Hi folks,

I just wanted to inform you, that overwriting the original Win98SE-defrag.exe with the defrag.exe from WinME breaks the "Microsoft Money99" installation that results in the following error message:



I'm not sure why this affects the defrag.exe but it's a reproducible error.
Keep that in mind, since I got mails from various people about that, after including the WinME-defrag into the German inofficial Win98SE ServicePack!

Interesting discussion about open source defragmenter here

nonsense.
What will happen if there is no defrag.exe? Maybe it is other Me defrag part (cvtapplog, taskmon) issue?

Out of curiosity, what is the reason why you put a direct or indirect link to ReactOS in every other post you make?

ReactOS is NT oriented, has nothing to do with Win9x/ME.

jaclaz

REAL pathetic, patchworks! that's being a little immature of you. open source defrags are WAY OFF topic and are vastly irrelevant to the problem swgreed is having here

I strongly agree with Tihiy. WinME Defrag (US English edition) worked fine under my Win98FE/SE machines and did NOT break any programs.

The Money 99 program might have been broken either during a computer crash or when using Scandisk to delete lost clusters. Pop in your MS Money 99 CD, swgreed, and re-install the Money 99 program to make it work again.

also ask the creator of the German 98se SP to remove German WinME defrag from the pack.

You're invited to test it yourself!

Have you read that 3ad ?

Anyway, open source zealot here.


As almost _every_ windows users (and some Linux too) your eyes are quite closed: open source means free access to the source, in other words you can "port" the code to your platform (in this case to windows 98). Am I wrong ?

In this particular case, we have JkDefrag that is a GNU disk defragment and optimize utility for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/X64. and FreeDOS defrag that aims to be a great utility for people using old versions of windows, like win95 or win98.

In other hand ROS offers fraginator...

1+1=2 : what about build a multi platform/filesystem disk optimizer/defragmenter ?

Sure.


I am too, but I try to give links related to the topic, not general, unrelated things.

I used (and posted a link to) jkdefrag, besides other utilities, a rather long time ago, here:
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...85812&st=47


Well, my eyes are open enough to read:


Though a very nice utility, it NEEDS NT family API's, Win9x/Me are different.



Yes.

FreeDOS defrag, on the other hand, is known to be buggy, expecially on large volumes.






Very good idea, and while you do it, we could plan to live forever happily, together with our flying elephants, but WHAT can this be related to solving the problem swgreed has?

jaclaz

was it German WinME Defrag or English WinME Defrag, swgreed? check carefully

also was MS Money NOT running when you used WinME Defrag under Win98se?

I have a version of MS Money which is MS Money 2001 (newer than the 99 edition) which is on the MS Works & Money 2001 CD that came with my HP Pavilion computer. WinME Defrag did NOT break that version of MS Money.

Then i'm right: you're eyes are closed.

swgreed asked to fix a problem caused from the SUBSTITUTION of the original Win98SE-defrag.exe with the defrag.exe from WinME...


...so from MY point of view substituting original WIN98SE-defrag.exe with an open source one IS related to the topic (guess how).


Well, i find just one 3ad -except this- with the "jkdefrag" tag...



Well i unsderstand the difference between me and you: you just USE open source software while i'm trying to PROMOTE (even the develop of) it.

I don't post USABLE SOFTWARE but WANNABE IDEAS, can you see the difference ?



While i'm not a developer i MUST try to stimulate indipendet developers to reach the solutions.
If this is wrong, then sorry, but the "evangelism" have to go on.

(anyway note that i'm not an alone dreamer)

@patchworks

As said, I am too a fan of Opensource, I even actually wrote some (in my very primitive batch files) but as you have your point of view:



I have my rather more pragmatic one:
while substituting MS defrag.exe with an opensource one, is a nice thing and, more important than that, it is pertaining to the OP request, IF the program exists.

If it does not, it does not solve the problem, nor does it belong to this thread....


So the answer to my question:

is clear (bolding is mine):


About this:


you might however understand the difference there is between starting a new thread about an existing good app and hijacking someone else's thread with unuseful, unrelated information.

And I am begging the pardon of other members if our little exchange of ideas has worsened this hijacking

jaclaz

my 2 ¢ :

Defrag, scandisk and other hard disk tools [like format, fdisk, mbr etc] have nothing to do with software like Money [no matter which edition/version].
Defrag + scandisk do their work at disk level, they understand/verify/fix/backup/etc clusters, boot sectors, FAT, LFNs, they do not understand Windows APIs/Controls/DLLs [used by apps like Money].

So if there would be a flaw in defrag, that would result only in boot sector/cluster/file entry/directory entry errors.
And as we know, scandisk can fix most such errors.

HTH

my sentiments exactly, MDGx!

so the REAL cause of MS Money no longer working properly is NOT WinME Defrag. it could be something else (an incorrect or corrupt version of a DLL file) that can make MS Money stop working.

just insert your MS Money CD-ROM, swgreed, and re-install the program and it should work as expected. end of story.

That's what I thought as well, but I got 2 user-feedbacks that had exactly the same problem (see error message from the 1st post). I triple checked everything until I left out the German WinME defrag.exe in the Win98 SE SP installation process.
(Reinstalling Money99 didn't change anything.)

The inf-install file was (concerning to the defrag.exe copy-routines) exactly the same as the English version.
However I still think it has something to do with the inf-installaton process, i.e. simply overwriting Win98 Defrag with WinME Defrag using the Explorer works fine and Money99 also does not complain. But installing WinME Defrag with the Win98 SE SP installation routine breaks Money99...

I'm at a loss...
I have no explanation for that kind of behaviour

weird

Most probably this is COMPLETELY unrelated , but I found here:
http://snoopy81.ifrance.com/snoopy81/en/tools.htm
http://snoopy81.ifrance.com/snoopy81/dl_en/money81.inf

A modified .inf file to use money99 without Internet Explorer (i.e. on a 98lite install).

Is it possible that money99 somehow "calls" something in Explorer or related .dll's that in turn do some "weird" check on defrag.exe or on its Registry entries?

jaclaz

Very much so [especially registry entries (?)], otherwise disk clusters/files/directories [even if deffective] have nothing to do with money99 or any other software program.
The only thing that might happen if the money99 clusters or files are deffective, is that you might get an invalid/GPF/IPF/or similar error(s) because the money99 executable cannot find other files/directories it depends on for proper operation.

HTH

very well said, jaclaz. But I really HATE "Opensource" apps that do NOT work under Windows 9xME systems, so I recommend AGAINST them. unless they are reliable enough to run under Win95/98/ME, AVOID using such programs. so that's my "rebuttal" to what patchworks said earlier.

swgreed may want to try un-instaling money99, deleting the registry entries and "left-over" files and then re-installing money99 from scratch to get it to work again.

might be possible the german 98se SP corrupted some DLL files that caused money99 to stop working.

Tried all that already, but the dll-corruption assumption is an interesting point...
But why just the defrag.exe? It seems to be an unexplainable side effect... (for now)