98Guy

Look at the jumper settings here: http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/ph...php?p_faqid=719 To test the drive, the simplest way is to connect it the primary IDE channel and don't connect any other drives (hard drives or CD drives) to the mother board. I have a WD400 and WD200 from the same time-frame as your drive (Oct 2001) so you probably have the 10-pin connector (see the diagram on that page). If it's the only drive connected to the system (as I recommend) then there should be no jumpers. When your system boots, press del or f2 and get into the BIOS menu and see if there's an option to auto-detect (or just detect) the hard drive while you watch. If not, then make sure you have all your IDE channels enabled and set to auto. If the bios or fdisk is still not seeing the drive, but they do when you connect any other hard drive, then either your WD300 is dead, or it's locked. If you feel like playing around, there are 2 other jumper settings (pins 7-8 and 9-10). Pins 9-10 are labelled PM2 on the PC board and (from what I've read) relate to "Power Management" and allows the drive to be spun-up from sleep mode. I'm thinking that there might be some combination of jumper settings that might reset this password locked mode. A locked drive (full-sized 3.5" drive) is really rare. Most likely it did come from an X-box because I've never seen an option in any motherboard bios to enter a password to lock or unlock a hard drive. Here are a couple of other web-pages: http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=82689 http://www.xbox100.com/tutorials/HDwsofthacks.HTML

If a drive has been password protected, then isin't the motherboard BIOS supposed to prompt the user for the password during system boot-up? I've never worked with a hard drive that's been password protected, so I don't know at what point in the startup cycle the user is supposed to enter the password, or if this password-asking business is a standard feature on motherboards, or if it's only supported by proprietary motherboards like laptops or desktops from Dell, gateway, xbox, etc. Might want to look at this (post #5): http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?sho...p;#entry3226701 They're talking about a WD 300 (might be referring to a 300 gb WD drive, not specifically a WD300 model).

About once or twice a month an active topic or thread in the win-9x forum will get moved. Invariably, the thread will involve discussion about a particular piece of software (usually AV, firewall, perhaps some other app) and the future, past or present compatibility of that software with win-9x. I would hazzard a guess that everyone who regularly reads such posts would agree that such topics or threads are more relevant to win-98 moreso than some other forum. Yet someone comes along and moves the topic/thread to some other forum, where (invariably) regular readers of (that) forum will post messages like "why are you still using win-98?". In other words, by moving the thread (which is win-98-centric) into a more general forum, the quality of the responses drops dramatically and regular win-9x forum readers quickly abandon the thread. Example: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=127720 So my questions are - why can't the "mover" of a thread be identified, and why can't the mover be forced to enter a brief explanation as to why the topic was moved (otherwise the move doesn't, or can't, take place)? On a different level, I ask that some leeway be considered before such posts are moved in the first place.

Are you sure that it isin't a WD800 model? What is the manufacture date on the drive? If you connect it as a slave and run fdisk, fdisk should at least give you the option to select the drive and to show any partitions on it. Even if it has no partitions, fdisk should at least recognize the presence of the drive. If it doesn't, then carefully observe the BIOS post screen and messages during a cold start of the machine. If the drive is not being detected during startup, then you have something messed up in the BIOS and need to fix that first. But at least post the correct model number and date of manufacture of the drive. I'm thinking it's a 30 gb drive if it really says WD300. An 80 gb drive would be WD800.

Close to 3 years ago I built a win-XP-pro system for a relative who dabbles in video editing. The system had a couple 250 gb hard drives which I first prepared as FAT-32 (with 4 kb cluster size) and then installed XP (which complained and wanted to reformat the drives as NTFS which I declined). Various Adobe video editing software was installed, and he had no problems acquiring video from several sources (digital video cameras, off-air from TV tuner built into video card, etc) and was able to generate DVD's with several hours of content. The fact that the system had a FAT32 file system didn't seem to be any sort of limitation and all installed software worked seamlessly as far as that was concerned.

totally out of line, 98Guy (and far from the truth, IMHO). I use NTFS on some of my home PCs and it's very good. Totally in line. The purpose of NTFS was (a) for MS to have a completely proprietary (and largely undocumented) file system with no linkage to FAT-x that they envisioned would eventually be adopted (licensed) for use by other devices that require internal file storage (since FAT-x is or has become public domain), and (b) to prevent file access by local users without logging onto the system (ie without booting up the full NT-based OS itself) and when the OS is up and running you have another layer of file access defined by user and group rights. None of that is possible with FAT-32 (which is a weakness in corporate, institutional or military environments) but none of that is necessary for the home or SOHO user. Unless you can rely on your local IT department for computer maintenance (because they are likely to have access to expensive third-party NTFS repair utilities) then it's far easier, and cheaper, for the novice to repair FAT-32 volumes. The argument that NTFS is more reliable or robust than FAT32 is pure fiction. I have probably more than 1000 years of collective FAT-32 hard-drive experience, and have never lost data due to soft-errors caused by logical corruption. FAT32 is faster given it's lack of journaling and other overhead, and FAT32 is also more secure from a virus, trojan and root-kit perspective because (a) it's harder to hide files and prevent AV access to files on a FAT32 volume, and (b) NTFS alternate data streams are vulnerable to malware usage (and naturally, FAT-32 does not have this rather useless "feature" in the first place). And how exactly do you score, rate or define the "goodness" of NTFS? Your statement is similar to how many people rate their AV software. They come to the conclusion that the particular AV software they use is "good" because it rarely, or ever, alerts them to the presence of malware. Whether that's because they've never exposed their system to malware, or because they have malware that is undetectable, is a conundrum they never consider. Naturally NTFS is a _functional_ file system. But compared to FAT32, it's an overly complex file system for many of the environments and situations it's used for. And there are always downsides to unneeded complexity. My motto for Microsoft: If it works, it's not complicated enough.

Where are you seeing 950 mb? Is XP reporting that to you? What directory? The vast majority of users will not be installing the JRE with the JDK. The offline installer (with JDK) is between 52 and 72 mb. I doubt that after installation it becomes almost a gig.

So? All they've done is insure that a system can still be infected if OLEDB32 is exposed to the exploit code some other way other than web-browsing.

Microsoft has chosen to "fix" the current IE vulnerability by releasing a new version of mshtml.dll instead of fixing the real vulnerable file which is OLEDB32.DLL.

Based on this: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en Is Microsoft replacing mshtml.dll instead of OLEDB32.DLL ???

The milworm html code page described above does not appear to trigger the exploit on an XP-SP2 system with IE6. The system in question was last updated / patched (via windows update) on October 29, and IE7 was never installed on it. On that system, task manager showed that IE6 memory usage reached between 150 and 200 mb before it stabilized. The exploit page took a few seconds to be processed, and resulted in a small blank frame in the upper left corner of the page with a small red X icon (similar to a missing page icon). I'm not sure if this is supposed to happen, or if it indicates that the second part of the exploit (the iframe.html page) wasn't found or loaded. I had to turn off the information bar in IE6 in order for the page to load without requiring any user prompting or permission. I've been looking for definative accounts that IE6 is vulnerable, or if IE6-specific test code is available. Best I can tell, Microsoft is the only source of the claim that IE6 is vulnerable (and all other web-info sources simply are repeating the MS claim). ----------------- http://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/ "At first it looked like it was just an IE 6 thing on XP, but then it encompassed IE 7 on XP, and Vista platforms might also be impacted. Now it appears that all versions of Internet Explorer from 5.x up to 8 betas are probably at risk." ---------------- http://newsfeedresearcher.com/data/article...y-internet.html "Microsoft is continuing its investigation of public reports of attacks against a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer. Our investigation so far has shown that these attacks are only against Windows Internet Explorer 7 on supported editions of Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows XP Service Pack 3, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, Windows Vista, Windows Vista Service Pack 1, and Windows Server 2008." http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/a...t_explor_2.html ----------------- And this I don't understand: --------------- In a revised security advisory, Microsoft said research confirmed that the bug is within all its browsers, including those it currently supports -- IE5.01, IE6 and IE7 -- as well as IE8 Beta 2, a preview version that the company doesn't support through normal channels. Users running any of those browsers on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003 or Server 2008 are at risk, Microsoft said. -------------- First, I don't trust that Microsoft is the only source of the claim that IE5 and IE6 are also vulnerable. I would like to see an independent confirmation of that. Second, why is MS still supporting IE5.01 ??? I thought that they are ONLY STILL SUPPORTING 2K SP4 - if so doesn't that also mean IE5.5 or possibly 6 at a minimum - not 5.01? And for all you firewall and AV fans, note this: ----------------- He also points out that anti-virus programs have turned up less-than-remarkable results for the exploit, with VirusTotal.com reporting that only four out of the 32 of these anti-virus programs flagged the exploit as malicious or suspicious. -------------- It's like I always said. Your AV program will eventually tell you that your system is infected, but only a few weeks or months AFTER the initial infection. And even so, the detection will be of some other malware, not the original infector, and the AV software will be of no help in actually *removing* the malware.

So the code on Milworm doesn't affect IE6 (on win-98 systems anyways). Does that mean we can assume that a single example of exploit code can't exploit ie6 AND ie7 at the same time? What if the code at Milworm were to be run on XP-sp2 with IE6, and the exploit worked in that case? How would that alter your theory? In any case, what do we know about the version history, and the similarities between the 9x and NT versions of oledb32.dll?

When you say "there are variants that work on IE6", do you mean a) there is example code on milw0rm.com that will work on IE6? or b) you are *speculating* that somewhere on the web real circulating code has been deployed specifically against IE6 or someone else has published example code that works on IE6, or c) you are repeating the microsoft PR material that says that IE6 is equally (if not identically) exploitable. ?

From this page: http://www.milw0rm.com/exploits/7403 I downloaded this file: http://milw0rm.com/sploits/2008-iesploit.tar.gz Which contains these files: ie-sploit.html iframe.htm Would I be correct in assuming that if I were to execute one or both of them on a system that is vulnerable to the current IE data binding flaw, that the code would harmlessly spawn the calc.exe function?

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/...ory/961051.mspx "Our investigation so far has shown that these attacks are only against Windows Internet Explorer 7 on supported editions of Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows XP Service Pack 3, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, Windows Vista, Windows Vista Service Pack 1, and Windows Server 2008." Hmmm. IE7 / Win-XP is affected eh? "At this time, we are aware only of attacks that attempt to use this vulnerability against Windows Internet Explorer 7." Hmmm. Threats against IE7 are known to currently exist eh? Oh, and just to be clear - IE7 does not run on windows-98 ? -nuf said-

Please explain how / why they are so large. The offline install packages are only 15 - 16 mb in size.

Thanks for the mis-information. jre-1_5_0_16-windows-i586-p.exe (16.13 mb) jre-1_5_0_17-windows-i586-p.exe (16 mb) jre-6u11-windows-i586-p.exe (15 mb) Where do you see any of them listed as being > 300 mb ?

Getting answers out of the Java community is like pulling teeth. They look down on questions relating to web-applets and end-user issues and they live in their own world of java application programming. They are largely unaware that older versions of the JRE are not un-installed when an update is installed, and they have no clue (or they sweep it under the carpet) or are in denial when it comes to how that can make a system vulnerable to exploits. With regard to the differences between 1.5.x and 1.6.x, there probably is no need to seek 1.6 because no web applets likely exist at this point that depend on 1.6. With regard to any change in the installer after 1.6.07, they deny it, don't know about it, or ignore the question. There is some mention that 1.6.x is faster than 1.5.x, but it's scanty. Anyone know of any java performance benchmark software that runs on win-98? Someone did post this: ----------------- >> I don't know if it was possible before in a Java applet to select JRE >> version, but it is now (I think as of SE 6 Update 10). > Just x.y.z or x.y.z update w ? You can get as specific as update. From: http://java.sun.com/javase/6/webnotes/6u10...tion/index.html The new Java Plug-In provides a new platform- and browser-independent mechanism for selecting a JRE version upon which to launch an applet: the java_version applet parameter. This new parameter supports: a.. Selection of a particular JRE version ("1.5.0_11") b.. Selection of a particular JRE family ("1.5*") c.. Selection of a particular JRE family or later ("1.5+") ----------------- The way I read that, if you install 1.6.10 or higher, then you're opening up your system to any vulnerable Java web-code that can request a specific version be used to process the code. So an exploit for a particular version can be launched with that method. What I don't know is if you have to have the specific older version installed, or does the 1.6.10 version come pre-packaged with ALL PREVIOUS JRE VERSIONS built inside it (perhaps that's why it's so large) ???

Can you translate that into english?

Is there a "better" updspapi.dll available? The one that came with the above MS update is this: 6.2.0029.0 (SRV03_QFE.031113-0918) 6/28/2005 363kb I tried another one (by putting it in the same directory): 6.1.0022.0 (SRV03_QFE.031113-0918) 11/18/2004 364kb But got the same error you did with both of them.

Can you be more specific? I installed KEX, but I'm still getting this: --------------- The PSAPI.DLL file is linked to missing export NTDLL.DLL:NtCreateProfile. --------------- psapi.dll version 4.00 (2/25/1998) ntdll.dll version 4.10.1998

I could have sworn that a month or two ago, that JRE-5 was EOL at the end of October *2008*. Was I wrong, or did they give JRE-5 another year of life? So what exactly does that mean? How will my "internet experience" or my "java experience" be different if I have a machine with JRE-5 versus JRE-6 ?????????

What do you see when you go here: http://javatester.org/version.html I'm currently using 1.6.0_07. I thought that Sun was going to stop supporting 1.5.x at update 16, but it seems there is an update 17. Does anyone really know the difference between the 1.5 stream and the 1.6 stream of JRE? Is it true that any version of 1.5.x (including update 17) is "approved" for win-98, whereas 1.6.x is not? Who here knows the real dirt about all these different versions of JRE?

Not true. Patches for IE6 are being made available all the time. There have been 13 advisories in 2008 so far: http://secunia.com/advisories/product/11/?...advisories_2008 And 14 during 2007: http://secunia.com/advisories/product/11/?...advisories_2007 All the important ones have patches except the most recent (which was announced just a few days ago). Mozilla SeaMonkey 1.1.x has had 6 advisories during each of 2006 and 2007: http://secunia.com/advisories/product/1438...advisories_2008 Firefox 2.x has had 15 advisories in 2007, and 9 in 2008. There are many versions of Opera. The latest is 9. That version has 9 advisories in 2007 and 10 for 2008 and a total of 21 going back to 2006. Opera version 8 has a total of 26 vulnerabilities going back to 2004. Either there is no information on Secunia about K-Meleon, or it has never been the subject of an advisory. Bottom line is that other so-called "safe" browsers have plenty of vulnerabilities. Also note that most vulnerabilities that are announced or discovered will never be exploited (which means they will be rare if they even exist) and many exploits that do exist will probably not function as designed on win-98 systems anyways.

Has anyone modified the inf files (or has unpacked the relevant binary files) for this: Microsoft Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 6 SP1 (KB958215) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en It's having a problem with psapi.dll when I try to install it.