[LoneCrusader]

Drugwash, on 20 March 2013 - 09:31 AM, said:

...Opera... If it were the last available option, I'd rather cancel my Internet subscription and I mean it.

+1

I really detest Opera...

It would be nice if it were possible to pick up the last sources from Firefox 2.x or 3.x and keep it modified/updated it for 9x, but that's far beyond my ability...

Drugwash, on 20 March 2013 - 08:29 AM, said:

"keep dreaming..."

Yep...

[CyberyogiCoWindler]

Drugwash, on 20 March 2013 - 08:29 AM, said:

Unfortunately, Firefox has become a huge resource hog. I have to use it everyday under XP and at some point it takes about 1GB of memory + HDD space, goes slower and slower until it can't be operated anymore and needs restarted. Of course, this may also be the fault of certain extensions I have active, but if it wasn't for those, I wouldn't be browsing the Internet nowadays. I have a fixed monthly download quota and can't afford to waste it with useless advertising, Flash and whatnot.

Guys, I'm afraid we need a new browser, designed from scratch for Win9x, that can use HTML5 but can also be able to reject all that advertising that's cluttering the pages. But I already know the answer to that: "keep dreaming..."

In Firefox I use the plugin Adblock Plus to fight ads (WebWasher 3.4 made too much trouble), and to reduce picture file size (i.e. bandwidth) there is the FasTun proxy plugin. Additionally I have Flashblock installed to start Flash only on selected websites (others manually by click). With AdBlock Plus you can also disable other unwanted pictures individually (e.g. eBay components) to save bandwidth and screen space.

This post has been edited by CyberyogiCoWindler: 21 March 2013 - 01:08 AM

[jds]

CyberyogiCoWindler, on 19 March 2013 - 06:28 PM, said:

Please urgently support a newer Firefox version.

eBay has yesterday changed their page design and now contains tons of javascripts those make it so horrendously slow that it turns almost unusable. I already disabled the "remaining time" entry on the search results page (attempts to redraw now about every second, while each redraw takes 30s, which makes the browser almost freeze). Also long search entries are now printed over the 1st displayed eBay item and so prevent clicking on it.

You don't say what version of FF you are using, nor your other system details.

I just visited eBay (US) on a P3 machine using FF version 3.5.20pre and it worked pretty well. I viewed an item with 35m remaining (where the countdown is fake) and another with less than 1m remaining (where the countdown is real) and in both cases the count went perfectly smoothly.

Now, what I have found is that the optimal version of FF is system dependent. On my old (now decommissioned) P2, the best performance was with FF 8 or 9 (didn't use 9 for long, but 8 certainly worked very well). Yet on my Celeron-A laptop, FF 8 and 9 were completely and utterly unusable, just like you describe, however, version 3.5.20pre was much, much better. (Strange that FF 8/9 worked well on the lower spec P2, yet was unusable on the Celeron-A.)

HTH
Joe.

[CyberyogiCoWindler]

Of course I am using Firefox 3.6.22 - no newer version works with Win98SE.

By the way, even here in the MSFN forum the first pulldown menu "Signed in as" stays permanently open (hangs down) and so wastes space on the screen. It is uncloseable.

Please fix this.

[Drugwash]

CyberyogiCoWindler, on 22 March 2013 - 04:59 PM, said:

By the way, even here in the MSFN forum the first pulldown menu "Signed in as" stays permanently open (hangs down) and so wastes space on the screen. It is uncloseable.

I've had that "bug" under XP, so it may not be KernelEx related. In my case, it turned out to be some GoogleAPI, GoogleAJAX or something like that, blocked by my add-ons. Apparently, nowadays no site can run without Google stuck in the middle and I don't like that because I don't trust Google and I don't (want to) use Google in any of its forms.

Anyway, please double-check if some add-on or third-party tool blocks access to the above or anything similar and try to unblock them. A browser restart may be required.

This post has been edited by Drugwash: 22 March 2013 - 05:43 PM

[CyberyogiCoWindler]

Thanks. The hanging pulldown menu was caused by manually blocking "ajax.googleapis.com/*" in Adblock Plus. Unblocking it fixed the problem.

This post has been edited by CyberyogiCoWindler: 23 March 2013 - 07:11 PM

[Windashnet]

Drugwash, on 22 March 2013 - 05:42 PM, said:

CyberyogiCoWindler, on 22 March 2013 - 04:59 PM, said:

By the way, even here in the MSFN forum the first pulldown menu "Signed in as" stays permanently open (hangs down) and so wastes space on the screen. It is uncloseable.

I've had that "bug" under XP, so it may not be KernelEx related. In my case, it turned out to be some GoogleAPI, GoogleAJAX or something like that, blocked by my add-ons. Apparently, nowadays no site can run without Google stuck in the middle and I don't like that because I don't trust Google and I don't (want to) use Google in any of its forms.

Anyway, please double-check if some add-on or third-party tool blocks access to the above or anything similar and try to unblock them. A browser restart may be required.

There is an Addin for Firefox called "Google opt out" or something similar, that cuts the Google web site tracking, etc. but be forewarned it also makes Google searches take longer and search find less of the type of sites and info you use regularly. So if you have a lot of varied interests and search for stuff a lot using this Addin can mean you will not find things as easy or at all as you would normally do.


One of the things I have noticed that is even more of a problem than Google is Facebook which is ten times worse than Google as far as personal info, there is an Addin to cut the Facebook cord too, but if your a Facebook junkie it will cut some of the Facebook stuff too.

Another big problem besides these sites is tracking cookies placed by websites for other sites.

And then we have flash tracking and cookies(Addin's to block both of these are available now.), and HTML5's extra tracking options and advertising push modes.

Me I think HTML5 is not worth the extra trouble to be worth it, and I think there should be a major boycott of the junk.

[Windashnet]

Drugwash, on 20 March 2013 - 08:29 AM, said:

Unfortunately, Firefox has become a huge resource hog. I have to use it everyday under XP and at some point it takes about 1GB of memory + HDD space, goes slower and slower until it can't be operated anymore and needs restarted. Of course, this may also be the fault of certain extensions I have active, but if it wasn't for those, I wouldn't be browsing the Internet nowadays. I have a fixed monthly download quota and can't afford to waste it with useless advertising, Flash and whatnot.

Guys, I'm afraid we need a new browser, designed from scratch for Win9x, that can use HTML5 but can also be able to reject all that advertising that's cluttering the pages. But I already know the answer to that: "keep dreaming..."

The biggest memory bug in Firefox is the history bit, you can get Addins to change how the history works.

Also there is an Addin called "Cache Status" that will let you clear memory and disk cache on the fly, so if you have opened a lot of graphics type web sites and the cache is thrashing as it deletes old stuff for new, you can just click the status bar and clean stuff out.

Also just a thought, but if you have the drive space and ram setting Firefox cache options higher makes a big difference.

You can add in a separate small hard drive(Compact Flash and an adapter to IDE is a cheap and fast swap hard drive. Must be at least twice your available ram, preferably at least three times, or wn9x will have kitties.) as windows swap space and force 9X to use that drive only as swap.

And remember you can put a really big hard drive as storage space on win9x and take all the clutter off the boot drive as long as the controller you use has a 9X driver and maps as a SCSI. You can use upto a 1.5TB SATA as one partition, anything 2TB or higher needs to be partitioned, like the 2.0TB WD Green I got at Christmas time. I had to map the drive as two 1TB partitions or loose a little bit of space, It wasn't much, few hundred meg or so though so depending on what you use the storage for mite make one big partition look good. The drive may have actually been a tiny bit over 2TB as it was a WD AV Green Advanced Format Drive. Now there are some quirks with drives over 750gig(Maybe a problem on a 750gig if lots of small files are on the drive.). Scandisk has memory problems on these big drives, and won't work once the directory gets so big. So you have to fix problems manually or with other apps if a file or directory gets hosed. If you only use the drive as storage and move stuff over to it, you will seldom if ever have any problems. You should not, and probably will not be able, to use these big drives unpartitioned as a boot drive in 9X. Generally add in controllers are not primary controllers anyway. There are cheap PCI SATA controllers with 9x drivers on e-bay. You have to work at it to get cheap drives but there out there.


Anyway a few ideas that mite help.

[Windashnet]

roscoegrable, on 17 January 2013 - 05:33 PM, said:

I just wanted to thank the all of contributors for the info I got from this site. I found someone who had an old Presario that they hadn't even powered up in years and they were just going to toss it in the trash. Well I'm just a little too frugal for that, but I didn't want a boat anchor ME OS, so I did a little research and found Kernelex..... WOW. With an $13 investment I brought the RAM up to 640 (not bad for an old machine) and $12 for a wireless adapter, I have turned this once dust covered PC into a very capable browser. With Kernelex I can fly Opera 11.64 and Firefox 8.0. I was able to load Flash 11 and Reader 6 Since it didn't cost me much I've thrown caution to the wind and and have loaded up a ton of freeware. This machine now rivals my XP station and all for a $25 investment. So once again my big thanxxx for the folks who created Kernelex and the contributors to this forum who supplied invaluable input. The only problem I'm still having is getting my HP Office Jet K60 printer running (the HP web site is less than helpful), I have down loaded every driver I could find and tried every method of installing them with no success...............any input????

I've ran into trouble with HP before, if you have the original cdrom there are 9x patches here
http://h10025.www1.h...duct=59273#N361
It will look like you have to start from scratch, enter operating system, but if you page down hit the "boxed plus symbols" there are two patches, you will need to run patch one "HP OfficeJet K Series Millennium Twain Software Patch" then patch two "USB I/O Patch". Unless you run AOL I would forget about that patch. My guess its the USB patch that's the problem but I think you have to run the other patch first. An alternative is to get a cheap PCI USB card(I have had really good luck with the 2 port ALI cards.)(Make sure the card has win9x drivers included. although you may not need them.) (Stay away from older VIA chipset usb only cards as some have the usb bug, the VIA SATA/USB chipsets seem to be ok though and are real cheap. So if your thinking of a big storage drive its an option.) and disable the on board USB ports on your motherboard. I've fixed lots of different USB problems with these cards, also it frees up interrupts on most motherboards, which can be a problem on 9x if the on board USB's are using 3 interrupts as most motherboard chipsets do.


Now if you do not have the original cdrom, then you have to contact HP tech support directly and beg for the original drivers and then they will send you a link to download the original cdrom image so you can write your own cdrom or you can buy a cdrom from HP. And then you can run the patches or add in the USB card either one will probably fix your problem. In a few cases paches don't fix USB problems, and then your down to the card. They are only a couple of bucks on line and should be $10 or less at a local computer store, I generally wouldn't pay more than $5 but if your in a hurry a locally picked up higher priced card is an option.

Anyway a few ideas that mite help.

[CyberyogiCoWindler]

Windashnet, on 27 March 2013 - 03:52 AM, said:

There is an Addin for Firefox called "Google opt out" or something similar, that cuts the Google web site tracking, etc. but be forewarned it also makes Google searches take longer and search find less of the type of sites and info you use regularly. So if you have a lot of varied interests and search for stuff a lot using this Addin can mean you will not find things as easy or at all as you would normally do.


One of the things I have noticed that is even more of a problem than Google is Facebook which is ten times worse than Google as far as personal info, there is an Addin to cut the Facebook cord too, but if your a Facebook junkie it will cut some of the Facebook stuff too.

Another big problem besides these sites is tracking cookies placed by websites for other sites.

And then we have flash tracking and cookies(Addin's to block both of these are available now.), and HTML5's extra tracking options and advertising push modes.

Me I think HTML5 is not worth the extra trouble to be worth it, and I think there should be a major boycott of the junk.

I have installed the Google opt-out plugin and especially block any Facebook content. While Google (used as search engine, not Google Plus or mobile phone stuff) is mediocre, I consider Facebook even a criminal organization. Its mindedness against privacy is IMO in no way better than Slimetology. No other widespread internet service has a such agressively data-eating dictatorial attitude like Facebook. They are like the Bork - nobody (and no data) can escape their empire once you are part of it.

This post has been edited by CyberyogiCoWindler: 28 March 2013 - 09:19 PM

[loblo]

The excellent Ghostery add-on works fine with both Firefox 8 and Opera 12.02. A must have for those who do not want Facebook, Google and others to track their every moves on the internet IMO.

[jds]

CyberyogiCoWindler, on 22 March 2013 - 04:59 PM, said:

Of course I am using Firefox 3.6.22 - no newer version works with Win98SE.

Skip ahead a few versions ... FF 8 and 9 work fine (except as I noted above) with the help of KernelEx 4.5.2 (in fact, if I recall, so do versions 7, 6 and maybe even 5).

Joe.

This post has been edited by jds: 30 March 2013 - 05:01 PM

[CyberyogiCoWindler]

jds, on 30 March 2013 - 06:21 AM, said:

CyberyogiCoWindler, on 22 March 2013 - 04:59 PM, said:

Of course I am using Firefox 3.6.22 - no newer version works with Win98SE.

Skip ahead a few versions ... FF 8 and 9 work fine (except as I noted above) with the help of KernelEx 4.5.2 (in fact, if I recall, so do versions 7, 6 and maybe even 5).

Joe.

Does their browser history and bookmarking work in Win98SE? A browser without that is completely useless!

[jds]

CyberyogiCoWindler, on 30 March 2013 - 09:37 PM, said:

jds, on 30 March 2013 - 06:21 AM, said:

CyberyogiCoWindler, on 22 March 2013 - 04:59 PM, said:

Of course I am using Firefox 3.6.22 - no newer version works with Win98SE.

Skip ahead a few versions ... FF 8 and 9 work fine (except as I noted above) with the help of KernelEx 4.5.2 (in fact, if I recall, so do versions 7, 6 and maybe even 5).

Joe.

Does their browser history and bookmarking work in Win98SE? A browser without that is completely useless!

See this post (and perhaps others in this topic) : http://www.msfn.org/...post__p__979102

BTW, I also noticed your comment on Opera. As someone that also once detested Opera, I must say that Opera today (eg. 12.02) is wonderful (eg. I love the magnification feature).

Joe.

[1234567890]

what opera 12.02 works is kernelex 4.5.2??
...without errors and failures?

[Dave-H]

1234567890, on 08 April 2013 - 04:16 PM, said:

what opera 12.02 works is kernelex 4.5.2??
...without errors and failures?

Opera 12.02 works fine on Windows 98SE (and I assume Windows ME) using KernelEx.
There are a few anomalies, for instance you can't drag bookmarks around on the personal bar to re-order them as you should be able to do, but they are mainly cosmetic.

[utplayer]

Is this project still in development? I see it's apparently also meant for games. Well, in Unreal Tournament (the first one) ACE developers were smart enough to deprecate pre-2000 support, effectively blocking all of those systems from online play since most servers run this engine. Well, I tried KernelEx 2000 mode on 98SE and the game simply crashes on startup. It works with 98SE mode though, but I doubt this will help anything. Also, I'm running the game through the Glide API, which was still supported on 2000.

It's perhaps futile, but I guess it's worth noting here that a contemporary Win98 game does not work with KernelEx

Also another question... this application doesn't make any permanent changes to system files, right?

This post has been edited by utplayer: 18 May 2013 - 04:13 AM

[loblo]

utplayer, on 18 May 2013 - 03:58 AM, said:

It's perhaps futile, but I guess it's worth noting here that a contemporary Win98 game does not work with KernelEx

According to the rest of what you wrote this is a completely inaccurate generalization. Your game only crashes when you put it in 2K mode and vanilla 98SE apps are certainly not meant to be run in specific NT or higher compatibility modes.

[utplayer]

loblo, on 19 May 2013 - 11:43 AM, said:

utplayer, on 18 May 2013 - 03:58 AM, said:

It's perhaps futile, but I guess it's worth noting here that a contemporary Win98 game does not work with KernelEx

According to the rest of what you wrote this is a completely inaccurate generalization. Your game only crashes when you put it in 2K mode and vanilla 98SE apps are certainly not meant to be run in specific NT or higher compatibility modes.

Depends on what you mean by "vanilla 98SE apps". Epic always listed NT4 as working for this game.

[Windashnet]

utplayer, on 19 May 2013 - 11:33 PM, said:

loblo, on 19 May 2013 - 11:43 AM, said:

utplayer, on 18 May 2013 - 03:58 AM, said:

It's perhaps futile, but I guess it's worth noting here that a contemporary Win98 game does not work with KernelEx

According to the rest of what you wrote this is a completely inaccurate generalization. Your game only crashes when you put it in 2K mode and vanilla 98SE apps are certainly not meant to be run in specific NT or higher compatibility modes.

Depends on what you mean by "vanilla 98SE apps". Epic always listed NT4 as working for this game.

Yes but, since the game has native win98SE support, it sets up its installed files for win98SE mode. If you simply must have it run in win2K mode, you mite try the registry fix noted earlier in this thread, so when you install the game it reads your system as win2K from the registry and installs for win2K. Then it may work(?) with the KernalEX win2K mode enabled.