[Drugwash]

soporific:
eMule is running here about 24/7 - I'm official translator for my language and I'm playing a lot with it. So an eD2k link is always welcome, as far as I'm concerned. It does take a while to complete a download - that's the idea of the network - but at least I get it integer. My connection is not that good to allow me downloading almost 200MB in one shot from within the browser, and I don't have Premium accounts on public hosts. Plus I'm testing alpha/beta software and crashes/freezes happen on a regular basis.

Analada:
As for "ghosting"... problem is: (2) When you have a working stable win98SE system [...]. That almost never happens, because there's always some tinkering to do, some application to install/replace/uninstall, some hardware to change, etc. Just like Eck above said. But yes, there are people that might like preserving certain configurations and Ghost may come in handy. Not me, for now.

Eck:
I've been foolin' around with a few live Linux distros myself: Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Knoppix. Not bad, but I'm missing a certain "feeling", plus a few key (IMO) options/features. Still planning to dig deeper into the concept, but I'm either lacking the time or the will to do it.

[Analada]

Drugwash, on Jan 26 2007, 04:27 AM, said:

soporific:
eMule is running here about 24/7 - I'm official translator for my language and I'm playing a lot with it. So an eD2k link is always welcome, as far as I'm concerned. It does take a while to complete a download - that's the idea of the network - but at least I get it integer. My connection is not that good to allow me downloading almost 200MB in one shot from within the browser, and I don't have Premium accounts on public hosts. Plus I'm testing alpha/beta software and crashes/freezes happen on a regular basis.

Analada:
As for "ghosting"... problem is: (2) When you have a working stable win98SE system [...]. That almost never happens, because there's always some tinkering to do, some application to install/replace/uninstall, some hardware to change, etc. Just like Eck above said. But yes, there are people that might like preserving certain configurations and Ghost may come in handy. Not me, for now.

Eck:
I've been foolin' around with a few live Linux distros myself: Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Knoppix. Not bad, but I'm missing a certain "feeling", plus a few key (IMO) options/features. Still planning to dig deeper into the concept, but I'm either lacking the time or the will to do it.

A couple of years ago I spent six months on linux. Downloaded every distro and gave them a workout. Same as you I missed a certain "feeling". Also got fed up with endless configuration files. Still it has its place.

Now as regards Ghost 2003. I think it could really help a load of people on this forum given the postings on reinstallation. To expand on what I said before: --

When you have a working and stable (yes it should be) win98se with your commonly used applications/games installed, do a Ghost of the partition(s). Let's call it backup A. Then a few weeks later do another on separate DVD-R/2nd HD: backup B. Then if after subsequently installing some software that messes up your system revert to backup B. Do subsequent backups regularly and cycle the DVD-R media.

If you do this it's highly unlikely that you'll ever have a problem that you can't solve quickly and easily. For example I can replace C: partition and reboot perfectly within 6 minutes, complete with all configurations and customisations. What other software or procedure can achieve that?

[soporific]

welcome to the battle of the century: my fight to get a 244mb file up onto a free file server.

I'll keep the stats of this batte updated frequently

No of failed uploads: 4
No of different file hosters: 2
No. of times it got to over 80% and then failed: 3
No. of times it got to over 95% and then failed: 2
No. of times it got to over 99% and then failed: 1
No. of hours of wasted upload bandwidth (at about 20kbps): 8
No. of times I've wanted to do something nasty to the people behind these websites: 3

This post has been edited by soporific: 26 January 2007 - 07:09 AM

[soporific]

Drugwash, on Jan 26 2007, 09:27 PM, said:

soporific:
eMule is running here about 24/7 - I'm official translator for my language and I'm playing a lot with it. So an eD2k link is always welcome, as far as I'm concerned. It does take a while to complete a download - that's the idea of the network - but at least I get it integer. My connection is not that good to allow me downloading almost 200MB in one shot from within the browser, and I don't have Premium accounts on public hosts. Plus I'm testing alpha/beta software and crashes/freezes happen on a regular basis

Another 24/7 emuler ... good on you man. Have you ditched your TV like I have? I got rid of it 6 years ago, and I don't consider it a loss, as I get everything I watch from the mule. If anybody is still watching ads, paying megabucks for music, megabucks for softare ... then get with the program. You DO need to know how to forward ports if you are behind a router or gateway, and you DO need to start collecting credit so as your downloads can run like water through a pipe. I reckon I'm one of the wealthiest people in the world when it comes to emule credits. When I want something from the network, bam, i've got it.

Emule, emule, emule ... i do NOT KNOW what I would do without it. Everyone, take the HINT!!!

[Drugwash]

What's that a TV?! You're way ahead of me, I ditched it only about 2 years ago, together with the radios. I got enough instant messaging IDs to ask people when I need to know something.
And eMule is good too for documentaries that would never get on TV or elsewhere public. And not only, but let's not push it.

Anyway, where's the eD2k link for v1.8?

[soporific]

Drugwash, on Jan 27 2007, 01:16 AM, said:

Anyway, where's the eD2k link for v1.8?

Oops... it was supposed to be there a couple of hours ago

Now fixed... and with a BitTorrent link as well to make up for the wait ..

[Drugwash]

Off we go! But... no sources. Please check link and make sure eMule is running and the file is shared.
One thing - this package is supposed to be installed on all kinds of configurations, not only freshly installed systems. Some of them may be heavily tweaked already, with much newer file versions than the ones to be installed by this package. I'm curious if anybody checked all components against automatically overwriting newer file versions.

Another thing is that my autoexec.bat contains the following (and I may not be the only one using this trick):

@deltree /y c:\windows\cookies
@deltree /y c:\windows\history
@deltree /y c:\windows\tempor~1
@deltree /y c:\windows\temp
@md c:\windows\temp

If this package unpacks itself in the temporary folder set by environment variables and that folder gets wiped out on each reboot, that'd be a bit of a problem. Yes, the user could remove/comment those lines, if he knew about them, but if he doesn't (system tweaked by a friend/specialist/etc.), he'd report a broken package.
So, would it be possible to create and use a folder of its own instead, just to be on the safe side?

[soporific]

Drugwash, on Jan 27 2007, 01:58 AM, said:

Off we go! But... no sources. Please check link and make sure eMule is running and the file is shared.

http://sharethefiles.com/forum/ed2kstats.p...iew_release.exe

Drugwash, on Jan 27 2007, 01:58 AM, said:

One thing - this package is supposed to be installed on all kinds of configurations, not only freshly installed systems. Some of them may be heavily tweaked already, with much newer file versions than the ones to be installed by this package.

OK, the limitation of the program at the moment is that only one file in each package is checked for its file version. If I choose the wrong one (usually its obvious which one to use) then we get into trouble. So its these things that I can't test until I get feedback. The code definitely works for clean systems, but I guess some that have been up for years will have all sorts of junk on it doing who knows what to whichever. Or something ...

Drugwash, on Jan 27 2007, 01:58 AM, said:

So, would it be possible to create and use a folder of its own instead, just to be on the safe side?

I'll make the change for the next version, definitely.

This post has been edited by soporific: 26 January 2007 - 09:47 AM

[Eck]

The torrent reports 0 seeders (I think you have to seed it first) and a 0 for download availability. Hmm, something's not right there. I downloaded a couple of other torrents just to check it and uTorrent downloaded them perfectly.

For at least RapidShare you do know that you need to split it into 100MB parts? WinRAR will put them all together again when extracting. I don't mean split your program. I mean for example when you Rar it up you tell it to create it in 100MB parts. That's file001.rar, file002.rar, etc. Then I download each one and put them all into the same folder and right click the first and extract it to a folder. It then all becomes one file again.

But then, you likely know about that. Just making sure.

Besides that this forum (all of msfn.org) is having problems now on my Internet Explorer 7. I links to the main forum work, but the individual sub-forums leave an error page.

I needed to search for auto-patcher. That link led me back here. I don't think this is my machine. The forum worked fine a couple of hours ago.

Okay, the forum is back up but there is still nothing coming from the torrent.

This post has been edited by Eck: 26 January 2007 - 05:56 PM

[soporific]

Eck, on Jan 27 2007, 08:22 AM, said:

The torrent reports 0 seeders (I think you have to seed it first) and a 0 for download availability. Hmm, something's not right there. I downloaded a couple of other torrents just to check it and uTorrent downloaded them perfectly.

Maybe check the torrent again, I've changed some settings that could have been blocking attempts. Also, starting the seeding process could help out as well (!! talk about a newbie !!) --- I also fixed the TCP limit bug (my file sharng computer has only just been rebuilt --- yes that's right, an entire computer to serve the cause of file sharing.)

I'll also try rapidshare today, I'll do the split into parts, I know what you mean.

All my overnight uploads failed. I had 2 going .... grrrrrr

This post has been edited by soporific: 26 January 2007 - 07:38 PM

[soporific]

BitTorrent is up and away !!!! I got 40 kbps going up ... my emule customers will be a bit miffed ...

Drugwash, you use shareaza do you? IF not, tell me so I can give someone else my friend slot ...

This post has been edited by soporific: 26 January 2007 - 07:46 PM

[Drugwash]

Nope, no Shareaza. As I said before, it's eMule - the official one, latest version.
Anyway, my connection's been more and more sh!tty this month, with frequent disconnections and ever lower bandwidth. So it will tak some time, with ot without friend slot. Thanks anyway for the good intention.

[Eck]

Yep! As soon as that 1 seed showed up the download started and has been going strong, albeit comparatively slow, for the last several hours and reports about 45 minutes left.

Not critisizing the speed at all since I don't know exactly how it works either. I'm just happy about it doing its thing and getting the file. Normally it is many times faster but who know what kinds of servers I'm used to. Plus, generally I've not come in right at the beginning and several seeders were already available. That also makes things faster. Right now it looks like 10(14) (which it is, I don't know but there's always a number in a parenthesis there) folks are downloading. Hopefully most of us will leave our torrent software running and the file in the download folder so the speeds will be faster for others.

If there are many others. Although there are probably a lot more 98SE users than one would think, there are even less of those who know about this project and of those, are interested in using it. Hopefully that will change.

I'll be leaving it up until I finish reading the Novell manuals. That's pretty tortuous work. It's not that there's so much to read but it would be nice if I could retain at least a bit of it in my head before wiping the computer and not having them available until I get Acrobat Reader installed into Linux. I've got a lot of other stuff I've printed out but there's no way I'm printing out hundreds of pages of manual. I'm pretty sure I know enough to get the thing installed. Plus, most wouldn't have bothered to do the research I have anyway and would probably do okay. I just hate operating blind. It's always been RTFM for me.

Annoys the heck out of my sister! I read the manual for can openers before I plug them in for the first time. Only problem these days is I don't retain much in one sitting. Used to.

Anyway, 98SE will go in first. So I'm glad this update is available for it. I'm not one who likes running software again over itself unless there's a problem or the kind of thing that needs updating like Firefox or something. That's why I haven't been too helpful in the request to run auto-patcher again to see what it detects as being installed. If it works I don't like to mess with it.

[Eck]

Alright! It's safely tucked away to a cdr.

It looks like a few folks are downloading this. For a while after I was done several seeders showed up, but today only 1 seeder (with an 8 in parentheses whatever that means) is seeding.

This is weird, as I would think it would list soporific AND at least me since I'm still seeding. At any rate, and if I'm understanding the uTorrent program correctly, is appears that folks downloaded the thing then shutdown uTorrent and didn't bother seeding.

That's not nice torrent ettiquette.

Thanks soporific! Your patcher is awesome. (As long as this new version still works and doesn't muck things up, eh?)

I just read through the Revolution Pack thread. It hadn't interested me much in the past, but using WindowsX's Vista Visual Styles Pack 6 on XP got me used to the Vista style stuff and I became interested in possibly seeing a similar look in 98SE.

Wow! I saw your exchange of love their with Tihiy. Bombs bursting in air, eh? Well, everyone got along perfect with everybody else I guess the world would be boring.

Perhaps I'll try the Pack when I set things up. Seems to me it should be getting pretty much stable as Tihiy's been working on it for years now. Something like that I generally don't experiment with much until after everyone else has already had the problems and most have gotten fixed. Sort of how I approached MDGx's implementation of XP/WMP10 files onto 98SE. I didn't quite trust that thing for a long time. Now it is pretty much finished and stable so I use it.

It was different with the auto-patcher as the changes it makes are just what the clearly defined updates that it installs do. Well, I would install mostly all of those anyway so better your program does it than me!

That's why I think it's kind of funny that so many around here seem to be ignoring your program and using the old, old, and a bit intrusive into the system as far as changing some key driver install methods and other things, Unofficial 98SE Service Pack instead of your up-to-date patcher. And yet they go nuts with these programs such as 98SE2ME and the Revolution Pack right as soon as the first Alpha, Alpha, REALLY Alpha versions are put up.

The exception regarding 98SE2ME is that MDGx had already been experimenting with the files transferred from ME to 98SE on his own system for years before he put it all together into an installable program. So that was pretty much safe right from the get go.

With yours, what you labeled as Alpha was really right from the start a better way to update than the Unofficial Service Pack. Heck, it was just a few scripts that installed more of what we needed and included a much more up to date set of updates. Now, it's just more refined as to choices, includes even more neat stuff, and is more polished as to installing and uninstalling.

As far as folks complaining about the size, my goodness these folks would need to download and install all of these things seperately anyway. I'd much prefer having nearly everything I need all packaged up so I can simply click on the program and presto my system is all updated. That's far superior to figuring out what to install and in what order and who's package is best and all the other decisions and time consuming run on sentences, etc, etc.

So, once again thank you, thank you, thank you.

I hope you start getting some nicer recognition for this. It kind of annoys me when I still see folks recommending the Unnofficial Service Pack and not giving this pack any mention. I don't think folks outside of these forums even know it exists. Well, now there's a preview release. Gosh man, with the exception of some of those environment error work arounds I needed to take, every version has seemed to me to be as good a final as any of the other packs that are out.

Maybe time to take this thing to MajorGeeks, CNET Download.com, etc? Too early? Well, if it works (and perhaps when you get it to install its stuff to its own folder either in Program Files or the root - whichever works better), then it's time for folks to use it. And, be able to find it and download it easily. A lot of folks won't be installing EMule or uTorrent stuff. They'll need to be able to see it on common sites and click a button to get it. I don't mean the forum members here, rather the general public who still think Windows Update is an option. At this time they generally only know about either Windows Update or the Unofficial Service Pack.

[Drugwash]

Nice speech.
However, the main idea behind this package is not to perform redundant work, meaning not to install again what is already installed, in terms of (un)official updates and not only. This is the forte of the package and this is what should be recognized and appreciated in first place.

You are right about not many people out there knowing about it, nor these forums. But even those that may have stumbled upon MSFN might have gotten scared by the huge wealth of knowledge here and considered themselves not up to it, so they chickened out.

However, regarding auto-patcher, I'm pretty sure that when it gets to the stable stage, it will find its way to Softpedia, MajorGeeks and many other similar "launching pads". It does deserve to.

If I may add a bit of constructive criticism here - solely from my point of view, but applicable to others as well - maybe the DOS routine at the start, with selecting options and all that, could be replaced at some point with a simple GUI, with radio buttons, checkboxes, maybe an edit box for the temporary (or any other) path...

I'm saying this because Win98 is a GUI OS and whoever is using it now must have used it for quite a long time and got used to GUI controls in favor of DOS batch/command-line navigation. My personal opinion is that a few mouse clicks on a screen full of more visible options could avoid the disorientation of a user presented with a black screen and a couple of text lines, where he doesn't immediately understand what to choose/type.

All this said, I still have to complete the download so I can test this build. [insert some "nice" words here] to leechers that downloaded it on eD2k and removed the package from share or closed the client, as well as to my ISP that cut my download bandwidth down to an 8 kBytes/s at most.

[Eck]

GUI's are nice, yes. But without being all prettied up the white on black MS-DOS window the auto-patcher provides does have pretty much all the choices presented to a user. A few nice GUI boxes could do the same. I do think though, that most folks who would get this will be able to read what's there now and press the correct keys to toggle stuff on and off and continue.

The masses won't be using anything 9x anyway. Most of those that are will just go to Windows Update and hope for the best. Those in the know will decide for themselves which update package they prefer. Of those, I don't think reading text in a dos box is too much of a hastle. Certainly less so than needing to install all this stuff myself.

But of course, by all means if it can look nicer I'd be all for that too! I think it's unnecessary, but yeah GUI's are nicer looking. Whatever soperific decides on that is fine as long as the choices aren't removed. I like being able to toggle things on or off.

Ouch! That's a long wait time at that speed. I hope downloads will get faster when some folks who actually understand what the word sharing means (ya gotta share back) begin to find this.

This post has been edited by Eck: 28 January 2007 - 01:54 AM

[Drugwash]

The idea is a GUI with a wise choice of fonts may bring together more options at once, thus offering a beter overview of everything available and making it easier to choose the desired options.
Obviously, none of the current options should be removed - only rearranged a little.

As for download speed, maybe I should change ISP, but I don't quite like the terms of the contract provided by the other available ISP. Gotta think about it and also have a serious talk with my current ISP. Uploaders' speed is just another variable in this equation.

[soporific]

Drugwash, on Jan 28 2007, 08:49 PM, said:

The idea is a GUI with a wise choice of fonts may bring together more options at once, thus offering a beter overview of everything available and making it easier to choose the desired options.
Obviously, none of the current options should be removed - only rearranged a little.

Let me state for the record that i would easily prefer a GUI interface than what we put up with at present --- when you try to use Auto-Patcher on a system that hasn't got the proper graphics card driver installed, you can barely read the DOS box text even if you maximize it. And even when the display is all good, its still a bit hard to read. The only problem is I don't know how to write the code to make such a thing at present, and I have way too much on my plate to consider dropping everything to learn how. I might a bit down the track, but right now its just not possible. This is actually why I was fishing for partners for this project. My idea was that the other person would be responsible for packaging the project into a GUI format.

Any takers?

[soporific]

Drugwash, on Jan 26 2007, 03:52 AM, said:

Out of curiosity, I ran a report on my current system, which only has a few official updates and some manual upgrades installed. The list of *not found* updates is impressive, however I found some of the items that I do have installed are still reported as uninstalled. Grrrrr... So here we go:
• dun14-se: Dial-Up Networking 1.4 for Windows 98se (official package installed)
• DirectX9: DirectX 9.0c (October 2006) (August 2006 installed; does it know it's August and not October?)
• q323455: Directory Services Client Update for Windows 98 (official package installed)
• UCopy2GB: Unofficial Fix for Bug When Copying Files Over 2gb in Explorer (manually installed)
• 48BITLBA: Unofficial Update for Drives over 137gb (not for IBM portables) (manually installed)
• 7-ZIP: 7-Zip 4.42 (file archiver) (already installed 4.43 beta - don't ask where from, it was out there)

I want to get to the bottom of your list, please respond to the following questions:
323455: -- the code checks for the file version of negotiat.dll (5.0.2195.4784) --- if you don't have this file, or you have an earlier version, then the report will say you don't have it installed. Since this is causing problems, I am considering changing the file that is checked to dscsetup.dll (5.0.2195.5201) --- so can you please check for the existence of both these files and report back what file version you have

I am currently checking the other things you listed, i will adjust this post as I go ...

[soporific]

Eck, on Jan 28 2007, 06:04 AM, said:

I hope you start getting some nicer recognition for this. It kind of annoys me when I still see folks recommending the Unnofficial Service Pack and not giving this pack any mention. I don't think folks outside of these forums even know it exists. Well, now there's a preview release. Gosh man, with the exception of some of those environment error work arounds I needed to take, every version has seemed to me to be as good a final as any of the other packs that are out.

I just wanted to say thanks for your post --- the question of why Auto-Patcher isn't so well regarded by some of the more regulars on forums like MSFN i can only attribute to the fact I'm obviously not a full-on developer, or coder (as my exchange with Tihiy exposed) and/or that Auto-Patcher is obviously a DOS based program. It's a shame really because my project isn't about writing super-duper code --- all it is, is a TIME-SAVER !!! I read on the Neowin forums (which I haven't visited since the crap about using the word "AutoPatcher") that one of the reasons why an AutoPatcher for Window s98 would be so hard (and not worth doing) was the inability to stack up all the installs without having to reboot. ie an AutoPatcher for Windows 98 will SAVE MORE TIME FOR THE USER that an Autopatcher for any other later OS would be. it was why I started the project in the first place -- to save on the hours it usually took to bring a Windows 98 OS up to speed.

So all I can say is it is THEIR LOSS. If they want to spend more than a few minutes it takes me to set up the modules I want to install, then they can waste all the time in the world. I would just like to know why people DON'T use Auto-Patcher... as someone has already pointed out, its just an automatic hotfix installer that eliminates the need to wait around while Window s98 reboots. It really beggars belief actually ...

PS - I have posted a CD to someone who has kindly offered to host the file. I should have a URL within the week. I have totally given up on free file hosting --- unless someone recommends a particular site, I am just not going to bother wasting my time, and bandwidth.

This post has been edited by soporific: 28 January 2007 - 10:58 PM