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Windows 98 - fixing file operation delays

2016-12-24 04:12:59, In: Hack, Retrocomputing, Windows

Another text from series "Notes to myself". After installation of Internet Explorer 6 in Windows 98, some weird things may start to happen. It starts when large amount of files are deleted, moved or copied. After this operation every refreshing of explorer window related to renaming, moving, copying or deleting causes a minute hang of Explorer window. This persists until restart.
This is caused by a bug in Internet Explorer 6 shell, which is totally harmless in NT-based Windows systems, while in Win9x causes hang. And although MS has been notified about this problem since 2002, they haven't released any patch. The only thing we can do is to replace the part IE introduced to Explorer using the one from previous version, version 5.5.
But we have a IE 6.0! We need to use separate DLLs for IE and Explorer shell. So let's begin:
1. Obtain Internet Explorer 5.5 in Your language, CABs version, not a downloader which doesn't work. Using WinRAR, WinZIP or any other archiver supporting CABs, extract files browselc.dll and browseui.dll from iew2k_1.cab file in IE 5.5 installation. Extract them to some temporary directory.
2. Find browselc.dll and browseui.dll in your C:\Windows\System and copy them to C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer. This way we make sure that IE6.0's Iexplore.exe will use IE6.0 DLLs.
3. Start->Shut down->Restart in MS-DOS Mode (or just reboot from DOS prompt disk).
4. cd to temporary directory you extracted DLL files from IE5.5 installation.
5. Copy these 2 DLL files to C:\Windows\System overwriting them.
6. Exit this mode by typing exit or Ctrl-Alt-Del.

Now it should be OK, if you want to revert modification, just boot again to command prompt and copy files from C:\Program files\Internet Explorer back to System directory.
The only problem may happen with "View as web page" option which instructs wrong exports in our own DLLs. To switch this option, use only one Explorer window on your desktop, switch option, close the window and re-open it. It should work. It is also good to go to C:\Windows and turn the nice screen hiding files off before operation as you may have it permanently shown.

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