knightrider

This is just my $0.02, but I run pretty old hardware: AMD Duron 1,8GHz with 2GB ram on an nforce 2 chipset mobo. Windows Vista RTM ran slow as molasses. VLite'd Vista RTM, on the other hand, is perfectly fine and runs about 3 times faster than it did before. :-) I stripped Vista down to 580MB and fit it on a CD! :-D Next, I tried Windows 7 beta (build 7000) first as a full install and then vlite'd using Kazuni's preset which shrank the ISO down to 1,4GB. I didn't notice much difference to tell you the truth, although in task manager it did use slightly less memory. VLite'd Vista RTM uses 290-300MB RAM at startup and boots in 46 seconds. It shuts down faster than Windows 7 too. I suspect, but don't have any way to prove it, that Windows 7 ran better when it wasn't vlite'd. ? I just seems that for my old hardware, although I love the eye candy of Windows 7 build 7000 better than Vista, vlite'd Vista does seem to run about 10-20% faster than Windows 7 (vlite'd or not). I hope Microsoft makes Windows 7 available as RC and then RTM soon (hopefully by August!), so I can buy it. By that time Nuhi will probably have 7lite or vLite ready to strip out everything from 7 until it will fit on a single CD. :-) Regards, Paul

Hi. I have an older computer, so I used vLite to slim down my Vista DVD. Vista runs pretty snappy when it is reduced to a 550MB CD. :-) However, I have lost a lot of themes. I have Aero glass, but only have the theme where the taskbar is black. I like the theme where the taskbar is more translucent and green. I put in my original Vista DVD and tried to find the themes, but don't know how. Can someone help me find the themes? I really appreciate any help. Thank you in advance! :-) Sincerely, Paul

Same problem here, except that I am using the Sil 3512 SATALink Controller (PCI add-on card with bootable BIOS). With nLite I can integrate the textmode drivers into Windows XP, but with Windows Vista when I select the driver, it says "PNP" and won't give me the option of "Text mode". So what happens is, when I install Vista, it doesn't detect the integrated "PNP" Sil 3512 Controller drivers. I then end up using a floppy. What should I do? I went to the manufacturers driver download page and downloaded the latest driver, but it still has txtsetup.oem on it. Should I only point it to the .inf? Thanks. I appreciate it. Regards, Paul

Well, I installed Windows 98SE on Friday and I have not had one single BSOD or illegal operation. I am quite surprised and happy to see this. After all, many folks including myself have said that nforce chipsets only run stable on NT-based OSes. However this isn't true anymore, but I did something differently this time when I installed. I installed a Silicon Image Sil 3x12 (3512) PCI SATALink Controller (has a built in bootable BIOS). I then installed Windows 98 from the CD and no problems whatsoever. I really wonder now if it has something to do with the PATA controller or PATA controller driver. I installed the latest nVidia nforce drivers, but only installed GART, memory controller driver and SMBus. The "Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller" from Microsoft is listed in Device Manager. System specifications: AMD Duron 1,8GHz Shuttle AN35N400 motherboard 1GB RAM (non dual-channel motherboard installed as 512, 256 and 256) ATi Radeon 9600XT 256MB AGP card (using 32MB AGP aperture in the BIOS) Creative Ectiva PCI sound card with WDM drivers and 98SE OS patch from Creative Sil 3512 PCI SATA controller card (using the BASE driver, not the RAID driver and also the latest IDE BIOS) Seagate 160GB SATA hard drive Samsung SH-S182F DVD+/-RW dual layer drive USB card reader USB keyboard, USB mouse USB data cable for cellphone (Prolific PL-2303) In the past, each time I tried to install Windows 98SE on a PATA drive using the same hardware, Windows would BSOD if my USB data cable was plugged in while booting into Windows. I used Windows 98 Service Pack 2.1a then too and still had BSOD. Now I have zero problems. Perhaps it has something to do with PATA controller on nforce boards that won't work correctly with Win98? Last time I used an 80GB Seagate PATA drive, but it's a good drive (no bad sectors, passes all drive fitness, scandisk and other hard drive utilities). If the solution really is to use a SATA PCI card, then that is a good idea, because newer hard drives are mostly SATA. I hope others can try using the Sil 3x12 PCI SATA card on their nforce chipset motherboard and see if this solves their instability problem under Win9x. Best regards, Paul

I also have the same card, just under a different name: Sound Blaster Audigy Value The box says it only works with Windows 2000 SP4 and Windows XP. I hope someone could write win9x drivers for it. That would be really cool. Paul

Sygate Personal Firewall Pro version 5.5 build 2525 worked well for me when I was running Windows 98SE.

Sygate Personal Firewall Pro version 5.5 build 2525 works very well in Windows 9x. I prefer Avast for antivirus, but the recent version was said to cause Windows 98SE to hang on shutdown. I also experienced that personally. Supposedly they fixed that with the latest release. It is very light on resources (system requirements are a 486 with 32MB of RAM if you are running Win9x). Winamp 5.09 worked fine with Win95 OSR2 and Win98SE (but newer versions of Winamp have been said by others to be unstable). Yahoo Messenger 7.0 worked fine for me and it allows for use of avatars and a personal photo, just like version 8. Versions 6 and 8 are unstable for whatever reason and version 5.6 build 1358 is unable to connect because Yahoo disabled it (they said it is "expired", so they are forcing people to upgrade). Nero version 5.5.10.42 is stable. Office XP worked well too. Norton Partition Magic 8.0 Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Free Download Manager CCleaner 1.41 AIDA 32 IrfanView

I have read on the forums here and also experienced it myself, that the nforce2 chipset is very unstable in Windows 98SE and ME. BSODs here and there.. hang/freeze/lockup, etc. Is there a way to fix this? Is it because Nvidia's nforce driver is not good enough? It seems that everything was fine until I installed the Nvidia nforce drivers! Can someone fix this or is the best advice to replace the motherboard with one that has a VIA chipset? I currently have a Duron 1.8GHz (FSB 133) processor. I really would like to run Win98SE on my nforce2 motherboard. Currently I'm running XP and it is stable, but I would like to dual boot 98SE with XP so I can run older programs and also for the nostalgia of 98SE. Thank you very much in advance. Paul