mr don

CCleaner will always be useful. A lot of the bugs have been ironed out. Many of the new releases are improvements on programs cleaned/errors found in the program etc... CCleaner also supports the manual addition of programs through .ini file support. The latest iterations of CCleaner are really very good, so even if they drop it, or if MS drops support, that won't stop CCleaner from cleaning. Even if it does, there are open source projects that take up the cause such as Bleach Bit. But I like CCleaner better, so far, so that is what I use. Don't worry pal, we are here for ya!

Just copy & paste this into your start/run box ---> restore/rstrui Sorry for all the confusion here. This should bring System Restore right up in XP Regards, Don

Augeas, have you read here? --> http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/overwritten-data-gutmann.html & also here? --> http://www.actionfront.com/ts_whitepaper.aspx I ask, because sometimes what people think is at first impossible is not impossible. You may think I am being overly cautious, but on the flip side, let me take something less innocuous. Most people are aware that Yahoo archives are encrypted. This would keep ordinary users from being able to view the data right? I tested my own archives & I can get around the encryption to view the files. I don't even have to have Yahoo installed to view them. In light of the fact that situations like these may appear impossible to novices, I was just wondering... Not saying you are a novice or anything, as you appear pretty knowledgeable about many things, but there are those who fail to see things at the deeper level... You seem to doubt that data can be read slightly to the left or right of a track, but according to Error Correcting Code info I located previously, it is something that drives can & do use occasionally to try to recover bits of data when they think a sector may be failing. It is just that data recovery labs may employ these techniques when a sector is NOT failing to try to glean "ghost" images. This is what is scary to me, which is why I suggested it. I remember reading some of this stuff years ago, & while CCleaner appears to eliminate data, I was just wondering if it did the standard sanitation, leaving bits & pieces of data sticking around, or if it was more akin to a real life cross-cut shredder (once gone, nearly impossible to recover)? The websites listed above may enable you to gain more insight into the area I posted about earlier. I should not have assumed that you knew what I was talking about, so that was partly my fault. I should have posted links, so I take the blame. So, now you have a couple links that can show you a greater insight to what I was referring to. Peace!

It has been known for some time, that you can recover data from hard-drives utilizing specialized equipment that can: - Use magnetic underscanning techniques that scan the undersides of a drive, picking up the "ghost" image - Using specialized machines that can sidestep normal tracks on a drive & read slightly to the left or right of a track & pick up residual data there - Electron Scanning Microscopes & other methods may involve being able to calculate the overwritten data content by analyzing the current 0 & 1 state, then applying filters to see what the percent of 0 or percent of 1 currently is, ie, is it 95% of a 1? or is it 90%? etc, then reconstruct various levels based on this tech. Interesting article on data carving --> http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Data_Carving Though this is yet another type of data reconstruction, I found the way that it reconstructs it intelligently from existing file fragments to be interesting. Now, what I would love to know, is while I understand that CCleaner can write or overwrite data onto a drive, I would love to know if it can totally destroy data? Does it include a way to: - Eliminate "ghost" images left when reading slightly to the right or the left of a track instead of dead center? - Eliminate "ghost" images left on the undersides of magnetic media? - Use specialized patterns that are sufficiently randomized as to prevent attempts at intelligent patterning decoder (IE, decipher the previous 0 or 1 based on the strength of the current 0 or 1 that "overwrites" the data) images? I do believe the CCleaner people are great people that are very good at what they do, but I would like to know how it stacks up compared to the claims of something like Robinhood Evidence Eliminator? I do not like that software. It is more confusing to use than CCleaner, + options have to be very explicit. Additionally, I have heard that if it detects you using a key it doesn't think is licensed to you, that it will go into a pretend mode of removing junk, giving you a false sense of security! This is bad for a number of reasons including over time that their key system may become compromised, which will compromise your machine, or if they update & "lose" your old key, then it no longer "works" etc. I am not as interested, however, in that part, as I am in the forensics that this software mentions in their scareware website. So, if CCleaner does not include any magnetic underwriting, & if the data patterns are not carefully selected & sufficiently randomized as to be reverse decompiled under the hands of a skilled expert, then could this feature be added to a future release of CCleaner? Basically, I would love to know that if I connect an external drive to CCleaner, someone can't "sidestep" the CCleaner overwrites, making the attempts to delete the data rather useless since they did not try to pull it from the deleted track, but rather from the sides or bottom of the magnetic track instead. Think of it like a highway. Normally, you go straight. But you can also go slightly left or right of the "track" you are on when driving to pass other people in many instances. I guess the question I have here, is "Can a drive scrubbed with CCleaner be recovered if using specialized government computers/methods that us normal people don't have access to?" I want to ask for secure data destruction, IE TOTAL data destruction in CCleaner if that doesn't exist. I am not 100% certain on all the methods CCleaner uses, however, but I don't remember reading that they scrub the sides or undersides of magnetic tracks. Perhaps I am wrong, however. But assuming I am not, I am requesting this capability so I can know that a drive is scrubbed clean. Additionally, I am not certain that I know that CCleaner can secure wipe a SSD Solid State Drive yet. I believe it does/should although I am not 100% certain at this time... As you know, "Wiping an individual file on a solid-state drive may not succeed in destroying the contents of the file, due to the wear-leveling mechanism that dynamically maps logical to physical disk clusters. However, if you simply delete a file and then wipe all of the free space on the drive, then the file?s contents should be destroyed." There is TRIM, but as far as I am aware, only Windows 7, the newest version of Linux kernel, or Windows Server 2008 RC 2 support the TRIM command. Hopefully, XP/Vista users? won't be left out when you get this sorted out? Of course, consideration also needs to be taken for SSD drives that don't support TRIM as this has to be supported by the drive as well. In non trim SSD, wear leveling simply writes to the pages until its full, at which time when new data needs to be written, the OS tells the controller "hey, I need to write new data", and the controller finds previously full pages of no longer needed data, zaps it empty, then writes the new data to the page. --> Interesting read I discovered "Contrary to popular myth, TRIM does NOT immediately erase the data. It just sets a flag in the logical->physical cluster map to say that the cluster doesn't need to be read and rewritten when the block goes through the next read/modify/write cycle. If the drive correctly follows the spec, this flag will also make reads of that logical cluster return all zeros, but I am thinking that maybe there is an alternative read command that doesn't do this... If the drive doesn't follow this rule, it will make the TRIM implementation incompatible with RAID3, RAID5, & RAID6. Also, in order to facilitate wear leveling, SSD drives and even most USB sticks have more storage than they make visible to Windows, and it is possible that multiple historical versions of a logical cluster exist on the drive, but the map of logical to physical clusters points to only the latest one. Using http://www.diskinternals.com/flash-recovery/ I recovered almost 200MB of photos from a 128MB CF Card that had been reformatted. Don't know how it is able to get at the physical clusters that are no longer pointed to in the map but it apparently does. Don't know if this is possible on an SATA SSD." If this were true, wouldn't this also complicate erasing the data blocks if duplicate "spares" exist that are written to from time to time? Would this present any form of data breach/leak/undelete problem? regards, Don

That depends on how badly you need your data gone. It has been suggested that up to the 7 pass NSA level may be possible to dig up using Electron Scanning microscopes or other methodology involving indexing the former state of the 0 & 1 data on a drive to calculate what it had been prior to a disk write. If you have normal data, probably 1 pass is good. If you have data the government really wants to get hold of, I would say more than 1 pass is needed with all the high tech stuff they have. The age of the drive in question really matters too. Back in 1996, Peter Gutman, computer science professor at Auckland University in New Zealand, published a paper proposing how data could be recovered from hard disk or floppy disk sectors that had been overwritten. The idea behind this is based on the fact that the read/write heads are never precisely positioned over the same exact area twice and that by using electron-microscopes (Scanning Tunneling Microscopy) it would be possible to find a 'shadow' of the previously written sector. The hard drives mentioned in this 1996 paper are MFM and RLL drives, which were the first generation of hard drives used for personal computers (IBM called them the Winchester drives). The largest MFM and RLL drives made got up to about 130MB in size and were quickly replaced by IDE/ATA hard drives. At the time Professor Gutman's paper was published, the MFM/RLL hard disk technology was already 10 years old. [see the time lines of hard driver here and here]. Technology has continued to advance for hard drives and the most important advances have been in the form of higher bit density per square inch. Getting the data that small has required evolutionary changes in magnetic storage and head design. When Professor Gutman did his research, the track spacing between groups of sectors was very wide and the bit density was low, thereby providing a valid means of recovering a shadow of the previous sector. Of course if you could only read just the top level of bits per sector that had not been overwritten, you would only be able to recover an extremely small percentage of the original sector--at best you would only be able to recover just a small sliver of the original sector. Today's hard disks have a bit density far greater and the track sizes are extremely small--down to the nano scale in size. Notice the advances in the past 10 years: 1996: IBM stores 5 billion bits per square inch on a platter. 2006: Hitachi stores 345 gigabits per square inch using perpendicular magnetic recording. If you have important data such as your a secret spy or something, you better be hoping on more than 1 pass, because chances are, they can recover it.

Please uncheck Cookies & Autocomplete Form information under Internet Explorer on CCleaner Regards, Don

Louie, I am going to suggest something that may have been overlooked in all the excitement here. You were asking earlier what CCleaner default settings are. I recommend downloading & installing CCleaner 2.36 & reverting to default on a test system. It is also suggestible to try the oldest version you can find on FileHippo.com The oldest versions of CCleaner DID use .ini files to store settings in. Later, for the default programs, the .ini file was built into the CCleaner .EXE file. Could this possibly be what you are referring to about it "picking up the old settings?" Could it be that you have been referring to the default settings built into CCleaner all along? I know that earlier versions stored these in the same folder as CCleaner, but newer ones integrated the main ini into CCleaner while leaving an additional settings.ini, etc that can be stored optionally depending on user selection. Let me know if this helps.

I am a little confused by what you want, so I am going to simply answer this question based on assumptions I am making from the question you presented here. You purchased a Solid State drive & want to move the temp files/internet temp files etc to another drive so that you can prevent as much wear as possible on the Solid State Drive, & reduced fragmentation since I am assuming that Defraggler cannot handle a Solid State Drive. I will show you how to do some of what you asked, but here are things you might like to consider before beginning. - Solid State drives are guaranteed for 10 years in many cases, as opposed to 3 to 5 with magnetic based. - Due to wear leveling control on SSD, I see no need to worry about shortened lifespan. Magnetic drives also lose life as they have a Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) rating. Either drive is going to die one day. Some make the case that defragging a SSD drive shortens its lifespan, but I make the case that defragging shortens the life of ANY drive you use it on. Even the magnetic media based ones, since they have Mean Time Before Failure ratings & any use of the drive shortens that time. Of course the benefit of occasional defragmentation is faster file access with less CPU overhead which reduces strain on your system. I would make that same case for SSD, but some people here feel differently concerning that. - It can be argued that SSD are more reliable, but I feel leery trusting all my important data files to a SSD drive since magnetic drives have platters that the data can be recovered if necessary by sending them off to a data recovery lab. I am not sure at this point if a SSD drive can be recovered if they die, or if the data is just gone. To move the internet cache files to the old drive, you can open up your Internet Explorer browser, then go to Options. It may be listed differently across different versions of IE, so just look for Tools/Internet Options, or an Options button as in IE9 etc. Under the Temporary Internet Files may be listed Settings or something similar. From here, you can change the folder to another drive if necessary. There are different versions of Windows, but if you wanted to set your swap file to another drive to save wear, you can also do this from under XP by right clicking My Computer/Properties/Advanced. Then, under Performance, click settings. Click Advanced tab, then click under virtual memory where it says Change to change the paging file. I have found hibernation to be a mixed bag, with it working fine on some systems but not on others. Resume time typically takes nearly as long as a reboot. Sometimes, however, hibernation causes problems or even a crash. What seems to work nearly as good, is to use standby. It resumes quick & doesn't seem to cause any problems. Think of it as a lighter sleep state. If you do not find hibernation of any help to you, I would disable it under the power options in the Control Panel as this can take up 1 GB space or more on some systems. Next, set CCleaner to empty the contents of the Internet Temporary files folder that you moved earlier under the section where you can add custom folders to clean. Then, to get it to ignore the SSD drive you are on, simply uncheck everything you want it to ignore. You should be able to, well, get it to ignore pretty much everything! Under advanced settings, get it to remember the settings to an INI file instead of the registry. You will want to leave the checkmark for CCleaner to clean the IE folder on the other drive, if you still want to do that. What I would ask myself if I were you, is whether this is what you want. Moving your temp files to another drive that is slower will slightly decrease your system performance. It will also cause your computer CPU & subsystems to have to wait longer on read/write cycles causing them greater wear as they are in use longer waiting for things to get done. Personally, if it were me, I would just let windows handle the swap file & the internet temp folders on the SSD drive as that is a lot faster than a normal drive & I just cannot see the benefit of using another drive to offset those to. The lifespan of a normal SSD is enough that it should be comparable to a normal drive "death" anyway, so I just don't see the advantage of slowing down your system to "prevent wear". I would use a magnetic disk based drive for external imaging/important files since those actually have a physical platter that can be sent to data recovery labs if the write head crashes for instance. I would use the SSD for normal computing purposes. And I would have CD/DVD backup of that in case something went wrong. I hope this answers all the questions you have, but if it doesn't, please feel free to ask more. Regards, Don Edit: Some systems will automatically reboot when you click the Move button in Internet Explorer for the temp files. As of now, I am not certain if this is because they try to move the folder while it is in use (internet browsers open?), or if it pertains to the version of IE or Windows they are using. Be certain that all internet browsers are closed & run CCleaner before beginning. It may be a better option to avoid opening IE altogether when attempting to move the folder, & just go to the Control Panel instead. Use the Internet Options in the control panel to avoid opening an IE window while moving. Make sure you are done with whatever file(s) you have open before proceeding so that if Windows does reboot, you will not lose anything. Thank you!

Are you saying ---> "but when I downloaded it (from your own site) it says 2.0.0.0." that the website you downloaded it from says the 2 series? Or that CCleaner itself is saying it after you installed & ran it?

Alan: What you are describing sounds like files/folders that exist but are simply marked inaccessible. These are not black holes, you just cannot natively browse through the contents under the regular windows browse mode. I have personally run across files such as these when using certain data recovery programs that can read & parse the normally access denied folders. Typically, windows will give such errors for areas such as these: - Password protected user accounts - System Volume Information - Various system only areas I noted that in your picture, one of the directories was marked inaccessible, which is exactly as a file would appear if it were protected from normal browsing state. This does not mean that the data does not exist or that Windows cannot access the data. It simply means that it marks it as such to prevent users like you from accessing those data for either privacy or data corruption concerns. Additionally, Windows Vista & 7 both suffer from serious problems with system preservation errors. For example, you can in Windows XP easily modify the contents of the start menu. Try to move the Accessories from All Programs on the Start Menu in Vista or 7 to another location such as the desktop. Vista & 7 will auto generate a new copy on the start menu, but the problem doesn't end there. Delete that folder off the desktop, & despite it being "gone", windows will still try to install programs to the "new" start menu location on the desktop. This would be the desktop or where-ever you happened to move that system item from the start menu earlier. So a new "Start Menu" item will be created on the desktop (or where-ever you happened to have moved it). I highly suspect that this is a problem in Vista/7 & not CCleaner itself. In such a situation, the only plausible way to correct this would be to correct the errors, whether this involves a system restore or total system reinstall in order for CCleaner to be able to resume normal cleaning duty. CCleaner, I suspect, is not targeting the incorrect places for deletion, but rather Windows causes the target(s) to be wrongfully used or applied due problems such as listed above. I don't even know if a System Restore can fix the problem I listed above, so it is highly advised not to try it unless you simply have a setup you are not afraid to damage for testing purposes. Additionally, I found a bug with Vista System Restore (so it probably applies to Windows 7 as well) wherein that you can restore the system back a few days, then you can undo that restore. Try to restore to a restore point even older than the one you used initially & it will work, but all your restore points will get erased. Regards, Don

Windows Vista also fubars the start menu if you go trying to rearrange, or delete, or move certain "system" folders off the start menu. Why would you do this? To umm, customize the menu perhaps? Had no problems with this in XP, but Vista & 7 are a different animal. The moment you do this, forever afterwards, Vista & 7 try to recreate the "old start menu" path that you created when you moved items off the start menu. The trouble is, that Vista adds these items back to the start menu, & then gets confused by you having moved them earlier, so it counts the start menu items as having 2 locations instead of one. It is confusing having Vista try to maintain 2 copies of the accessories folder etc, when this problem never existed in XP! In addition, it causes future installations to try to install to the "new" location instead of to the start menu where it belongs! I tell you what might be simplest... Determine how much music & files you have. Select them all, right click, properties... Now, right click My Computer & click manage. Now bring up the disk management & under drive C: or whatever drive you have Vista on, right click it & choose shrink. Leave more than enough space for your files, then create a new partition & quick format it. Open My Computer to see the "new drive" & then open the drive & right click/new folder on that drive. Create a My Music, My Documents, My Pictures folder & add your content there. This way, it is protected from viruses, malware, ccleaner deletion etc, assuming they are normal viruses that just attack drive C:

Meanwhile, for a more permanent solution while using firefox: Type into the address bar about:config & press enter. Press enter again to show you understand the risks. Type into the autofind bar network.http.sendrefererheader & modify the selection to have a value of 0 instead of the default 2. Next, use the private surf option in Firefox. Using All-Seeing eye might not be a bad idea either -> http://www.scanwith.com/download/All_Seeing_Eye.htm I will be glad to find out when CCleaner does definitively (not might/maybe/possibly) remove the ever cookie. But alas, using the compact databases, shouldn't there just simply be a simple entry for evercookie that is enabled by default to avoid misunderstanding by those less knowleageable? Peace! Edit: May even try http://www.admuncher.com/ when I get time... Also, there have been reports that better privacy -> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/ defeats it, so I just have to check later on.

Many times, the CPU information is accurate but I see no indication of whether it is 2 CPU (Dual Core), 4 CPU (Quad Core), 6 CPU (Hex Core) etc... I would love for CCleaner to show 2 more pieces of info on the bar at top: - # of processor cores - Model of PC (Start/Run/type DXDiag + hit enter key. This shows PC model + installed ram + CPU speed etc). But it would really help people like me to be able to see at a glance, hey, this machine has more than 1 core, so maybe it can do without another hardware update, or perhaps I need to know the model # of the PC but sometimes you get units missing stickers that detail whether they are something like a DC 7600 Convertible Minitower PC for example... This would greatly simplify getting drivers for such a machine! You can get all this info from DXDiag, but wouldn't it be simpler to implement it into CCleaner itself? I have long wanted to be able to see this info at a glance, rather than have to do it manually! If you like this idea, feel free to + it up. Thanks! Edit: I did notice that when running CCleaner in Windows 98 or ME, that it fails to show rated processor speed. You cannot right click my computer/properties in W98 or WME to get the rated speed. If you go to start/run/dxdiag, yes, that does show the rated processor speed. Would be very nice if CCleaner can correct this bug as it is very annoying not to know how fast a system is. Some people run a decent speed system with W98 or WME installed, so by having the ability to show the speed, a more accurate discernment can be made so far as what to recommend they do to a computer. Also, I recognize Nergal's concern that it may raise CCleaner load time, but what would that add, perhaps 0.002 seconds or so to do a DX check & call up the single/dual/quad/hex etc core of the computer + the computer speed + the computer model + ram? What I am thinking, is there must be a more reliable way of calling up the system information since it obviously is not working properly with an older OS, & since DXDIAG works across ALL Windows based platforms. With this in mind, why not just call up the info using a DX checker? It seems this could solve all of the problems & perhaps call it up faster too? Thanks!

I believe the latest Opera 10 works on 98 if you update Windows Installer to version 2. This will fix the IE problem by using Opera instead. There IS a way to see the CPU speed (Start/run/type dxdiag + hit enter key). This appears to work on 98 + ME so I wonder how hard it would be to implement a check? Shouldn't be that much harder if it already shows in the DXDiag utility, right? You don't have to run the winreport tool, no, no, just run DXDiag. It is much simpler to access.

A) What version of Windows are you using? Did you run a clean install of CCleaner (uninstall old version/install new) C) Did you check all the options in CCleaner prefs? I don't recommend checking them all unless you know what you are doing. D) Did you run the CCleaner or the Registry cleaner part? E) Did you disable certain things with the startup utility that may cause problems, or uninstall programs with CCleaner's add/remove etc? F) Are you running any deep freeze, or 2?, 3? etc antivirus programs at once on the system that may cause problems?

Dennis, why would you use a trial version when there are several freeware utilities for this that work great? http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/RAM-Idle-Standard/966489601/1 I only posted 1 example, but there are many...

That is interesting, tasty... Could you please elaborate a bit more on that? I never really tried doing that yet, so I may not be as familiar with the operations as you just yet. So, you create a batch file, but is that in the same folder as the dfsetup121.exe? Yes? When it sets up, do you have an option for it not to always check for updates, or does it do that automatically? copy "Idle Defraggler Defragmentation.job" C:\windows\tasks /y <- Does this set up the defragmentation job properly with no user intervention? schtasks /change /tn "Idle Defraggler Defragmentation" /ru system <- What does the tn & the ru command do? If I like what you have here, I may redo this script, using Win Rar to simplify the process & make it even easier/simpler/faster than a batch file can do it. Thanks!

Dennis D, has it ever occurred to you that a failed System Restore may not be caused by defragging them? I ask because recently I was checking a friends wireless Verizon card (which would connect, but user could not surf the internet...). Some of the steps I tried involved checked to be sure Internet Explorer did not set a proxy server (can cause loss of internet), + a few dozen other things. Vista repair option did not fix the internet connection. At least initially till I pulled a few tricks out of my hat. I decided to try a system restore, which restored, but internet still wasn't working. After running the undo system restore, it was successful. Then I tried restoring to another earlier date. Success, but at which point, there are no system restore points after this for whatever reason. The restore points were erased. Not by me, but by Windows Vista. This was on a Vista SP2 system. I wouldn't necessarily blame Defraggler for "corrupting" the restore points just yet, as I have never had it corrupt my XP restore points. I haven't seen it corrupt Vista machine restore points that I use it on yet. I HAVE seen Vista delete restore points AFTER you restore 3 different times... Restore/undo last restore/restore to an earlier restore... At this point, there was no loss of programs or pics/docs on the machine, nor was the internet working. I pulled a couple tricks out of my hat & got the internet working though. Peace!

This is definitely about CCleaner. http://sourceforge.net/projects/littlecleaner/ I also tried that & it seems impressive. I will have to do further testing to be sure. I am not of course, posting these as the "alternative" to CCleaner. I am merely posting because some people feel that CCleaner registry cleaner should not be changed at all. But I have seen registry cleaners who do safely recommend entries to remove, & one of them is references to items that no longer exist. I do not see what CCleaner cannot be stronger in that area, which is the reason I posted info, so that people can see what I mean. I didn't want to just say it can do this or that with no way to verify the fact that is is possible. I am not demeaning CCleaner in any way, I just feel that it can be stronger in the search for orphaned/no longer existing entries. If I use 5,000 pieces of software in a week, then it really adds up if CCleaner doesn't show these entries. By the same token, I fail to see why CCleaner doesn't remove the scan for "unused extensions" as that is the most dangerous scan in the registry cleaning section. All it takes is for someone to remove the .exe/.mp3 or some other important extension to ruin a windows installation . It is all too easy for malware or other programs to alter the default programs that are associated with extensions so that CCleaner can "helpfully" suggest they are safe to remove... Well, I am out for today, but peace man! Have fun!

I hope this goes well for you. Isn't Sony the one that produces PS3 in the first place? They are an awful company to deal with. Sony is one of the companies I refuse to give another dollar to. They are behind nearly every form of DRM/TCP/etc etc out there. + the developers of the game probably had the "bright idea" that if they locked the use of the drive to the machine, if someone tried to clone a copy of the game, then they would need the disk drive in order to play the game, as opposed to fully installing it so it won't use the drive as much... Aha! Anti-Piracy! Anyway, I sure hope you get your problems fixed. Sony NEEDS to be sued!

Update... Glad you got it fixed. For me, Firefox seems to have fewer problems with tabs & other small bugs. Glad you got that problem fixed, but if you have too many problems, you may want to try another browser till they correct some of their bugs.

I just tested on mine. I am using 2.34 at the moment. I got different times with different runs, but this is with a few hundred tabs open, so resources are in use while running & it is ignoring open firefox windows. I got: 1.7/0.102/0.110/0.176 etc... I installed the latest 2.36 & got: 0.195/0.126/0.113/0.135/0.123/0.111 etc. I will have to try it again sometime when I don't have so much opened. Peace.

Haha! Trust us, we know it's ancient! What it is, is that W98 gave developers direct access to hardware. Programs that ran would be coded to take direct access to the sound hardware. In XP & higher, they stopped granting direct access, but made software have to go through an emulation layer in order to access it. In XP & higher, only the OS has direct access to the hardware. Of course, there are still people in home/businesses that I have seen, that are still using W98. My guess is that W98 licensing is much cheaper than the "newer" versions of Windows, hence the business use. See? Windows 98 IS good for something! Save company $$$! I do love XP, but, some people still use 98... I haven't seen that many on 95 or earlier.

Have you looked at this one? http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=1187796&sku=ULT31803 I think it supports about 26 types of media, instead of 17.