Shell Replacement

This is a good place to start: http://www.shellfront.org/

Talisman is the shell I use. It is pretty handy in that you can run it over Explorer until you are comfortable, and then replace explorer thereafter. Lots of shell replacement folks here, though, and as many opinions

Thank you bakerstreet. I'm still reading about it and it sounds good. I would like to know from the other "old-timers" if they're in agreement and/or what they would suggest.

Shell replacements require a fair bit of reading and research BEFORE diving in....baker's link is a good place to start, having been around for quite awhile.

In win98 things are fairly straight-forward if it all goes wrong...provided you know how to boot to Dos and edit text files...

Thanks Jafo. Reading and researching now...

OK. Talisman. LiteStep. Aston. Anybody have a favorite?

For me it is a tie between Litestep and Talisman. I never cared much for aston, though I haven't tried it for a while. If you can RTFM, Litestep is freeware and has a ton of 3rd party plugins, but a lot of complexity goes with that, and many's the unwary n00b that has regretted not reading the docs.

If I had to make suggestion, I would use something in the way of a shell 'enhancement', and then move on to a shell replacement if you felt it necessary. There are several apps here that will run reasonably comfortably over Explorer, and give you the feel of running without it. I'll let the hoverdesk/nextstart/desktopX crew chime in, and as I mentioned Talisman would work as well.

Personally, I like LiteStep on my 98 partition. It is highly configurable and there are oodles of themes available.

If you do decide to dive in though, I would offer this advice. Read as much as possible about before beginning, and...

If you get an error that says Windows needs to be re-installed, DON'T PANIC!

Re-boot with a boot disk, at the prompt, go to your C:/Windows directory and type: "edit sys.ini" and change the lines that reads "shell=litestep.exe" to "shell=explorer.exe" and re-boot.

Wow! Talisman looks good. Nextstart themes look great. LiteStep looks cool. How does one decide? And I'm sure to get more opinions coming soon. And thanks guys for all the info.

The phrase to learn is 'RTFM'.
Like snatching the pebbles from the master's hand, understanding that phrase will grant you passage....

Lol. Thanks, Jafo.