dencorso

Along the time MDGx made available *two* different versions of USBASPI.EXE: ASPI Manager for USB mass-storage Version 2.26 ©Copyright Panasonic Communications Co., Ltd. 2000-2007 CRC32: 1C96416A MD5: 325F845251AD7F30A600E26B888F7367 21,322 bytes ASPI Manager for USB mass-storage Version 2.28 ©Copyright Panasonic Communications Co., Ltd. 2000-2007 CRC32: DE44AE4D MD5: 4434E0F5D75568742CD7AD73C313A8E9 21,323 bytes After uncompression, both grow to exactly 31011 bytes, and differ in just 7 bytes, with some code reordering... Both may be derived from USBASPI.SYS 2.24, by patching, but it's more than the plain vanilla isometric patch, and the whole help screen that appears on runing either from the command line was also added, prior to compressing. My comparisons are done with Beyond Compare 3.2.3 (not freeware) on Win XP SP3. It's not expensive, and worth the cost. I'm not sure which is the last version of it that runs on 9x/ME, since I never tried to install it there. The ascii comparison I posted (and which remains there) was created from 2 screenshots from Beyond Compare, cropped, merged and edited to remove the hex dump (since it didn't add any new info in this particular case).

Sure! You're right, of course! I misread it! I've just fished out the version that shipped with Ghost2003, which was superseded by the one we're all using and it says: Iomega ASPI USB-EHCI 1.0 V.02 : 12 Aug 2002 Copyright © 2002 Iomega Corporation. The additional colon (here marked in red) present lets no doubt as to where the date begins and the version ends! It's also remarkable that there were twelve versions from Aug 12 '02 to May 09 '03, indicating that lots of bugfixing took place in that period, before Symantec eventually gave up Iomega and started implementing its own built-in USB support in ghost and gdisk.

Is anyone else here experiencing that issue?

Great!

@RLoew: I know this is a controversial matter, and a cosmetic one too. But since your patch goes beyond what the one by anonymous does (even if there is the above mentioned caveat) it might be a good idea to bump its version to 2227, beacuse it would help everybody to easily identify both and differentiate them from the unpatched kernel32.dll v.4.10.0.2225, since the file pached by anonymous identifies itself as 2226. Another, less intrusive, but visible way of doing it would be to change the special build from QFE to RRL.

Are you loading the iomega ehci driver like this? DEVICE=<Drive:\<Path\>>ASPIEHCI.SYS /int /all If not do try it. And you may try using /norst with either USBASPI Then again, you may try loading them after DOS is fully booted, by using either DEVLOAD or DEVLOD. Both are great. Well, I fear I've just added some more variables to the problem... Later edit: As requested, these are the drivers I spoke of, so that we can be sure we're testing the same drivers: ASPIEHCI.SYS v. 13 52,106 bytes CRC32: BE9DA061 MD5: A21BDF09885668D49EE7CA60B4AA899E GUEST.EXE v. 8.5 32,396 bytes CRC32: 4F3CD18D MD5: B3194E47B7087D1DA32D1C885BAA6A18 NJ32DISK.SYS v. 1.06 15,808 bytes CRC32: 61575716 MD5: B9211CE1938663E80914C95F4A08E2C2 DI1000DD.SYS v2.00 16,368 bytes CRC32: F9F9E011 MD5: 662FF106A2C4012D212E8F99B62EC6E0 This is just for completeness, because I'm pretty sure we're all using the same ones.

True. But even if you decide to sell it and maybe get another one, perhaps smaller... or none at all, in any case, now you know all you need to partition / format your next HDD to suit perfectly your needs. During the 1 TB disk tenure with you you probably learned many things you'd never envisaged you one day would. So it's not a total loss. BTW, I'd give options (i) and (ii) a try. I think ASPIEHCI.SYS/GUEST.EXE may work.

Turns out I remembered it wrong: v. 1999 is also from the anonymous patcher, who was led to it while fixing another, that one blorked, MS update, look here (a 2006 version of the proper page at MDGx's): Much water has flown under the bridge, since then...

No. It's an original mod by the anonymous patcher, based on his own reverse engineering of the Krnl386.exe V .1999 (which is by MS and has a KB). Later, when I get home I'll post you the kb number. But the anonymous patcher, just like LLXX and RLoew, is a quite trustworthy source, although his documentations are scanty. What worries you?

Here: dosdrvr.exe... You'll get to a page in Japanese, but the drivers are in English. Problem is, when you hit "Download Now" you'll be taken to a licence page that is actually in Japanese, too. No prob, just scroll down and notice a gray box with the default selection next to "いいえ"... that means "I don't agree", so just click on the next radio-button, which is not selected by default, which is next to "はい", which means "I agree". Then click on "I agree and answer truthfully" and you'll be given the download. So, click on "Primary" and the download'll begin. Once you get dosdrvr_exe, don't run it, but instead open it with 7-zip or WinRAR and grab ASPIDISK.SYS v. 4.01b from inside it. You need to improve your Google-fu, piikea! @jds: I don't happen to have it at hand right now to calculate the CRC-32, but that's the same file I have and use, too. And it came from the same place. And it's the latest version of it that I know of. As for Guest.exe v. 8.5, that's the one that comes in the distribution CD of Ghost 2003.

Done

Tihiy, would you please consider looking into LDT garbage collecting, or some form of LDT salvation, please? I've been looking into things like this too often for confort, of late:

Yes. My External USB 2.0 Seagate Expansion 1500 GB (with a Seagate Barracuda LP ST31500541AS (5900 rmm) 1500 GB HDD inside) is correctly detected with ASPIEHCI.SYS (v.13 09-May-2003) + GUEST.EXE (v. 8.5)... and I can run Win ME DOS SCANDISK on it too! It's divided in 3 patitions: a primary FAT-32 LBA and two logical FAT-32 LBA inside an extended LBA partition. But DOS 7.10 (from Win 98SE) gets somewhat less stable with so many clusters (or so many sectors) around it, so crashes happen, after some time. DOS CHKDSK doesn't work with it too, giving "wrong media byte" error, but SCANDISK finds nothing wrong. I didn't try a surface scan, though, because that would take ages to finish. Better do it under XP SP3, using chkdsk /r, of course. It's great to be able to read from or copy to such a huge disk in DOS, but that's about all I dare to do with it in DOS. DOS wasn't really meant to handle those huge storage media. Perhaps FreeDOS, now that it's getting mature, may be a good option, when push comes to shove... No, I don't recall ever having faced that particular "divide overflow" error. And yes, the best way to ascertain the versions of all those DOS drivers we've been talking about is to use your favorite hexeditor, for sure!

So your Guest is v. 8.5! But to have ASPIEHCI.SYS v.13 09-May-2003 you must have at least performed LiveUpdate2 (bumps Ghost up to revision 789) but you've probably done that and LU3, too, so I'd guess you've got it, too. BTW, I've run a quick test and Guest does work with USBASPI.EXE 2.28, so option (iv) also works. Also BTW, thanks for the heads up on USBASPI.SYS 2.27! It's actually newer than USBASPI.EXE 2.28... I've just got it from the Panasonic Japan site (the English version, of course).

That's why one should install the right OS for the right hardware. Win XP SP3 is perfect for Celeron 900s and the like. If MS wanted, it could have continued being sold with netbooks for two more years, maybe, and still be profitable. But supporting a 10 year old OS may have speaken louder. Be as it may, there's always eBay, so it's far from unavailable, at present, and it's very affordable. But for one looking to buy it, here goes some advice: be sure to buy FPP!

Santana - Samba Pa Ti (which is *not* an actual samba, of course! )

Heads up, friends! WildBill's unofficial KB2360131 went v3, and now it contains an updated version of MSHTMLED.DLL, based on 6.0.2800.1501/1502 (which, as WildBill found out, is a rare case of GDR and QFE files being essentialy identical, except for the date of compilation, version number and checksum), and hence his MSHTMLED.DLL v. 6.0.2800.1503 should be satisfactory for everybody. It does work OK, I'm using it since v3 was released. WildBill rocks!

The ReactOS Explorer is also a good choice.

I don't know whether (iv) works. (i), (ii) and (iii) I can vouch for. Versions are important here... USBASPI.EXE (Panasonic, v. 2.28) is findable at MDGx's. And any GUEST prior to v. 8.5 is useless (except, perhaps, v. 8.0, if it exists). NJ32DISK.SYS is, for all I know, just a previous, older version of DI1000DD.SYS (or, at least, is derived from the same common source... the Copiright dates are somewhat confusing as to which is newer, but version number and size point to DI1000DD.SYS as the newer one (see the ASCII comparison attached). BTW, ASPIDISK.SYS v. 4.01b Copyright 1989-1997 by Adaptec, is that it? Never have actually used it. Now that you mention it, it opens up still more combinations, right? In any case, this is a trial and error game, where patience pays, and getting irritated leads one nowhere. Even my two external Seagates behave differently.

Yes. From DOS, I suppose. Try: (i) ASPIEHCI.SYS (v.13 09-May-2003) + GUEST.EXE (v. 8.5 or later)... the IOMEGA drivers (ii) USBASPI.EXE (Panasonic, v. 2.28) + DI1000DD.SYS (Novac, v 2.00)... the "Motto-Hairu" drivers. (iii) ASPIEHCI.SYS (v.13 09-May-2003) + DI1000DD.SYS (Novac, v 2.00)... (iv) USBASPI.EXE (Panasonic, v. 2.28) + GUEST.EXE (v. 8.5 or later)... (v) try all the above with previous versions of USBASPI.EXE (v. 2.26) or USBASPI.SYS (v. 2.24, 2.20, 2.15 and 2.06)... (vi) try DUSE.EXE (I haven't got *any* experience with it). Google for them and you shall find lots of info about them. I have used all three combinations at the top of my list, each recognizes some of my USB devices, but none finds them all. With those three I have been able to recognize all of them, even if I have to change from one to the other depending on the USB device. It remains very far from clear to me why some devices will be seen by each of these combinations, but none by all. And both my 500 GB drives, as well as my 1.5 TB drive are seen and work OK with at least one of the first three combinations, but even among just the USB HDDs, none recognizes them all. Go figure!

@Prozactive: Let's update your USB stack to the latest possible files before giving up. You have NUSB3.3 installed? If not, do it, please. Then proceed as per this post. As for SATA on 98SE, be warned that the last drivers known to really work are: Via's SerialATA_V220E.zip (direct download). Now, the bad news is that I think they don't support e-SATA, or don't do it properly. But this is how I remember it, so I may be wrong. If you can manage to find Via's description of the features of the 220e driver somewhere still, you may find out for sure.

RLoew is right, of course. The COPY2GB patched kernel32.dll v. 4.10.0.2226 is based on Microsoft's hotfix kernel32.dll v. 4.10.0.2225 (from KB320798). Both LLXX and the anonymous patcher have produced patches derived from kernel32.dll v. 4.10.0.2225, just as RLoew did now. For the record, here's a link to the original thread this matter was discussed in. Thank you, RLoew, for looking into this matter. You do rock! No. That's not the case. I do have three 8 GiB, one 16 GiB and one 32 GiB pendrives and one 16 GiB plus two 32 GiB SDHC cards, and all of them boot perfectly with DOS 7.10 our DOS 8.0. One of the 8 GiB pendrives is an OCZ ATV Turbo, while all the others are Corsair Voyager (normal or GT) and the SDHC cards are SanDisk Extreme III (class 6 or 10), in case that may be relevant.

So, Opera 10.10 would be the best bet for full functionality, is that so?

What exactly are the last versions of Opera and Firefox to work perfectly under Win 98SE, without requiring KernelEx? It seems I've lost track of them, sorry.

Yes. The RTC is a chip on the motherboard. It used to be a Motorola MC146818 CMOS RTC, way back when... nowadays it's included into the chipset, AFAIK. An yes, I'd say your battery is getting bad or that there is insuficient contact between the battery and either or both socket's contacts. I'd change the battery, and make sure it's well seated into its socket.