper's post to which I replied to.

Look.

just download PORTABLE FIREFOX from portableapplications.com or google it....ok?

no install required....

you dont need ie7 at all...

i have ie 5.5 and i use firefox but have switched to firefox portable....it is very very good and very lightweight.....

Yesterday, I confirmed the Windows ME Internet Explorer taking people to the Internet Explorer 7 page!

Internet Explorer checks for new versions by itself. This feature is enabled by default, as far as I remember.

Microsoft will be supporting security updates on Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1 until at least 13 July 2010 through Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 support.
See the MS Windows 2000 Pro Support Lifecycle page: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3071.
If you don't believe me then see the Notes box on the IE6 Support Lifecycle page: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2073

Any webpage that takes you to a MS IE7 download page or says that it "requires" Windows XP or IE7 or whatever is just plain bad scripting and needs correcting!

and you may want to direct your complaints to the creator of the site that has the "bad" scripts

And remember we have the awesome patch:
Maximus Decim InternetExplorer 6.0sp1 Component Update
to keep IE6SP1 for Win98SE upto date:

Thread:
http://www.msfn.org/board/Maximus_Decim_In..._Co_t97816.html

Download:
http://www.mdgx.com/spx/MDIE6CU.EXE

Don't shoot! - I know this topic is from last year...
I also know I said the above about IE6 support and so on...

But, I have actually found my first web site that will not work correctly on IE6...

Go to Legend Memory's website: http://www.legendmemory.com/
Go to Products menu, then select Downloads, or Certifications, or Technical Support.

You will get the following message and cannot proceed:
You are using a version of Internet Explorer which does not allow iframes within a javascript popup, you can use Mozilla, Firefox or IE 7 to view the content.

So, maybe IE6's days are over?

No I don't think so. This seems to be a old problem, I-frames in javascripts are not new. IE6.0 does not work but FF2.0 or K-meleon (both Gecko 1.8) don't have any problems with your link and I assume they never had. So this must already have been the case when IE6.0 was still supported. And it is still supported, updates are still available! Not for Win9x offcourse but that's a different matter.

This is the choice (read error if you like) from the website's creators. Similar case, some site's don't work in FF because of activeX. Does this mean that IE is required? For these particular sites the answer is yes but you can't blaim Mozilla for that.
And I wonder if we need I-frames in javascript more than activeX

I tried the link, and surprisingly I got the error! That's just incredible.
Why the webmaster wanted to display web content in a javascript popup?!
Ok, it's not the first time a webpage doesn't display (honestly when that happens I sent this website to hell), and I always assumed it was by ignorance of the webmaster.
But here it can't be ignorance since he wrote a specific error message abot that!

That's incomprehensible...

That might be the case, but it worked fine in IE6 last year...
So, it does indicate deliberate exclusion of IE6 for their website.
I expect this trend will continue, and especially when IE8 is released, many websites will be forced to comply with stricter scripting.
See here for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_8

Of course, Firefox works...

I don't see where this is a 98/ME problem. SeaMonkey on 98FE works at that site just fine. Microsoft does the same thing with a lot of their sites, making them so they don't display correctly in Mozilla or Firefox, or using ActiveX to make certain that only IE users can access their sites.

What's really odd here is that the site will work with IE6, if Javascript isn't allowed to identify the browser. I used Proxomitron to block a lot of Javascript and to hide the browsers identity. I did have to right click on "refresh" once, but other than that, the site worked in IE6 as long as it couldn't identify that IE6 was the browser. Then again, they might be doing users a favor by preventing them from using such an insecure browser.
Rick

Hello,

Okay I saw this subject a few minutes ago, fired up my 98SE computer with 6IE no problems.
I use seamonkey or opera on my win98se computers and firefox and opera 9.5 on my windows xp computers.
and there still are alot of sites that are 6IE friendly, but go with FF or OP anyway.