First I’d like to thank Avast for continued support of Win9x-ME systems. Most anti-vir software have just abandoned this group and it comprises the majority of my PC’s. I’ve just been crusing w/out any file/virus protection for…well a looonnngg time. Thank you!
On my main PC system, (Win98) are problems shelling to DOS. Sometimes after several minutes of waiting, I would finally get a DOS prompt, sometimes it would just lock up. Same thing would happen if I typed in a ‘Start’ command, i.e. “Start song.mp3”. (This should start the default media player & play song.mp3, etc)
I finally got this working by checking the Disable Kernal Mode. The DOS and START functions started working immediately. However, I just double checked and this option is not still checked so now I’m not sure what or how I fixed this?
After heavy use (multiple windows open, running, & switching between them, copy/paste, etc.) sometimes all of my program icons go missing. Using Explorer you can see the file tree but without the manila folder icons, the files are listed but no icons with them, the quick launch although still there is missing all icons, etc. (It seems to be system wide not just w/Explorer) This has also happened several times on my son’s WinME system.
Regular system lockups it doesn’t seem to be any one thing in particular., i.e. I may or may not be in DOS, running netscape, exploring local intranet, etc. When this happens, CNTL-ALT-DEL doesn’t always give me the ‘close program’ control, or pressing it twice should always reboot regardless. About half the time, when it’s locked up, I cannot get any control and have to literaly unplug the AC.
This Win98 system is very stable, or was anyway, at one point it was on 24/7 for over 2 years and was still running great until we lost power to the house.
I have added a Radeon 9250 256Meg PCI video card recently, and my son’s WinME system (mentioned earlier) also has this type of video card. Both cards are from a different manufactors, but both are using the ATI chipsets.
The Win2000 systems (3) I have seem to run pretty well with Avast. One of these is heavily automated to run scheduled tasks, and I’ve had to re-write all of the scripts. Avast seemed to be slowing them down just enough to fail some tasks, but I believe this has been fixed.