problems with 32.dll when loading drivers

In message , MEB
writes
I see you installed something new from soporific, what was it?

It was the full UBCD, but with the option - which it offers - to install
over an existing system, keeping settings etcetera. I should have known
better - this sort of thing is always better done as a full clean
install. And I don't _really_ hold soporific responsible.

I have outlined what would likely be the normal procedure in this situation
and the procedure when installing an un-official compilation. Perhaps it
might be beneficial for you to outline what you have already done. You

The installation proceeded quite far, but did get to a point (after one
- I think - reboot) where it went into a loop, repeatedly encountering
some error message.

should also note that unless you follow the procedures and updates/patch
process being used in unofficial patchings by the creator of the patch, your
results will likely NOT reflect the same success.
That type of process requires one be prepared to re-install an image should
the testing fail or corrupt one's system.
[]
Indeed. I managed to restore my system to how I had it by use of an ERD
saveset from before I started with UBCD; this is not a full image, but
is a Microsoft utility. Unfortunately, as I've only discovered
subsequently, it (a) didn't bring back sound - which I didn't notice
immediately - and (b) has damaged _some_thing involved with the loading
of drivers in general. (I've now found it with _three_ things - the
sound, the microscope [webcam], and a new USB stick.)

To keep some people happy I will say: I am using 98lite; any advice
given may not be applicable to those who are not.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL(+++)IS-P--Ch+(p)Ar+T[?]H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

it is no use hitting all the targets and missing the point. - chief executive of
the Disability and Carers Service, quoted in computing, 23 March 2006, page 26.

In message , MEB
writes
I see you installed something new from soporific, what was it?

It was the full UBCD, but with the option - which it offers - to install
over an existing system, keeping settings etcetera. I should have known
better - this sort of thing is always better done as a full clean
install. And I don't _really_ hold soporific responsible.

I have outlined what would likely be the normal procedure in this situation
and the procedure when installing an un-official compilation. Perhaps it
might be beneficial for you to outline what you have already done. You

The installation proceeded quite far, but did get to a point (after one
- I think - reboot) where it went into a loop, repeatedly encountering
some error message.

should also note that unless you follow the procedures and updates/patch
process being used in unofficial patchings by the creator of the patch, your
results will likely NOT reflect the same success.
That type of process requires one be prepared to re-install an image should
the testing fail or corrupt one's system.
[]
Indeed. I managed to restore my system to how I had it by use of an ERD
saveset from before I started with UBCD; this is not a full image, but
is a Microsoft utility. Unfortunately, as I've only discovered
subsequently, it (a) didn't bring back sound - which I didn't notice
immediately - and (b) has damaged _some_thing involved with the loading
of drivers in general. (I've now found it with _three_ things - the
sound, the microscope [webcam], and a new USB stick.)

To keep some people happy I will say: I am using 98lite; any advice
given may not be applicable to those who are not.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL(+++)IS-P--Ch+(p)Ar+T[?]H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

it is no use hitting all the targets and missing the point. - chief executive of
the Disability and Carers Service, quoted in computing, 23 March 2006, page 26.

Just to keep me happy, eh? So you really don't care about the innocent user
who might stumble upon this thread and not realize that it isn't about
Windows 98?

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS-MVP Shell/User
http://grystmill.com

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message
...
In message , MEB
writes

SNIP OT material

To keep some people happy I will say: I am using 98lite; any advice given
may not be applicable to those who are not.

Just to keep me happy, eh? So you really don't care about the innocent user
who might stumble upon this thread and not realize that it isn't about
Windows 98?

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS-MVP Shell/User
http://grystmill.com

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message
...
In message , MEB
writes

SNIP OT material

To keep some people happy I will say: I am using 98lite; any advice given
may not be applicable to those who are not.

In message , Gary S. Terhune
writes
[]
If you'll notice, nobody is responding to it, anyway, except me. Your
statement "I have tried to revert...." is exactly what takes this out of the
realm of stock Windows 98. You can't fix a problem until you know what it

This reversion is one of the functions offered by 98lite - a shell swap,
between the 95 shell and the 98 shell. (It does more than just change
explorer.exe and shell32.dll - it also amends several files, such as
notepad.exe, such that they work properly with whichever shell.)

is, and in this case the problem is almost certainly caused by a serious
screwing up of your system caused by your experiment. And, possibly, due to

I am pretty sure you are right there.

your total lack of preparation for said experiment by making sure you have
the drivers to install your system stored carefully away, preferably in a

I have the drivers for the sound circuitry. The problem does not seem to
be the drivers themselves, but the process (?) which handles the
installation of (any) driver: when I add new hardware (or delete the
sound circuitry and then reboot), I get the usual "found new hardware",
and either it finds the drivers or I tell it where they are, and it
starts to load them - and then I get the rundll32 error box.
[]
Interesting - does 98lite have something to do with Linux then? (I ask
with no baggage: I'm just genuinely interested.)

As far as code goes, nothing (I presume.) I was referring to the fact that
98Lite and it's brethren tear the 98 OS into pieces, rip out whole chunks,
and then (and here's where the Linux reference comes in), replace it (or
rather, some of it) with homegrown, "Open Source"--style code. Then claim
that because it still has the 98 kernel, it's Windows 98, just tweaked.
That's a load of bullcrap. At that point, it is no longer Windows 98 in the
slightest. Note your phrase, above: "I have tried reverting to the '98
shell..." Far more than the kernel, it is the shell that defines an OS from
the point of view of the user, and just because some nerds want to turn that
logic on its head doesn't mean squat.

I'm confused by the difference between "shell" and "kernel" in what you
say above; it seems to me that you mean different things by the two
terms. (Please don't gloat in your answer! If I don't ask, I won't
learn, will I!)

You've got two problems.
1. You don't have a functional '98 machine anymore because you ripped out
huge chunks and replaced them, and then the aptly named "soporific"
obviously either didn't do a good enough job with the installer (referring
to it's uninstall functions) or didn't expect anyone to bother trying to go
back to the original shell. And you, due to total lack of foresight and
professionalism, haven't the slightest idea just how different from your
original system your current one is, just how much DLL Hell exists, etc., ad
infinitum.

Well, my "shredded" system had been working fairly reliably for several
years before I tried the soporific stuff.

2.You don't have the original drivers for your Win98 system. That's just a
failure on your part, period. I don't think it would mater if you did --

I almost certainly _do_ still have the original motherboard CD somewhere
- I certainly wouldn't throw something like that out; however, I've
moved house since I built the PC. I went to the motherboard
manufacturer's website and fetched a - Windows 98 - driver for the only
part that isn't working, the sound circuitry.

what you describe doesn't sound like it's at all that simple, sounds more
like rampant DLL Hell in the Hardware/PnP/Drivers installation layer. I
won't go through all the steps in my logic, but if it were my machine, and I
just wanted to get my real Windows 98 back, it would have been flattened and
rebuilt by now.

If I were going to do that, I think I'd go for XP.

Except that you still apparently want to play with the big boys and make it
your holy grail to find out what went wrong and fix it. Problems is, you

I'm very puzzled why you consider this to be such a satanic wish: what,
exactly, is wrong with wanting to know what has gone wrong?

didn't set out with a pro's mentality, you just slapped the thing in and
went for broke. I do that on one or more of my test machine regularly, but

No, I did an ERD, which though not a complete backup by any means, has
nearly always allowed me to restore a working system in the past. In the
very few cases where it hasn't, it has got me back to a situation where
I just had to reinstall one piece of software (usually Easy CD Creator)
manually.

not even on a separate partition of my main work machine. Only on totally
throw-away boxes. Believe it or not, software CAN wreck hardware, and more

I remember there was (allegedly - I never investigated!) a command you
could type on the Commodore PET that would cause it to do harm to
itself! But yes, even on PCs, there certainly are things. (I suppose
some of the utilities that thoroughly exercise bits of the system - such
as hard drives, or in extremis processors, are the most likely these
days, but I'm sure there are some unexpected ones too.)

importantly, what gets installed on one partition may not behave and STAY on
that partition and totally leave the others untouched. Windows XP and even
more, Vista, are excellent examples of this. I do install all of them on
adjacent partitions on my main machine, but I also know fairly well what
they will do to each other, and I generally keep them at least mostly hidden
from each other and ameliorate the rest.

But then, I'm pretty much the same brand of fool that you are. That's how I
learned Windows 98. Install it, do whatever I can to it, while keeping track
of what happens when I install this or that, until I get myself into such a
deep hole, I'd reformat and reinstall. I did that up to a dozen times a day,
over 300 times in the first year I owned it, until I got it right or gave up
on whatever application or hardware I was playing with. I've had to curb

Wow! Well, it was the (presumed) expertise that I sensed you had
developed as a result of all that, that I'd hoped I could tap into.
[]
At all times, even now with my main XP installation (that has four other
Windows OS partitions that I multi-boot), I am always conscious of the fact
that I might lose the use of it at any moment and constantly ask myself what
will I do in that case, with, of course, dozens upon dozens of possible
strategies available to ponder and perfect (even practice) while I wait for

Well, except for actual hardware failure or perhaps FAT corruption, I am
fairly certain I can extract my _data_ files, if necessary by booting
into DOS. (I frequently dump them to CD as well.)

the inevitable -- and that is how you have to think about computers: That it
is inevitable that at any moment it will be destroyed, with absolutely
nothing to recover, neither hardware or data, a blackened chunk of melted
metal and silicon, ready for immediate delivery to the recycler.

Indeed.

disservice by not dealing with them in a forum dedicated to the topic, you

Hmm, I was unaware there were any, but I've done a search after your post,
and I see that both of the newsservers I use actually include
fido7.su.f98lite, which I have now subscribed to; I suspect the "su" means
it'll be in Finnish (which I don't speak), but I'll report back.

Doesn't look to me like there's even a forum for 98Lite, let alone

Well, I've now loaded some posts from that, and they're certainly not in
a language I can understand - it could well be Finnish.

associated hackers. Which does nothing but lower my already low opinion of
the product and the crowd that uses it. Unless maybe if you pay for
98Lite... there's a member's login -- maybe there's a forum hiding in there.

What is your opinion of TweakUI, and the other PowerTools?

Otherwise, it indicates to me that there is no seriousness on the part of
these cross-breeders. That they're just a bunch of silly hackers who don't
give a crap about anyone else, especially not the people who are interested
in supporting their efforts, if not with money, then with ideas and
feedback. That's how the people I know who have developed very successful
applications for computers have always conducted their business. Seeks
experts to get behind their effort and have a very open and lively forum.

Agreed - or, do it all themself, but still have plenty of dialog (about
both problems and suggestions) with the users. A couple of examples of
that, I would say, are Irfan Skiljan's IrfanView, John Steed's Brother's
Keeper (genealogy software), and GoldWave (sound editing); all of these,
but particularly the first two, deal openly with the users. I have
actually bought all of these (and some others), even though at least one
(IrfanView) is free for home use, as I believe in encouraging them.
[]
years.) This is at least historically true. I haven't kept up with AOL in
recent years, but it seems to me that they have at least lessoned their
efforts to reprogram the OS, and instead learned to work within its bounds.

Just about - I've had to do battle with it for a friend recently, and it
still seems to have very much its own way of doing things, at least the
interface to BB, for no advantage to the user that I can see.
[]
I honestly beg to differ. Hijack these NGs is exactly what you did, not that
you had much choice. But your issue is NOT a Windows 98 issue, it's a 98Lite
issue. And 98Lite users, if they have any respect whatsoever for the stock
98 users that regularly attend these groups, they'd get their own room.
Otherwise, they're no less obnoxious than any other trolls.

I thought a troll was someone who deliberately posted something
inflammatory, hoping to start a flamewar or similar. I certainly didn't
intend to do that - mine was (and still is) a genuine request of the
"has anyone else come across anything like this, and know what the cause
is" sort.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL(+++)IS-P--Ch+(p)Ar+T[?]H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
** http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/G6JPG-PC/JPGminPC.htm for thoughts on PCs. **

it is no use hitting all the targets and missing the point. - chief executive
of
the Disability and Carers Service, quoted in computing, 23 March 2006, page 26.

In message , Gary S. Terhune
writes
[]
If you'll notice, nobody is responding to it, anyway, except me. Your
statement "I have tried to revert...." is exactly what takes this out of the
realm of stock Windows 98. You can't fix a problem until you know what it

This reversion is one of the functions offered by 98lite - a shell swap,
between the 95 shell and the 98 shell. (It does more than just change
explorer.exe and shell32.dll - it also amends several files, such as
notepad.exe, such that they work properly with whichever shell.)

is, and in this case the problem is almost certainly caused by a serious
screwing up of your system caused by your experiment. And, possibly, due to

I am pretty sure you are right there.

your total lack of preparation for said experiment by making sure you have
the drivers to install your system stored carefully away, preferably in a

I have the drivers for the sound circuitry. The problem does not seem to
be the drivers themselves, but the process (?) which handles the
installation of (any) driver: when I add new hardware (or delete the
sound circuitry and then reboot), I get the usual "found new hardware",
and either it finds the drivers or I tell it where they are, and it
starts to load them - and then I get the rundll32 error box.
[]
Interesting - does 98lite have something to do with Linux then? (I ask
with no baggage: I'm just genuinely interested.)

As far as code goes, nothing (I presume.) I was referring to the fact that
98Lite and it's brethren tear the 98 OS into pieces, rip out whole chunks,
and then (and here's where the Linux reference comes in), replace it (or
rather, some of it) with homegrown, "Open Source"--style code. Then claim
that because it still has the 98 kernel, it's Windows 98, just tweaked.
That's a load of bullcrap. At that point, it is no longer Windows 98 in the
slightest. Note your phrase, above: "I have tried reverting to the '98
shell..." Far more than the kernel, it is the shell that defines an OS from
the point of view of the user, and just because some nerds want to turn that
logic on its head doesn't mean squat.

I'm confused by the difference between "shell" and "kernel" in what you
say above; it seems to me that you mean different things by the two
terms. (Please don't gloat in your answer! If I don't ask, I won't
learn, will I!)

You've got two problems.
1. You don't have a functional '98 machine anymore because you ripped out
huge chunks and replaced them, and then the aptly named "soporific"
obviously either didn't do a good enough job with the installer (referring
to it's uninstall functions) or didn't expect anyone to bother trying to go
back to the original shell. And you, due to total lack of foresight and
professionalism, haven't the slightest idea just how different from your
original system your current one is, just how much DLL Hell exists, etc., ad
infinitum.

Well, my "shredded" system had been working fairly reliably for several
years before I tried the soporific stuff.

2.You don't have the original drivers for your Win98 system. That's just a
failure on your part, period. I don't think it would mater if you did --

I almost certainly _do_ still have the original motherboard CD somewhere
- I certainly wouldn't throw something like that out; however, I've
moved house since I built the PC. I went to the motherboard
manufacturer's website and fetched a - Windows 98 - driver for the only
part that isn't working, the sound circuitry.

what you describe doesn't sound like it's at all that simple, sounds more
like rampant DLL Hell in the Hardware/PnP/Drivers installation layer. I
won't go through all the steps in my logic, but if it were my machine, and I
just wanted to get my real Windows 98 back, it would have been flattened and
rebuilt by now.

If I were going to do that, I think I'd go for XP.

Except that you still apparently want to play with the big boys and make it
your holy grail to find out what went wrong and fix it. Problems is, you

I'm very puzzled why you consider this to be such a satanic wish: what,
exactly, is wrong with wanting to know what has gone wrong?

didn't set out with a pro's mentality, you just slapped the thing in and
went for broke. I do that on one or more of my test machine regularly, but

No, I did an ERD, which though not a complete backup by any means, has
nearly always allowed me to restore a working system in the past. In the
very few cases where it hasn't, it has got me back to a situation where
I just had to reinstall one piece of software (usually Easy CD Creator)
manually.

not even on a separate partition of my main work machine. Only on totally
throw-away boxes. Believe it or not, software CAN wreck hardware, and more

I remember there was (allegedly - I never investigated!) a command you
could type on the Commodore PET that would cause it to do harm to
itself! But yes, even on PCs, there certainly are things. (I suppose
some of the utilities that thoroughly exercise bits of the system - such
as hard drives, or in extremis processors, are the most likely these
days, but I'm sure there are some unexpected ones too.)

importantly, what gets installed on one partition may not behave and STAY on
that partition and totally leave the others untouched. Windows XP and even
more, Vista, are excellent examples of this. I do install all of them on
adjacent partitions on my main machine, but I also know fairly well what
they will do to each other, and I generally keep them at least mostly hidden
from each other and ameliorate the rest.

But then, I'm pretty much the same brand of fool that you are. That's how I
learned Windows 98. Install it, do whatever I can to it, while keeping track
of what happens when I install this or that, until I get myself into such a
deep hole, I'd reformat and reinstall. I did that up to a dozen times a day,
over 300 times in the first year I owned it, until I got it right or gave up
on whatever application or hardware I was playing with. I've had to curb

Wow! Well, it was the (presumed) expertise that I sensed you had
developed as a result of all that, that I'd hoped I could tap into.
[]
At all times, even now with my main XP installation (that has four other
Windows OS partitions that I multi-boot), I am always conscious of the fact
that I might lose the use of it at any moment and constantly ask myself what
will I do in that case, with, of course, dozens upon dozens of possible
strategies available to ponder and perfect (even practice) while I wait for

Well, except for actual hardware failure or perhaps FAT corruption, I am
fairly certain I can extract my _data_ files, if necessary by booting
into DOS. (I frequently dump them to CD as well.)

the inevitable -- and that is how you have to think about computers: That it
is inevitable that at any moment it will be destroyed, with absolutely
nothing to recover, neither hardware or data, a blackened chunk of melted
metal and silicon, ready for immediate delivery to the recycler.

Indeed.

disservice by not dealing with them in a forum dedicated to the topic, you

Hmm, I was unaware there were any, but I've done a search after your post,
and I see that both of the newsservers I use actually include
fido7.su.f98lite, which I have now subscribed to; I suspect the "su" means
it'll be in Finnish (which I don't speak), but I'll report back.

Doesn't look to me like there's even a forum for 98Lite, let alone

Well, I've now loaded some posts from that, and they're certainly not in
a language I can understand - it could well be Finnish.

associated hackers. Which does nothing but lower my already low opinion of
the product and the crowd that uses it. Unless maybe if you pay for
98Lite... there's a member's login -- maybe there's a forum hiding in there.

What is your opinion of TweakUI, and the other PowerTools?

Otherwise, it indicates to me that there is no seriousness on the part of
these cross-breeders. That they're just a bunch of silly hackers who don't
give a crap about anyone else, especially not the people who are interested
in supporting their efforts, if not with money, then with ideas and
feedback. That's how the people I know who have developed very successful
applications for computers have always conducted their business. Seeks
experts to get behind their effort and have a very open and lively forum.

Agreed - or, do it all themself, but still have plenty of dialog (about
both problems and suggestions) with the users. A couple of examples of
that, I would say, are Irfan Skiljan's IrfanView, John Steed's Brother's
Keeper (genealogy software), and GoldWave (sound editing); all of these,
but particularly the first two, deal openly with the users. I have
actually bought all of these (and some others), even though at least one
(IrfanView) is free for home use, as I believe in encouraging them.
[]
years.) This is at least historically true. I haven't kept up with AOL in
recent years, but it seems to me that they have at least lessoned their
efforts to reprogram the OS, and instead learned to work within its bounds.

Just about - I've had to do battle with it for a friend recently, and it
still seems to have very much its own way of doing things, at least the
interface to BB, for no advantage to the user that I can see.
[]
I honestly beg to differ. Hijack these NGs is exactly what you did, not that
you had much choice. But your issue is NOT a Windows 98 issue, it's a 98Lite
issue. And 98Lite users, if they have any respect whatsoever for the stock
98 users that regularly attend these groups, they'd get their own room.
Otherwise, they're no less obnoxious than any other trolls.

I thought a troll was someone who deliberately posted something
inflammatory, hoping to start a flamewar or similar. I certainly didn't
intend to do that - mine was (and still is) a genuine request of the
"has anyone else come across anything like this, and know what the cause
is" sort.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL(+++)IS-P--Ch+(p)Ar+T[?]H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
** http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/G6JPG-PC/JPGminPC.htm for thoughts on PCs. **

it is no use hitting all the targets and missing the point. - chief executive
of
the Disability and Carers Service, quoted in computing, 23 March 2006, page 26.

In message , Gary S. Terhune
writes
Just to keep me happy, eh? So you really don't care about the innocent user
who might stumble upon this thread and not realize that it isn't about
Windows 98?

I do, actually.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL(+++)IS-P--Ch+(p)Ar+T[?]H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
** http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/G6JPG-PC/JPGminPC.htm for thoughts on PCs. **

it is no use hitting all the targets and missing the point. - chief executive
of
the Disability and Carers Service, quoted in computing, 23 March 2006, page 26.

In message , Gary S. Terhune
writes
Just to keep me happy, eh? So you really don't care about the innocent user
who might stumble upon this thread and not realize that it isn't about
Windows 98?

I do, actually.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL(+++)IS-P--Ch+(p)Ar+T[?]H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
** http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/G6JPG-PC/JPGminPC.htm for thoughts on PCs. **

it is no use hitting all the targets and missing the point. - chief executive
of
the Disability and Carers Service, quoted in computing, 23 March 2006, page 26.

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message
...
In message , Gary S. Terhune
writes
[]
If you'll notice, nobody is responding to it, anyway, except me. Your
statement "I have tried to revert...." is exactly what takes this out of
the
realm of stock Windows 98. You can't fix a problem until you know what it

This reversion is one of the functions offered by 98lite - a shell swap,
between the 95 shell and the 98 shell. (It does more than just change
explorer.exe and shell32.dll - it also amends several files, such as
notepad.exe, such that they work properly with whichever shell.)

The reversion function failed this time, which is a 98Lite problem, not a
Windows 98 problem. Please take it to a 98Lite forum.

is, and in this case the problem is almost certainly caused by a serious
screwing up of your system caused by your experiment. And, possibly, due
to

I am pretty sure you are right there.

your total lack of preparation for said experiment by making sure you have
the drivers to install your system stored carefully away, preferably in a

I have the drivers for the sound circuitry. The problem does not seem to
be the drivers themselves, but the process (?) which handles the
installation of (any) driver: when I add new hardware (or delete the sound
circuitry and then reboot), I get the usual "found new hardware", and
either it finds the drivers or I tell it where they are, and it starts to
load them - and then I get the rundll32 error box.

Then I must have misread an earlier post that I thought said you couldn't
decently reinstall the system from scratch because you lacked all the
drivers. I in no way thought that the sound drivers were to blame, as I
explain farther down.

Interesting - does 98lite have something to do with Linux then? (I ask
with no baggage: I'm just genuinely interested.)

As far as code goes, nothing (I presume.) I was referring to the fact that
98Lite and it's brethren tear the 98 OS into pieces, rip out whole chunks,
and then (and here's where the Linux reference comes in), replace it (or
rather, some of it) with homegrown, "Open Source"--style code. Then claim
that because it still has the 98 kernel, it's Windows 98, just tweaked.
That's a load of bullcrap. At that point, it is no longer Windows 98 in
the
slightest. Note your phrase, above: "I have tried reverting to the '98
shell..." Far more than the kernel, it is the shell that defines an OS
from
the point of view of the user, and just because some nerds want to turn
that
logic on its head doesn't mean squat.

I'm confused by the difference between "shell" and "kernel" in what you
say above; it seems to me that you mean different things by the two terms.
(Please don't gloat in your answer! If I don't ask, I won't learn, will
I!)

These may not be the best explanations, but they'll do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_...ter_science%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(computing)


You've got two problems.
1. You don't have a functional '98 machine anymore because you ripped out
huge chunks and replaced them, and then the aptly named "soporific"
obviously either didn't do a good enough job with the installer (referring
to it's uninstall functions) or didn't expect anyone to bother trying to
go
back to the original shell. And you, due to total lack of foresight and
professionalism, haven't the slightest idea just how different from your
original system your current one is, just how much DLL Hell exists, etc.,
ad
infinitum.

Well, my "shredded" system had been working fairly reliably for several
years before I tried the soporific stuff.

You've had 98Lite installed for years? Regardless, I didn't say that 98Lite
doesn't work, I say that installing it shreds your Windows 98 system. And
that's exactly what it does. That's its *intent*. The rip out great gobs of
Windows 98 that the creators and users don't want in there. Fine, but it is
no longer Windows 98 and I doubt that it's even close to possible to restore
a functioning Windows 98 System once 98Lite has been installed.

2.You don't have the original drivers for your Win98 system. That's just a
failure on your part, period. I don't think it would mater if you did --

I almost certainly _do_ still have the original motherboard CD somewhere -
I certainly wouldn't throw something like that out; however, I've moved
house since I built the PC. I went to the motherboard manufacturer's
website and fetched a - Windows 98 - driver for the only part that isn't
working, the sound circuitry.

Again, that was a misread on my part and I've clearly explained what I think
is wrong in another in the next paragraph.

what you describe doesn't sound like it's at all that simple, sounds more
like rampant DLL Hell in the Hardware/PnP/Drivers installation layer. I
won't go through all the steps in my logic, but if it were my machine, and
I
just wanted to get my real Windows 98 back, it would have been flattened
and
rebuilt by now.

If I were going to do that, I think I'd go for XP.

If you've been running Windows 98 and/or 98Lite for "years" on that machine,
I doubt it's built to handle XP in any manner that would satisfy you. But I
don't know the machine's specs, so I'm just guessing.

Except that you still apparently want to play with the big boys and make
it
your holy grail to find out what went wrong and fix it. Problems is, you

I'm very puzzled why you consider this to be such a satanic wish: what,
exactly, is wrong with wanting to know what has gone wrong.

Absolutely nothing! You just didn't prepare for your experiment in a manner
that would have allowed you to determine what went wrong. You have no data
from your experiment except that you installed it, then tried to get out and
can't. Beyond that, you only have my *guess* that the issue is in the
hardware installation programming.

didn't set out with a pro's mentality, you just slapped the thing in and
went for broke. I do that on one or more of my test machine regularly, but

No, I did an ERD, which though not a complete backup by any means, has
nearly always allowed me to restore a working system in the past. In the
very few cases where it hasn't, it has got me back to a situation where I
just had to reinstall one piece of software (usually Easy CD Creator)
manually.

So I hope you've learned a valuable lesson from this. Just because you got
away with half-measure tools in the past (ERD, SCANREGW /BACKUP, Windows
ME/XP/Vista's System Restore) NOTHING takes the place of a full backup that
can be quickly restored to a reformatted or new hard drive.

not even on a separate partition of my main work machine. Only on totally
throw-away boxes. Believe it or not, software CAN wreck hardware, and more

I remember there was (allegedly - I never investigated!) a command you
could type on the Commodore PET that would cause it to do harm to itself!
But yes, even on PCs, there certainly are things. (I suppose some of the
utilities that thoroughly exercise bits of the system - such as hard
drives, or in extremis processors, are the most likely these days, but I'm
sure there are some unexpected ones too.)

importantly, what gets installed on one partition may not behave and STAY
on
that partition and totally leave the others untouched. Windows XP and even
more, Vista, are excellent examples of this. I do install all of them on
adjacent partitions on my main machine, but I also know fairly well what
they will do to each other, and I generally keep them at least mostly
hidden
from each other and ameliorate the rest.

But then, I'm pretty much the same brand of fool that you are. That's how
I
learned Windows 98. Install it, do whatever I can to it, while keeping
track
of what happens when I install this or that, until I get myself into such
a
deep hole, I'd reformat and reinstall. I did that up to a dozen times a
day,
over 300 times in the first year I owned it, until I got it right or gave
up
on whatever application or hardware I was playing with. I've had to curb

Wow! Well, it was the (presumed) expertise that I sensed you had developed
as a result of all that, that I'd hoped I could tap into.

Nope. If I haven't made it plain, yet, I think your system is totally hosed.
If you can't get into it, then an Overinstall of Win98 might get it working
sufficiently well enough that you can more easily copy off your personal
files before reformatting and reinstalling from scratch..

At all times, even now with my main XP installation (that has four other
Windows OS partitions that I multi-boot), I am always conscious of the
fact
that I might lose the use of it at any moment and constantly ask myself
what
will I do in that case, with, of course, dozens upon dozens of possible
strategies available to ponder and perfect (even practice) while I wait
for

Well, except for actual hardware failure or perhaps FAT corruption, I am
fairly certain I can extract my _data_ files, if necessary by booting into
DOS. (I frequently dump them to CD as well.)

Extract your data files in DOS to where? You have a DOS CD burning utility?
Easiest way is to put the drive into another machine and use that machine to
back up the files to CD or DVD (or get an external drive if your system is
new enough that BIOS sees and recognizes them, then use a bootable CD system
like BartPE to copy the files from your system to the external HD.) Now that
I say that, I think there are bootable CD systems out there that include
burner utilities. Might check them out.

the inevitable -- and that is how you have to think about computers: That
it
is inevitable that at any moment it will be destroyed, with absolutely
nothing to recover, neither hardware or data, a blackened chunk of melted
metal and silicon, ready for immediate delivery to the recycler.

Indeed.

disservice by not dealing with them in a forum dedicated to the topic,
you

Hmm, I was unaware there were any, but I've done a search after your
post,
and I see that both of the newsservers I use actually include
fido7.su.f98lite, which I have now subscribed to; I suspect the "su"
means
it'll be in Finnish (which I don't speak), but I'll report back.

Doesn't look to me like there's even a forum for 98Lite, let alone

Well, I've now loaded some posts from that, and they're certainly not in a
language I can understand - it could well be Finnish.

associated hackers. Which does nothing but lower my already low opinion of
the product and the crowd that uses it. Unless maybe if you pay for
98Lite... there's a member's login -- maybe there's a forum hiding in
there.

What is your opinion of TweakUI, and the other PowerTools?

For the most part, I think they are too dangerous for the average user. I
don't use them, I prefer to do things manually for the most part. The short
and sweet is that I don't trust them, and every one of them contains
functions that can wreck your system, either immediately or in the form of a
time bomb. Using TUI to get rid of IE4 integration into Win98 was one such.
I forget what the actual wording is of the settings involved, but once they
were involved, it turned out the functions they supposedly "turned off"
ended up completely hosed, with some secondary damage that was MUCH worse
than just not being able to view the desktop as a webpage. IOW, the
presumably simple tweaks had hidden parts that you aren't warned about and
that most people found out they wanted after all. Coincidentally, those
functions are among the same exact things 98Lite hoses.

Otherwise, it indicates to me that there is no seriousness on the part of
these cross-breeders. That they're just a bunch of silly hackers who don't
give a crap about anyone else, especially not the people who are
interested
in supporting their efforts, if not with money, then with ideas and
feedback. That's how the people I know who have developed very successful
applications for computers have always conducted their business. Seeks
experts to get behind their effort and have a very open and lively forum.

Agreed - or, do it all themself, but still have plenty of dialog (about
both problems and suggestions) with the users. A couple of examples of
that, I would say, are Irfan Skiljan's IrfanView, John Steed's Brother's
Keeper (genealogy software), and GoldWave (sound editing); all of these,
but particularly the first two, deal openly with the users. I have
actually bought all of these (and some others), even though at least one
(IrfanView) is free for home use, as I believe in encouraging them.
[]
years.) This is at least historically true. I haven't kept up with AOL in
recent years, but it seems to me that they have at least lessoned their
efforts to reprogram the OS, and instead learned to work within its
bounds.

Just about - I've had to do battle with it for a friend recently, and it
still seems to have very much its own way of doing things, at least the
interface to BB, for no advantage to the user that I can see.
[]
I honestly beg to differ. Hijack these NGs is exactly what you did, not
that
you had much choice. But your issue is NOT a Windows 98 issue, it's a
98Lite
issue. And 98Lite users, if they have any respect whatsoever for the stock
98 users that regularly attend these groups, they'd get their own room.
Otherwise, they're no less obnoxious than any other trolls.

I thought a troll was someone who deliberately posted something
inflammatory, hoping to start a flamewar or similar. I certainly didn't
intend to do that - mine was (and still is) a genuine request of the "has
anyone else come across anything like this, and know what the cause is"
sort.

There has been plenty of trollish behavior on the part of 98Lite promoters
in this group over the more recent years. Sorry, but in my eyes, you are
guilty by association. But that wasn't my primary intent, to call you a
troll, only "just as bad" as the others who *are* trolls. More accurately,
to define "hijacking a group" as a troll-like behavior, especially if it is
deliberately done and/or continues even after it's been pointed out to
someone less in the know what he's actually, even if unwittingly, doing.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS-MVP Shell/User
http://grystmill.com

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message
...
In message , Gary S. Terhune
writes
[]
If you'll notice, nobody is responding to it, anyway, except me. Your
statement "I have tried to revert...." is exactly what takes this out of
the
realm of stock Windows 98. You can't fix a problem until you know what it

This reversion is one of the functions offered by 98lite - a shell swap,
between the 95 shell and the 98 shell. (It does more than just change
explorer.exe and shell32.dll - it also amends several files, such as
notepad.exe, such that they work properly with whichever shell.)

The reversion function failed this time, which is a 98Lite problem, not a
Windows 98 problem. Please take it to a 98Lite forum.

is, and in this case the problem is almost certainly caused by a serious
screwing up of your system caused by your experiment. And, possibly, due
to

I am pretty sure you are right there.

your total lack of preparation for said experiment by making sure you have
the drivers to install your system stored carefully away, preferably in a

I have the drivers for the sound circuitry. The problem does not seem to
be the drivers themselves, but the process (?) which handles the
installation of (any) driver: when I add new hardware (or delete the sound
circuitry and then reboot), I get the usual "found new hardware", and
either it finds the drivers or I tell it where they are, and it starts to
load them - and then I get the rundll32 error box.

Then I must have misread an earlier post that I thought said you couldn't
decently reinstall the system from scratch because you lacked all the
drivers. I in no way thought that the sound drivers were to blame, as I
explain farther down.

Interesting - does 98lite have something to do with Linux then? (I ask
with no baggage: I'm just genuinely interested.)

As far as code goes, nothing (I presume.) I was referring to the fact that
98Lite and it's brethren tear the 98 OS into pieces, rip out whole chunks,
and then (and here's where the Linux reference comes in), replace it (or
rather, some of it) with homegrown, "Open Source"--style code. Then claim
that because it still has the 98 kernel, it's Windows 98, just tweaked.
That's a load of bullcrap. At that point, it is no longer Windows 98 in
the
slightest. Note your phrase, above: "I have tried reverting to the '98
shell..." Far more than the kernel, it is the shell that defines an OS
from
the point of view of the user, and just because some nerds want to turn
that
logic on its head doesn't mean squat.

I'm confused by the difference between "shell" and "kernel" in what you
say above; it seems to me that you mean different things by the two terms.
(Please don't gloat in your answer! If I don't ask, I won't learn, will
I!)

These may not be the best explanations, but they'll do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_...ter_science%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(computing)


You've got two problems.
1. You don't have a functional '98 machine anymore because you ripped out
huge chunks and replaced them, and then the aptly named "soporific"
obviously either didn't do a good enough job with the installer (referring
to it's uninstall functions) or didn't expect anyone to bother trying to
go
back to the original shell. And you, due to total lack of foresight and
professionalism, haven't the slightest idea just how different from your
original system your current one is, just how much DLL Hell exists, etc.,
ad
infinitum.

Well, my "shredded" system had been working fairly reliably for several
years before I tried the soporific stuff.

You've had 98Lite installed for years? Regardless, I didn't say that 98Lite
doesn't work, I say that installing it shreds your Windows 98 system. And
that's exactly what it does. That's its *intent*. The rip out great gobs of
Windows 98 that the creators and users don't want in there. Fine, but it is
no longer Windows 98 and I doubt that it's even close to possible to restore
a functioning Windows 98 System once 98Lite has been installed.

2.You don't have the original drivers for your Win98 system. That's just a
failure on your part, period. I don't think it would mater if you did --

I almost certainly _do_ still have the original motherboard CD somewhere -
I certainly wouldn't throw something like that out; however, I've moved
house since I built the PC. I went to the motherboard manufacturer's
website and fetched a - Windows 98 - driver for the only part that isn't
working, the sound circuitry.

Again, that was a misread on my part and I've clearly explained what I think
is wrong in another in the next paragraph.

what you describe doesn't sound like it's at all that simple, sounds more
like rampant DLL Hell in the Hardware/PnP/Drivers installation layer. I
won't go through all the steps in my logic, but if it were my machine, and
I
just wanted to get my real Windows 98 back, it would have been flattened
and
rebuilt by now.

If I were going to do that, I think I'd go for XP.

If you've been running Windows 98 and/or 98Lite for "years" on that machine,
I doubt it's built to handle XP in any manner that would satisfy you. But I
don't know the machine's specs, so I'm just guessing.

Except that you still apparently want to play with the big boys and make
it
your holy grail to find out what went wrong and fix it. Problems is, you

I'm very puzzled why you consider this to be such a satanic wish: what,
exactly, is wrong with wanting to know what has gone wrong.

Absolutely nothing! You just didn't prepare for your experiment in a manner
that would have allowed you to determine what went wrong. You have no data
from your experiment except that you installed it, then tried to get out and
can't. Beyond that, you only have my *guess* that the issue is in the
hardware installation programming.

didn't set out with a pro's mentality, you just slapped the thing in and
went for broke. I do that on one or more of my test machine regularly, but

No, I did an ERD, which though not a complete backup by any means, has
nearly always allowed me to restore a working system in the past. In the
very few cases where it hasn't, it has got me back to a situation where I
just had to reinstall one piece of software (usually Easy CD Creator)
manually.

So I hope you've learned a valuable lesson from this. Just because you got
away with half-measure tools in the past (ERD, SCANREGW /BACKUP, Windows
ME/XP/Vista's System Restore) NOTHING takes the place of a full backup that
can be quickly restored to a reformatted or new hard drive.

not even on a separate partition of my main work machine. Only on totally
throw-away boxes. Believe it or not, software CAN wreck hardware, and more

I remember there was (allegedly - I never investigated!) a command you
could type on the Commodore PET that would cause it to do harm to itself!
But yes, even on PCs, there certainly are things. (I suppose some of the
utilities that thoroughly exercise bits of the system - such as hard
drives, or in extremis processors, are the most likely these days, but I'm
sure there are some unexpected ones too.)

importantly, what gets installed on one partition may not behave and STAY
on
that partition and totally leave the others untouched. Windows XP and even
more, Vista, are excellent examples of this. I do install all of them on
adjacent partitions on my main machine, but I also know fairly well what
they will do to each other, and I generally keep them at least mostly
hidden
from each other and ameliorate the rest.

But then, I'm pretty much the same brand of fool that you are. That's how
I
learned Windows 98. Install it, do whatever I can to it, while keeping
track
of what happens when I install this or that, until I get myself into such
a
deep hole, I'd reformat and reinstall. I did that up to a dozen times a
day,
over 300 times in the first year I owned it, until I got it right or gave
up
on whatever application or hardware I was playing with. I've had to curb

Wow! Well, it was the (presumed) expertise that I sensed you had developed
as a result of all that, that I'd hoped I could tap into.

Nope. If I haven't made it plain, yet, I think your system is totally hosed.
If you can't get into it, then an Overinstall of Win98 might get it working
sufficiently well enough that you can more easily copy off your personal
files before reformatting and reinstalling from scratch..

At all times, even now with my main XP installation (that has four other
Windows OS partitions that I multi-boot), I am always conscious of the
fact
that I might lose the use of it at any moment and constantly ask myself
what
will I do in that case, with, of course, dozens upon dozens of possible
strategies available to ponder and perfect (even practice) while I wait
for

Well, except for actual hardware failure or perhaps FAT corruption, I am
fairly certain I can extract my _data_ files, if necessary by booting into
DOS. (I frequently dump them to CD as well.)

Extract your data files in DOS to where? You have a DOS CD burning utility?
Easiest way is to put the drive into another machine and use that machine to
back up the files to CD or DVD (or get an external drive if your system is
new enough that BIOS sees and recognizes them, then use a bootable CD system
like BartPE to copy the files from your system to the external HD.) Now that
I say that, I think there are bootable CD systems out there that include
burner utilities. Might check them out.

the inevitable -- and that is how you have to think about computers: That
it
is inevitable that at any moment it will be destroyed, with absolutely
nothing to recover, neither hardware or data, a blackened chunk of melted
metal and silicon, ready for immediate delivery to the recycler.

Indeed.

disservice by not dealing with them in a forum dedicated to the topic,
you

Hmm, I was unaware there were any, but I've done a search after your
post,
and I see that both of the newsservers I use actually include
fido7.su.f98lite, which I have now subscribed to; I suspect the "su"
means
it'll be in Finnish (which I don't speak), but I'll report back.

Doesn't look to me like there's even a forum for 98Lite, let alone

Well, I've now loaded some posts from that, and they're certainly not in a
language I can understand - it could well be Finnish.

associated hackers. Which does nothing but lower my already low opinion of
the product and the crowd that uses it. Unless maybe if you pay for
98Lite... there's a member's login -- maybe there's a forum hiding in
there.

What is your opinion of TweakUI, and the other PowerTools?

For the most part, I think they are too dangerous for the average user. I
don't use them, I prefer to do things manually for the most part. The short
and sweet is that I don't trust them, and every one of them contains
functions that can wreck your system, either immediately or in the form of a
time bomb. Using TUI to get rid of IE4 integration into Win98 was one such.
I forget what the actual wording is of the settings involved, but once they
were involved, it turned out the functions they supposedly "turned off"
ended up completely hosed, with some secondary damage that was MUCH worse
than just not being able to view the desktop as a webpage. IOW, the
presumably simple tweaks had hidden parts that you aren't warned about and
that most people found out they wanted after all. Coincidentally, those
functions are among the same exact things 98Lite hoses.

Otherwise, it indicates to me that there is no seriousness on the part of
these cross-breeders. That they're just a bunch of silly hackers who don't
give a crap about anyone else, especially not the people who are
interested
in supporting their efforts, if not with money, then with ideas and
feedback. That's how the people I know who have developed very successful
applications for computers have always conducted their business. Seeks
experts to get behind their effort and have a very open and lively forum.

Agreed - or, do it all themself, but still have plenty of dialog (about
both problems and suggestions) with the users. A couple of examples of
that, I would say, are Irfan Skiljan's IrfanView, John Steed's Brother's
Keeper (genealogy software), and GoldWave (sound editing); all of these,
but particularly the first two, deal openly with the users. I have
actually bought all of these (and some others), even though at least one
(IrfanView) is free for home use, as I believe in encouraging them.
[]
years.) This is at least historically true. I haven't kept up with AOL in
recent years, but it seems to me that they have at least lessoned their
efforts to reprogram the OS, and instead learned to work within its
bounds.

Just about - I've had to do battle with it for a friend recently, and it
still seems to have very much its own way of doing things, at least the
interface to BB, for no advantage to the user that I can see.
[]
I honestly beg to differ. Hijack these NGs is exactly what you did, not
that
you had much choice. But your issue is NOT a Windows 98 issue, it's a
98Lite
issue. And 98Lite users, if they have any respect whatsoever for the stock
98 users that regularly attend these groups, they'd get their own room.
Otherwise, they're no less obnoxious than any other trolls.

I thought a troll was someone who deliberately posted something
inflammatory, hoping to start a flamewar or similar. I certainly didn't
intend to do that - mine was (and still is) a genuine request of the "has
anyone else come across anything like this, and know what the cause is"
sort.

There has been plenty of trollish behavior on the part of 98Lite promoters
in this group over the more recent years. Sorry, but in my eyes, you are
guilty by association. But that wasn't my primary intent, to call you a
troll, only "just as bad" as the others who *are* trolls. More accurately,
to define "hijacking a group" as a troll-like behavior, especially if it is
deliberately done and/or continues even after it's been pointed out to
someone less in the know what he's actually, even if unwittingly, doing.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS-MVP Shell/User
http://grystmill.com