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Messages - Rekrul [ switch to compact view ]

Pages: [1]
1
You make a fairly valid point, but how far back are you expecting this software to work for?  You said it was 'universally understood' that if a program did not list its requirements then it would work on 'all' versions... All versions??  What, way back to version 1?

Sorry, I should have been more clear. There is much more compatibility between the Windows 9x line and the NT line than there was between the 3x and 9x lines. For many years, most Windows programs would work on both 9x and NT. While you could argue that "all" should include Windows 3x and before, very few programs seemed to support it after the 9x line came out, at least from what I can see.

 
If you are going to try and run a piece of software that was written in the last year or so, it clearly was not written to run on a pc running an 11 year old OS.  One would assume it runs on the 'current' populous, with all the latest updates.  That to me would be the assumption (but not necessarily correct).  But to assume it will work on 'all versions of Windows' I think it wrong.

Many programs still work on 98. Media players, video converters/joiners, download managers like Net Transport, art/paint programs (I've tried out at least four in the last few months), voice chat software, Total Commander, many (most?) emulators, most archivers, most command line software ported from *nix, CD/DVD burning software, many freeware/shareware games, etc.

For example; FotoSketcher, a program to turn images into simulated oil paintings or pencil sketches;

http://www.fotosketcher.com/

The Softpedia download page lists the requirements as "Windows All", and it works perfectly under 98. Some of the other download sites explicitly list 98 as being supported.

Every single program on the Boilsoft website lists 98 as the minimum required OS;

http://www.boilsoft.com/

DVD Regions + CSS Free still supports 98;

http://www.dvdidle.c.../dvd-region-free.htm


So it's really not that far-fetched that I thought these tiny little prgrams mght have worked under 98.

 
As a software developer it's neither cost effective nor sometimes even technically possible to write software that works on XP, for example and also runs on 98.  They are simply too different.

Then list the minimum requirements as XP and I wouldn't even look twice at it.  :)

Now that Windows 7 is out, how are W7 users supposed to know if your software will work on it, if there are no requirements listed? Your program could be a slightly older one that was released right before W7 came out. Conversely, how will XP users know that it wasn't written exclusively for W7? Listing the system requirements, or at least mentioning what OS versions it was tested under is just a generally good idea. When was the last time you picked up a commercial package in a store, either a game or app, and the box just said "For Windows" on it? Most of them not only list the windows version, CPU speed, amount of memory, etc, but also what graphics cards they were tested on, what sound cards etc.

Considering the age of Win9x (and that Microsoft has dropped support for it)

Microsoft would have dropped XP like a hot potato the day Vista was released, if they had their way.

I'll let you in on a little secret; Microsoft doesn't want anyone using anything but the latest version of Windows. They want every single computer user to upgrade whether they want or need to. If they thought they could get away with it, they'd have a remote killswitch in Windows that disabled the whole OS and flashed a giant message saying "BUY THE LATEST VERSION!" as soon as a new version came out.

Their entire business model depends on people continuously buying essentially the same thing over and over. Every version gets more and more bloated and has more annoying features that you can't turn off.

I guess you should implicitly assume that software doesn't support it - and software authors can then list Win9x explicitly if they went through the hell of supporting that old crap :)

It's funny, everyone else I know is using XP and they have almost daily problems with their systems. They take several minutes to boot, respond slowly to mouse clicks, get infected with viruses, even while running respected commercial anti-virus programs like McAffee or Kaspersky. They end up re-installing them every six months or so. I've been using this system for at least five years now and the only major problems I've had have come from installing software that takes it upon itself to "update" some of the system files, or install system-wide codecs, replacing the perfectly good ones I already have installed. It boots fast and is pretty much stable under most daily conditions.

My biggest source of problems is Adobe's piece of s*** Flash, which crashes on a regular basis. The older versions  (back around 7 or 8 ) never gave me any problems, but since installing v9, it's been a royal pain in the ass. I used to be able to open 5-6 YouTube videos, pause them all and let them download in the background (since YouTube's servers seem to be permanently set at about 25K/s), but now, just opening one video causes my entire system to lag for a minute or two until the video starts, then it stutters like crazy. Half the time, it's faster to just download the video and play it in MPC/ffdshow, where it plays perfectly.

Newer isn't always better...

2
Rekrul, I know you've probably heard this a million times and probably have good reason to stick with windows 98 -- but as a coder i think trying to support win98 is becoming something that isn't worth the effort, it's just no longer in use for all but a handful of people.

Fair enough, but is it too much to ask that software authors actually list the system requirements of their programs? At the very least, if it hasn't been tested on older versions, why not add a note saying "Written for Windows XP/Vista. Not tested or supported on older versions of Windows."? I thought it was pretty much universally understood that if a program didn't list any requirements for a particular version of Windows, it meant it was compatible with all versions.

It used to be that every program listed all the system requirements, now even some expensive commercial programs don't bother to tell you what versions of Windows they work under. Some commercial programs DO still support it, so how are you supposed to tell which ones do and which ones don't if there are no system requirements listed?

To be perfectly honest, I downloaded a bunch of these little programs and after the second one failed to do anything, I realized that probably none of them were going to work. If the author had included a message such as the above, I would have just deleted them and moved on. However it "irked" me that authors no longer list the requirements as if it was just universally decided that people who have older systems don't deserve the courtesy of being told ahead of time that the programs might not work for them.

What if I'd installed a program that tried to change something harmless on XP, but which seriously affected the stability of 98? That HAS happened to me before. I may no longer be considered worthy of support, but don't I at least deserve to know that the software I'm considering installing wasn't intended for me?

I suppose you could argue that I should just assume that no new software is meant for 98, but quite a few programs do still support it.

3
:) I need beta testers!

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that nothing you've written works properly under Windows 98SE, even though you didn't bother to list any specific system requirements for any of your programs. Like the rest, this one doesn't work at all for me. When run it complains that it can't find a long list of PNG files, selecting settings from the tray icon just opens an explorer window for the directory that it's in, selecting Show Info does nothing, etc.

4
Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Large file generator
« on: November 19, 2009, 03:01 PM »
:) And then there's the odd stroke of inspiration...
 
Check out BigByte v1.1!

With a little help from DOS it will fill your harddisk a lot quicker! So be careful! It creates a 1 byte file and doubles it until it's big enough, then copies the needed files together and deletes the rest.

Just tried this on my old Windows 98SE system (there were no requirements listed, which is generally understood to mean that it works on all versions of Windows) and got the following error when I asked it to create a 20MB file;

http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/239/errorry.png


5
:) I've just updated DragLock to work properly with the Windows key, and also added options to change the hotkey.

You neglected to list any system requirements for this (or any of your programs), so I tried using it on my old Windows 98SE system. It ran and there were no errors, but it does absolutely nothing. I tried changing it to every possible hotkey and none of them affect the mouse movement in any way.

6
Drag&Drop Robot / Re: Thread errors under Win98SE
« on: September 22, 2009, 05:04 AM »
Any progress on this yet?

7
Drag&Drop Robot / Re: Thread errors under Win98SE
« on: September 01, 2009, 12:12 AM »
hmm.. i havent tried it under win98 in so long.. i wonder if there might be issues.. it would help if you tried with some other tools besides the par commandline so we could know if it was d+d robot in general or just with working with this commandline tool in particular.

you say:
while D&DR pops up the message: Thread Error: The specified path is invalid (161)

i wonder if that is a par2.exe error rather than a d+d robot error..

Sorry, I should have thought to try other commands with it. The same thing happens no matter what command I use. For example, I tried configuring it to generate SFV files using Fsum.exe (http://www.slavasoft.com/fsum/) and got exactly the same results. Either "The specified path is invalid" if it opens a normal shell window, or "The handle is invalid" if the output is redirected. Either way, it stops after the second file and refuses to do anything else until you close and re-open the program.

8
Drag&Drop Robot / Thread errors under Win98SE
« on: August 16, 2009, 01:31 AM »
I downloaded Drag & Drop Robot because I wanted a way to easily batch process Par2 files. In fact, that's how I stumbled across it, by searching for a way to process multiple Par2 files (I don't visit here that often and don't remember all the programs offered).

Anyway, it said it still supports Win9x, so I downloaded and installed it. I used the following command line;

C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\par2.exe v -q %a

If I have the shell window set to normal or minimized, it processes the first file and then just sits there. I have to close the DOS window manually, at which point, another immediately opens to process the second file, while D&DR pops up the message;

Thread Error: The specified path is invalid (161)

After that, it doesn't proceed any farther.

If I set the window to Redirected, the output of the first file goes into the output window as expected, and when it finishes, D&DR reports;

Thread Error: the handle is invalid (6)

It processes the second file and then stops.

At that point, it won't do anything else, except print confirmation messages when you click the Interrupt button. You can't start the queue again. If I close and re-run the program it works again, but the exact same thing happens.

I'm using the official Par2 Command Line EXE.

Am I doing something wrong?

9
UrlSnooper / Re: Net Transport: Error writing to file???
« on: December 03, 2007, 05:17 PM »
Hello Rekrul

Been having the same problem, but only for the last month or so.

Did you solve it, or is it still a problem - can anyone else offer a solution.

Sorry, it's still doing it for me.

At one point I did try the new, pay version, Net Xfer and that seemed to work fine, however it stopped working after the trial period.

10
This program only works for the first time........
but second and until now  .....didn't work anymore

This was reported months ago.

11
Oh good your taking one example and think it vindicates your point.  ::)
If I want to create an app that uses transparency then it will function only on the OS's that support it.
It's that simple, no use in whining about it.

So give me an example of some feature that Windows 2K/NT/XP has, but which Windows 98 doesn't, which is actually required for a program to function, and which isn't just some novelty piece of eye candy. And by "required" I mean something that is integral to the functionality of the program and which would be completely impractical to emulate on 98.

12
For one thing the windows API changes, I know for a fact that there are API functions that will not work on anything less than Windows 2000.
Right off the top of my head SetLayeredWindowAttributes is one.

And transparent windows are required for the proper functioning of a program how?

As far as the support for WinXP, when it's time to upgrade then that's what I'll do.
But if I were still using it a decade from now I'll hardly expect anyone to continue to support it.

New versions of Windows are driven by;

5% Desire to make a better OS

95% Desire to get people to buy a new OS

It used to be that the OS existed to be able to run software. When did the OS itself become the star of the show with everything else taking a backseat?

13
why are you still using 98 and expecting to use new software???   :huh:  I don't suggest tormenting yourself with Vista, but XP or 2000 are still fantastically better choices.
-OverlySubtle (April 19, 2007, 04:28 AM)

Here's a question that I've asked many times, but which I have yet to recieve a real answer to;

What specific function of the 2K/NT/XP Windows line will new versions need to rely on that will cause them not to function uner 98?

Gotta agree here.
The time is coming very soon where people writing software will no longer care to be bothered with trying to support it.

The same thing is probably going to happen to XP users in the very near future. MS has announced that DirectX 10 will be for Vista only. Of course, companies are free to continue supporting older versions, but typically, any new program that relies on DirectX, requires the absolute latest one. With a couple exceptions, every game released in the last 2-3 years has required DirectX 9c.

14
ok i've finally been able to reproduce this.. i'm working on it now..

Thank you!  :)

15
Program Web Page and Download: https://www.donation...rlsnooper/index.html

Version 2.18.01 - Feb. 4th, 2007
  • Updated installer to use WinPcap 4.0 final on WinXp/Nt/Vista
  • Added code so installer uses WinPcap 4beta2 on Win9x/Me (last version to support these versions)

Version 2.18.01 still doesn't work under Windows 98SE! It runs fine the FIRST time you run it after installing, but it will NOT work a second time. All I get is a standard Windows error message saying it's performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.

16
UrlSnooper / Net Transport: Error writing to file???
« on: January 04, 2007, 05:51 PM »
I know this forum is for URL Snooper, but people use it to find URLs then download them, sometimes with Net Transport, so I thought I'd ask here.

I recently switched from dialup to DSL. Net Transport used to work great for me. Now, every time I try to download a streaming video (I've only tried RTSP ones so far, can't find an MMS one to try) Net Transport reports "Error when Writing to file(Please check your hard drive for problems)". This error pops up every time it re-connects to the server. However, it only does it with streaming URLs. I fed it a normal HTTP file URL and it downloaded it without a single complaint. Also, I have been downloading tons of files, usually in Rar format and so far, no other program has complained of problems writing to a file. I've checked all my downloads and they're all good. Finally, I've freed up a lot of space on my drive, so the area that it was writing to a week ago isn't the same area it would have been writing to yesterday. If it was a drive problem, it should be intermittent, not happening every single time.

I had 1.92 installed, but I also tried 1.87 and 1.93 and they had the same problem. Give it an RTSP URL and it complains endlessly of problems writing to the file. Give it an HTTP URL and there's not a peep out of it.

Can anyone suggest a setting somewhere that needs to be changed? Or at least a reason why this is happening?

17
UrlSnooper / Re: Help me get this URL
« on: December 28, 2006, 08:51 AM »
Hi! I'm in need of help!  Anyone knows how to grab embedded videos from here:
http://www.devilducky.com/media/52292/

URLSnooper gave me this:
http://64.237.40.51/media/mov/t/tomamdjerrymilk.mov?media=e6cc74a2669fb1d8726dc1e545b197cc

but tomamdjerrymilk.mov it's not the real movie !

Thanks.

edit: sorry, the movie the site gave me is "devilducky.mov"

I just went to that page with Firefox and once the movie started to play, I went to the Tools menu, then to Page Info and finally I clicked on the Media tab. The video was listed with a similar string of characters on the end. I clicked on it, pressed CTRL-C to copy it to the clipboard and GetRight picked it up. I downloaded the file with GetRight and now I have a copy sitting on my HD;

tomamdjerrymilk.mov - 4,071,108 bytes

18
UrlSnooper / URL Snooper Beta Version - 2.06.03 Discussion split
« on: November 09, 2006, 03:36 PM »
Does this version solve the illegal operation error under Windows 98, or should I keep waiting?

19
UrlSnooper / Re: Illegal Operation message under W98SE
« on: October 26, 2006, 07:29 PM »
old version works!??
ok that's a *huge* clue.

Yes. In fact, I have a couple different versions that I've collected and all the ones I tried worked fine with the latest Winpcap. Note that these were all 1.x versions. The only 2.x version I have is the most recent one.

20
UrlSnooper / Re: Illegal Operation message under W98SE
« on: October 22, 2006, 10:57 PM »
I just downloaded the lastest version of URL Snooper the other day and installed it tonight. I'm also using Windows 98SE and the same thing happens when I run it; It works fine the first time, then it refuses to start.

To verify that Winpcap wasn't to blame, I installed an older version of URL Snooper, 1.0b6, and it works fine. No crashes at all.

I was hoping to be able to use the new version (and have a keyword search that finally worked correctly), but I guess I'll be sticking to the older versions for now.

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