I tried doing codec fixes before I wiped. None of it worked. The game wouldn't play any FMVs and would lock up at a certain point trying to start the game (since the 3D graphics start DURING the first FMV with Aeris.

Jorpho wrote:

FFXIhealer wrote:

Well, the FMVs refused to run, period. Nothing I did solved the problem, short of a wipe and reload of Windows 98.

I remember having a similar problem. It was just a matter of having the right codec. Installing the latest version of Media Player 6 did the trick for some reason. Not sure why the particular sequence of steps you followed resulted in something different – it is surely a quirk of the installer rather than some obscure missing DirectX feature.

Newer versions of DX sometimes break compatibility with software that requires older versions. This is direct3D related only, as directdraw seems to work well in most cases.

Jorpho wrote:

But there were never any drivers for those Voodoo cards that supported DX9.

If they have no DX9 driver support, how would the presence of DX9 be an issue? I'd also say that VXD drivers were never very stable.

That's not how it works. Drivers and software sometimes require certain versions of a DLL file included in the DX package to function correctly. Some newer DX versions completely omit dll files deemed obsolete, or replace them with more compact versions lacking the same features - in some cases even 3d acceleration. For example - take older versions of 3dsmax - some require dx 8 and 9 files to render in direct3d. If ran on windows 8.1, viewport performance will be abysmal. After installing directX 9 redist and directX 2010, my viewports went from 20 fps to 150 - this on an RX 470. Did I mention the crash to desktop of freezing?

Same thing happens in Dungeon Keeper II. Try running it on a 7900 or GTX 8800 with the latest forceware drivers for said card. You'll get a black screen. This happens because DK2 renderer requires the complete unadulterated original DX6 files - these files are present, but in their compacted form, with missing features. As such, the game will not render ANY textures, resulting in a black screen with particle effects, the cursor and some sprites. Google Dungeon Keeper 2 black screen.

FFXIhealer wrote:

After installing Windows 98, I immediately did upgrades, including DirectX 7. THEN I tried to install Final Fantasy VII (uses DirectX 5). Well, the FMVs refused to run, period. Nothing I did solved the problem, short of a wipe and reload of Windows 98. Doing THAT, I installed FF7 first, with its bundled DirectX 5. Game works like a charm. Then I upgraded DirectX to 7 and FF7 still works perfectly fine.

So it seems that games that don't use DX7 will try to use DX5 files that it calls for. If those files aren't there, it won't run.

My suspects would be DirectMedia/dxmedia/DirectShow or wathever they call it (but that appeared later than DirectX 5), and the old Windows codecs (i.e.: Indeo and those all stuff that appeared on Windows 3.x). As Jorpho wrote, sometimes (re)installing Windows Media Player can help. Other times installing previous DirectX versions can do the trick (they won't overwrite DLLs from newer DirectX).

kanecvr wrote:

That's not how it works. Drivers and software sometimes require certain versions of a DLL file included in the DX package to function correctly. Some newer DX versions completely omit dll files deemed obsolete, or replace them with more compact versions lacking the same features - in some cases even 3d acceleration. For example - take older versions of 3dsmax - some require dx 8 and 9 files to render in direct3d. If ran on windows 8.1, viewport performance will be abysmal. After installing directX 9 redist and directX 2010, my viewports went from 20 fps to 150 - this on an RX 470. Did I mention the crash to desktop of freezing?

Same thing happens in Dungeon Keeper II. Try running it on a 7900 or GTX 8800 with the latest forceware drivers for said card. You'll get a black screen. This happens because DK2 renderer requires the complete unadulterated original DX6 files - these files are present, but in their compacted form, with missing features. As such, the game will not render ANY textures, resulting in a black screen with particle effects, the cursor and some sprites. Google Dungeon Keeper 2 black screen.

Not entirely DirectX fault. As I said before, DirectX is very permissive to installing older versions so you can get those missing DLLs. Yes, I've found even after DirectX 9 installation that a game needed some missing DLLs (also from DirectX 9!) and I needed to get a specific date version to get that missing DLL.

That was DirectX fault, but sometimes the problem lies on graphic drivers. If your card drivers drop support for 8 bit textures, you'll get bad performance (because it simulates 8 bit textures using other resources) or glitches/errors everywhere. And it's not uncommon that nvidia and ATI drop support of some features sometimes.

Yeah, Final Fantasy 7's 8-bit Palleted Textures really look awesome using my shiny new Voodoo2 card in there. Never had one back in the day, it makes that game just POP!

kanecvr wrote:

Newer versions of DX sometimes break compatibility with software that requires older versions. This is direct3D related only, as directdraw seems to work well in most cases.

The thing is, FF7 is another one of those cases where the game is so enormously popular that I expect it would be a textbook example of DirectX incompatibility, if that was the case.

For example - take older versions of 3dsmax - some require dx 8 and 9 files to render in direct3d. If ran on windows 8.1, viewport performance will be abysmal.

Well, yes, among other things Windows Vista dropped Visual Basic support for DirectX 7 and 8 applications. But we're referring to Windows 98.

Same thing happens in Dungeon Keeper II. Try running it on a 7900 or GTX 8800 with the latest forceware drivers for said card. You'll get a black screen. This happens because DK2 renderer requires the complete unadulterated original DX6 files - these files are present, but in their compacted form, with missing features. As such, the game will not render ANY textures, resulting in a black screen with particle effects, the cursor and some sprites. Google Dungeon Keeper 2 black screen.

You're suggesting installing the Forceware drivers affects the DX6 files..?

I've updated the first post. The only things I miss are the photo retouch and spreadsheet.

The below are what I tested back in 2011. Possibly the latest vers work fine with kernelex.

Gimp 2.6.7 with kernelex
Gimp 2.2.17 without Kernelex

OpenOffice 3.0.0 with kernelex 0.3.6
OpenOffice 2.4.1 without kernelex

Thanks, that was the missing piece. Going deeper into GIMP, I've found that GTK runtime is the limit to some programs. Latest GTK supported is 2.6, so programs depending on GTK must use 2.6 or lower. The latest "official" build is 2.6.9, but I've found also 2.6.10.

So, GIMP latest supported version is 2.2.17 (as you said) and I've found Gnumeric latest supported version is 1.4.3-rc4. Gnumeric builds for Windows are scarce, and that is the lastes build I've found for 1.4 branch (there are also builds of 1.5 branch, but that branch is for development).

I think Opera 11.50 ran for me without KernelEx. I found it to be a better experience than Firefox.

Sedrosken wrote:

I think Opera 11.50 ran for me without KernelEx. I found it to be a better experience than Firefox.

In Win ME it says it needs Windows 2000 or newer without kernelex.

Then I was wrong, it was 10.63 IIRC. Away from my P3, I'll have to set up a VM to test.

Diablo 2 (or at least the Expansion) version 1.13d works on 98.

Nintendawg wrote:

Diablo 2 (or at least the Expansion) version 1.13d works on 98.

Yeah, 1.13d works fine -- 1.14 seemed to work okay for me too, but the machine I was on wasn't quick enough to run it in D3D mode as 1.14 demands.

Taskbar Shuffle 2.5 also works on Windows 98. Allows to rearrange taskbar items. It seems that rearranging of tray icons is not supported on Windows 98 though (at least it doesn't work for on my Windows 98).

Hi, is anybody here who could offer Notepad++ 5.9.0 or 5.9.1 non-unicode for use on Windows 9x? The usual places to find old versions only carry the installer version but according to https://msfn.org/board/topic/105936-last-vers … comment-1176861 those installers only include the unicode-version. So what's needed for Windows 9x is the according binary zip- or 7z-file.

instead of hijaking a post from 2016 to ask for help, in the future just make a new thread.

I don't mean to pour oil into the fire (so to say), but Windows 9x can handle Unicode applications (more or less).
If unicows.dll, gdiplus.dll (xp) and KernelEx are installed, at least. 😀

DosFreak wrote on 2016-09-13, 12:18:

The below are what I tested back in 2011. Possibly the latest vers work fine with kernelex. […]
Show full quote

The below are what I tested back in 2011. Possibly the latest vers work fine with kernelex.

Gimp 2.6.7 with kernelex
Gimp 2.2.17 without Kernelex

OpenOffice 3.0.0 with kernelex 0.3.6
OpenOffice 2.4.1 without kernelex

does the open office include open office file format support?

IThumbs up on winamp, it really whips the llamas ass.

Oh and I always install WinRAR and I like to install TreeSize aswell.

Nah, you want the nagware version of winzip and set your system clock to 1998, install, put back to current date so you can get that sweet "It's 8124 days since you installed winzip" screen every time you use it. 🤣

Anyway, how did this thread get so far without mentioning oldversion.com ... well I didn't see it on a skim.