dencorso

You misunderstood me. I meant you'd be all set to actually install Win9x. Of course you'd have to creat at least one active partition, format and sys the disk before anything. But how did you intend to copy a folder onto an unpartitioned and unformatted HDD? It's simply not possible.

Sure. You don't even need to actually remove the HDD from inside the laptop, in case you manage to disconnect it from the laptop and have space enough to insert the PATA/SATA --> USB connector in it. Then just copy the Win9x folder from the Windows CD to your laptop HDD, reconnect it to the laptop and you're all set.

Rename both MAPI32.DLL and Mapisp32.exe in program files\common files\system\mapi\1033\95 to MAPI32.ANT and Mapisp32.ANT, to disable them. Let alone \windows\system\MAPI32.DLL. Reboot and see what happens. Whatever happens, in case they are needed, all you have to do is change back their extensions. And in case you do find they are needed, try restoring just the extension of Mapisp32.ANT first, for the \windows\system\MAPI32.DLL to be used...

I'm sorry to hear of your system's infection. And glad to see you were able to recover fast. I agree with most of the preventive measures you've just spelled out. I wish to add just two or three more measures to the list: I)Full disk dumb sector-by-sector current images of the current installation burnt to read-only optical media (I use multi DVD+R DL images, and intend to move on to Blu-Ray soon), not older than two or three months, six in the worst case. Or that plus monthly dumb sector-by-sector current images of every partition, where feasible. II)Up to date virus scanner on the XP partition, performing a daily scan of all the partitions (I use AVG 9). and, if possible III)A completely independent machine, with its installation backed up on optical media to use as a sandbox. (I still don't have one, but that's my next move).

Well, this refers to MAPI32.DLL instead, but at least explains what the MAPI is (sort of). Also give a look at KB173299... I think maybe you've got a version that's too new. In my machine I have MAPI32.DLL v. 4.0.410.59 and no MAPISP32.EXE at all. But I didn't install Outlook 97, because I use web-mailers, so I just have Outlook Express, updated with the Maximus-Decim packs.

Well, a total address space absolute limit of 4 GiB for 9x/ME makes sense to me. Of course, if a workaround is found, I'd like to be aware of it, so keep us posted about your research. BTW, if you want to revise and update the info for the RLoew(7) machine (or any others), do PM me. As it appears now on the list, the swap file ramdisk has less than 1 GiB allocated to it, but that, of course, is due to your letting Win98SE/ME see 3327 MiB, in the reported configuration. Moreover, I understand you have at least one machine dual-booting Win 95, now, and that would be an interesting addition to the list.

Well, thanks for the heads up. But I'm quite stisfied with the current settings I'm using, and don't intend to change them. I do find my 1.5 GiB ramdisk quite useful.

Now, jaclaz, that was really uncalled for. I know Italians are intense (from experience, as I'm from Italian stock), but I do think you could have said it more respectfully, even so. Let's please tone it down, OK?

I fear the only way to do it from a USB HDD would be without USB hotplug support, and in compatibility mode. And it'd be quite work-intensive to do it... But, then again, I don't see why you cannot install it as a dual-boot machine, perhaps even using a second HDD. That'll probably be less work-intensive and give you better results. Or else you also can use a VM to run 98SE.

I respectfully disagree. More info here: CALL.

Of course it does work with .EXEs and .COMs... I think MDGx meant to say "CALL only works from within batch files". And, in a sense, this is true... If you invoke a batch file directly from within a batch file, the second batch fails to return to the first one, as it ends, causing both to terminate, while if you invoke the second batch file by means of the CALL command, then the second batch, after it ends, returns to the first one, which resumes processing normally. This is the reason for which the CALL command was created, in the first place. On the other hand, invoking .EXEs and .COMs with CALL or without it have the exact same result.

I can confirm that. My machine has 3 GiB RAM. It is divided in a 1.5 GiB Non-XMS RAMDisk (RLoew's) and 1.5 GiB RAM visible to Win 98SE (using RLoew's RAM Limitation Patch). When I attempted to set the PageFile to 3822 MiB (at drive J:\) it resulted in Windows overriding my setting and creating a smaller variable-size swapfile at the default location (i. e. C:\WINDOWS). But it gladly accepts MaxPagingFileSize=1835008 (= 1792 MiB) and creates the swapfile at J:\, as directed. While I did not try to find the actual limit of the MaxPagingFileSize setting, it clearly is less than 3.7 GiB and more than 1.8 GiB.

No, it does *not*! But the BIOS of your machine may have it, and the Ranish Partition Manager depends on the BIOS to work. AFAIK, only RLoew's RFDISK and RFORMAT can work independent of BIOS, in DOS. Always double-check your results for hidden dependencies, in order not to spread misinformation. I have used RPM (v. 2.44 Beta) to sucessfully format and partition two different 500 GB HDDs on two different occasions, and it worked flawlessly in both cases. One of those HDDs (the IOMEGA) I still have with me and it remains in use (more details are in the quotation below).

Follow the links LoneCrusader gave you (I now put them in bold type in the quotation of his post). Enter the User Agent String LoneCrusader provided you, which is now bold red in the previous quotation. It should just work. HTH

Thanks for looking into it and for your swift reply. You do rock!

@RLoew: Would you please be so kind as to compare Petr's Ndis.VxD 4.0.1114 with the original 4.0.1113 and give us your expert evaluation about the advantages, if any, offered by Petr's patched file? The patched file is downloadable from Petr's original post, quoted above.

Remove the installed driver in Safe Mode. Reboot. Don't let Windows reinstall the same driver, but instead use "have a disk" and point to a folder where you unzipped this driver: Via's SerialATA_V220E.zip (direct download). Reboot and set the BIOS to RAID mode. It should just work.

Norton Ghost 2003 is not free but cheap (on, say, eBay) and would do it nicely. As for LapLink, in case one has the appropriate cable, DOS Interlnk can be used almost as easily. So I think the best suggestion, in fact, would be Ghost 2003 with a LapLinked/Interlnked drive as the destination.

I usually try the QFE first. In case it works OK, I dont even bother to try the GDR.

The idea is to open the machine, just disconnect the HDD from it without actually removing the HDD and, using an el-cheapo PATA/SATA to USB converter, connect it via USB to another machine just for imaging. It's a time proven procedure that works quite well. I do that quite often.

I think that, unless LoneCrusader or someone else pinpoints the condition in which that issue happens, there is no need for screenshots, and we may attribute what he reported to a one-time quirck.

Sorry, I cannot quite reconcile both your reports... I'd understood LoneCrusader found that issue precisely on 95C... Would you both please post screenshots?

Is it maybe the issue "Windows Explorer Reports 4 GB of Files as 0 Bytes" (KB158045), or related to it? BTW, there is also the Copy2GB+ issue (this thread), mentioned in KB318293, which was tackled initially by LLXX, then eventually solved fully by the "Anonymous Patcher"... it's not clear to me whether that issue also exists in Win 95 (most probably) and whether a port of the existing patch to kernel32.dll v. 4.10.0.2225 (available renumbered as v. 4.10.0.2226) to 95 is viable and/or necessary. I consider this patched kernel32.dll a *must* for all 98SE (and the corresponding 4.90.0.3001 for ME) installations, for it unleashes the full 4 GiB capacity of FAT to 98SE (and ME), which are otherwise actually limited to 2 GiB only (although it's controversial whether the corresponding patch is really needed for ME). This particular issue is related to the implementations of _llseek and SetFilePointer. On rereading the thread I pointed to above, I've found out there is also a patched kernell32.dll for 98FE, which I had completely forgotten about. @RLoew: Thanks a lot for releasing the UDF patch as freeware! You do rock!

You should be using MSVCRT.DLL v. 6.1.9848.0, which is findable at MDGx's.

From the present thread and from hdd size limits?, I think I have enough material to create this summary of what we do know at present about the limits of the different programs related to HDD formating, partitioning and maintenance, so here it goes: The limit for NDD32.EXE (up to v. 19.0.1.8, from NSW 2008) is somewhere between 7.8 and 7.9 million clusters, or somewhere between 61.0 and 61.7 thousand sectors per FAT (as I now believe it crashes when reading the FATs to a buffer in memory). The limit for SCANDSKW.EXE (4.90.0.3000) is somewhere between 26.4 and 26.6 million clusters, or somewhere between 206.1 and 207.7 thousand sectors per FAT. It crashed with Marius '95 1 TB raid single partition (link), although 98-Guy has reported it works up to 31.2 million clusters (follow the links inside this post). SCANDISK.EXE from Win ME works, at least, up to 1 TB, according to Marius '95, and to 31.2 million clusters, according to 98-Guy (both these limits are about the same, for a 1 TB partition, using 32 kiB clusters, has about 31 million clusters). NDD.EXE for DOS (2002 ..10E) also is reported by the same users as having the same limits as those of SCANDISK.EXE, but that's now doubtful, because it crashes for wsxedcrfv with 22.9 million clusters. In any case, Marius '95, for whom it worked, said it was very slow, so maybe he just didn't wait enough time for it to crash... FORMAT.EXE works up to, at least 1018 GiB, but above 1TiB a divide error occurs, according to RLoew, in the present thread. And the limit of Petr's fixed FDISK (based on the FDISK contained in this update: KB263044, which has a numerical display bug) is 512 GB, according to Microsoft (KB280737), and confirmed in the present thread. Suitable alternatives are The Ranish Partition Manager, although it is not adequate to format the partitions it creates, because of defaulting to 16 kiB clusters, or the Free FDISK v. 1.2.1, or Symantec's GDISK (not free), or RLoew's RFDISK (not free).