LoneCrusader

I've tested it successfully on a machine with 32GB of RAM using patched NTKRNLPA.EXE and HALMACPI.DLL from SP3 (5.1.2600.5512). Of course "successfully" here means that it booted to the desktop, reported the correct amount of RAM on the System Properties tab, otherwise behaved normally, and Shut Down without issues. I haven't had time to run other tests, use it on a daily basis, or experiment further with that particular setup yet so I don't know if other issues may be present. rloew did verify the problem reported with USBPORT.SYS and verify that replacing it with the Server 2003 version fixes it.

Is there any known reason to prefer an original pre-SP2 copy over a patched SP2 copy? I've only begun to look at this recently so I've read the relevant threads here but I'm not familiar with the subject beyond that. The version of NTOSKRNL.EXE on a given machine is chosen by SETUP based on the CPU and so forth. I assume that the version of HAL.DLL is chosen in the same manner? If that's the case would it not be possible that a different version of HAL other than HALMACPI.DLL will sometimes be chosen depending on the hardware? If I'm correct on this it would mean that other versions of HAL should also be checked for any updated files and checked for the proper locations to patch...

No ATI driver version, or device "INF installation path" from the ATI packages, or even a modified INF based on the working X700 report and the Windows XP INF for the X600 works with my HP ZD8000 Mobility Radeon X600 after hours upon hours of experimentation. I even replaced the VBIOS ROM of my system with the one from Dell but it causes the system to become unbootable. Had to recover the original BIOS with an emergency floppy. Looks like this is a dead end... (And we've gone way off the main topic here! lol...)

Links you sent me back then for this are now broken. (I still have the files though.) I tried using them with my HP ZD8000 laptop which has an ATI Mobility Radeon X600 chip (no ATI driver will work after hours upon hours of attempts). They seem to work OK but I always get a "Fatal Error! Unable to load nga_w32.dll!" on boot and whenever I try to access the SDD control panel. (Running 95 OSR2) I don't know if its related to this or not but after some time has passed the system sometimes locks up. Any idea if these drivers have problems on systems with large amounts (>512MB) of RAM? Are these files from the last SDD version (7 beta) or a different version? Most info I can find on this seems incomplete, and you seem to be the most well versed on this subject... I'd also like to request in your next version of VBE9x to include a 256MB version since they are now RAM-limited. Any updates in the works?

The onboard SATA controller MAY support IDE mode just fine but the option to change it is just hidden by the BIOS. Laptop BIOS are usually garbage with very few options. It may be possible to reenable the hidden options IF there are any... May be worth a visit to BIOS Mods...

Already tried that. No, as I mentioned much earlier there was no official 9x driver for the Mobility Radeon X600 although other X600 devices were supported. Your report of the Mobility X600 working seems to be the only one out there, although there is a report of an X700 working at least partially. So, now you seem to not remember specifically whether you actually had the X600 on the Dell Latitude D810 working or not..? Some searching on eBay reveals that the Mobility X600 device for the Dell D810 machines is removable and replaceable while the one for my HP ZD8000 is built on the motherboard. I wonder if the VBIOS of the two are interchangeable? But that's irrelevant if the 9x Catalyst drivers don't in fact work with the Dell either...

Do you still have this particular system and OS installation up and running? If so, I'd like to ask you some questions about it. What exact ATI package file did you download and from where? What is the exact VEN&DEV hardware ID of your Mobility Radeon X600 device? What exactly was this laptop? (Forgive me, I'm sure it's mentioned somewhere before but since so much time has passed let's state it again for the record.) I ask because I am attempting to get Windows 9x up and running on an HP ZD8000 laptop that uses the X600 graphics controller, and it absolutely refuses to work with any ATI package I have tried all the way from Catalyst 4.11Beta to Catalyst 6.2. As far as I can tell from Google you are the only person to ever get an ATI 9x driver working with the Mobility X600.

That's about the sum of it. There's just not enough people left with enough knowledge to undo the changes that cause incompatibility with older systems in newer code. (Although, and this is purely conjecture on my part, it might actually be surprising just how few changes would need to be made. I make this statement based on the fact that apparently the latest version 27.0.2 of PaleMoon can be hacked to run on Windows XP despite the continued insistence of it's developers that this is impossible.) IMO (and I'm no programmer), if anyone did make the attempt the way forward for 9x lies with K-Meleon. I've only used it in a couple of tests myself but it essentially takes Firefox and strips it of all of the "eye candy" and "window dressing" rubbish and uses only the webpage rendering engine while using the Windows API for all of the interface. In this process one loses some functionality and ease-of-use with Addons and such, but it would eliminate a raft of UI API calls not present on 9x from the equation and leave only the rendering engine to make compatible. Then all we would need would be someone good with the 9x UI to make a proper skin to dress up the final product. Tihiy? Most likely pipe dreams at this point, lol.

I wouldn't recommend anything later than Windows Vista for anyone or for anything personally, but that's just my opinion. (And I don't even really like Vista, but at least they tried to make it pretty...) Much as all of us here hate it, it has become almost impossible to use Windows 9x online these days. Over the past couple of years it's becoming more annoying to do so even under XP. One can still use 9x for many computing tasks but browsing online is not one of them and is not an enjoyable experience.

As bluebolt said you can't interchange drivers from other manufacturers as far as I know. This is because different manufacturers often write their drivers to only work with their specific hardware. There may be ways to "patch" drivers to be universal but it requires far more knowledge than I have to do so.

No, we should not post any disassembly here. If we end up finding a solution it should be OK to post patches that can be applied to the original files as they were distributed however.

Excellent. While you're at it go ahead and grab the .PDB's for HDAUDIO.SYS and the other .EXE and DLL files in the package in case we need them later. Now let's hope rloew can use the debug symbols to make some sense out of the code in the files since we don't have any source code to work with. When he and I worked on the RLUSB driver for Windows 95 we had source code to work with. This is more like shooting in the dark.

ATI brand - X850 XT Platinum Edition is the last with working drivers NVidia brand - 6800 Ultra is the last with official drivers; 7950GT is last that works with unofficial drivers 7950 GT AGP cards are EXTREMELY rare however. Best bet is to find a 256MB 7800GS AGP 7xxx series NVidia cards will probably need the Shutdown patch applied to the driver. Cards with 512MB of RAM may need rloew's NVidia patch to make all RAM available.

If anyone can obtain and provide the debug symbols (HDAUDBUS.PDB) for KB888111 and/or KB835221 for Windows 2000 it might be helpful. I've tried searching but no luck so far...

WarCraft III on a Pentium III? I've seen lag with this game when running it on a Pentium 4 3.06GHz with 2GB of RAM and using an ATI Radeon 9800XT 256MB video card. Of course I was playing on a highly customized map with lots of enemies, but the point is that it can still lag even with these specs. I wouldn't attempt that particular game on anything less than a P4. Also possibly worth nothing that a while back one of the official Blizzard patches broke the game under 98 for me; I don't know if this was ever fixed or whether it affected others besides myself. Needless to say their support was less than helpful when I reported the issue. Anyway, this is getting off-topic. If you are looking for an AGP card for the earliest versions of the AGP spec (i.e. not AGP 2.0 or 3.0) then I doubt there are many (if any) around that will fall into the 512MB category to begin with.

This makes no sense. All of the features added to 98SE by NUSB etc. already exist under Windows XP by default. Why would you ever need to use a third-party app or a script to manage removable devices under XP when it's already built in... Also, there are plenty of XP compatible USB3 drivers. Only Intel refused to produce an XP-compatible driver AFAIK.

Best as in "adequate for normal computing" or best as in "performance?" If for normal computing, just about any motherboard based on the Intel 865 or 875 Chipset will do fine and support up to 3+GHz P4. If for performance, here are a few standouts. Intel D875PBZ Pic (Last 9x-compatible Intel-branded board. Be sure to get true Intel retail version not OEM "Wasp" version) Soyo P4I875P Dragon 2 Platinum Pic (Beware of BAD CAPS; these are excellent boards but will likely need CAPS replaced) DFI Lanparty 875P-T Pic (Very rare LGA775 board with 98SE compatible chipset) MSI 865PE Neo3-F Pic (More common LGA775 board)

The Etron USB3 drivers don't even work under Windows 2000, so I wouldn't have much hope they will work on 9x. WDM under XP sometimes behaves differently even for the same functions. I don't think any XP files have been found to work under 9x other than possibly USBCCGP.SYS and even it has not been extensively tested because it requires a specific set of devices that use it and those same devices may work without it, depending instead on USBHUB/USBHUB20.

I'm sorry you feel that way. It's too bad, since you do have some programming/debugging knowledge you might have been able to help considerably in sorting this out. I have no direct knowledge of such things or patching files; I can only do research, very basic hexediting, and test what is given to me. I feel like it's a worthy investment but not everyone will agree. These days, nowhere else will you find such an experiment as WDMEX. Who else is left with enough knowledge to even make the attempt? Petr, Tihiy, Xeno86, PassingBy, LLXX, and others I'm sure I'm forgetting to mention have all moved on. Fatal Exception 0E at 0028:C026BEE6 in VXD NTKERN(01) + 0000053A Interesting that the BSOD error moves from the HDAUDBUS driver back into NTKERN with the older version.

Those functions are missing from Windows 9x but are included in WDMEX. More below. Yes, it's there. The ME USB1 drivers depend on KS.SYS but work under 98 so the 98 version is sufficient for them. The ME version of KS.SYS may or may not be useful for HD Audio if we get that far. Here's what we know so far: HDAUDBUS.SYS is missing these functions (a long list ) under Windows 98SE without any WDMSTUB/WDMEX loaded: MmAllocatePagesForMdl MmFreePagesFromMdl MmAllocateContiguousMemorySpecifyCache MmFreeContiguousMemorySpecifyCache MmMapLockedPagesSpecifyCache ExFreePoolWithTag PsGetVersion MmGetSystemRoutineAddress KdDebuggerEnabled IoFreeWorkItem IoQueueWorkItem IoAllocateWorkItem ZwSetSecurityObject ObOpenObjectByPointer IoDeviceObjectType RtlGetDaclSecurityDescriptor RtlGetSaclSecurityDescriptor RtlGetGroupSecurityDescriptor RtlGetOwnerSecurityDescriptor RtlLengthSecurityDescriptor SeCaptureSecurityDescriptor SeExports RtlAddAccessAllowedAce RtlLengthSid RtlAbsoluteToSelfRelativeSD RtlSetDaclSecurityDescriptor RtlCreateSecurityDescriptor rloew's WDMEX covers these functions but we have no way to know if HDAUDBUS.SYS is expecting a different return value for any of these. I experimented further and found that a "HKR,,DevLoader,,*NTKERN" line must be present in the INF or the driver will do absolutely nothing. It will "load" without errors in the Device Manager this way even without WDMEX loaded, so it can't be doing anything and it's no wonder there is no enumeration. "Enumeration" is NOT the problem based on this; so we need to see what is the cause of the BSOD I mentioned before we can know anything else. I put the required line back in my INF and now I get this BSOD when Windows 98SE boots and attempts to load the driver: Fatal Exception 0E at 0028:FF097160 in VXD hdaudbus(01) + 000050C0 This can be dismissed but then the system hangs here before the desktop loads and must be reset.

Why would anyone even bother to go there? Apparently one can be branded a "troll" simply for disagreeing with the attitude or outlook of the prevailing majority. Good riddance.

Have you tried adding the HotFix for KB254660 or using IntelliPoint to update your mouse drivers? Might help, might not. I've not encountered this problem before so I don't know what else to try. I'll have to have a look at the INF and experiment with it. Thanks for the info! WDMEX isn't free or currently publicly available; you would need to contact rloew about it if you're interested. rloew may also be able to provide a replacement for WDMCHECK; it's interesting that WDMCHECK is crashing out when run on HDAUDBUS.SYS. I just meant that I had compared the INF files for the 9x-compatible WDM AC'97 drivers to the 2K INF files for the HDAUDIO drivers to see how driver loading was handled, because this would need to be modified for Windows 9x to use the 2K INF files. The AC'97 driver INF's do not seem to use an "HKR,,DevLoader,,*NTKERN" line while other driver INF's such as USBSTOR do have this. I don't know if it's relevant or not yet. Yes; when Microsoft added USB support to 95 OSR2 a new VMM32.VXD, KERNEL32.DLL, KRNL386.EXE, and several other core system VXD's are replaced. (See my XUSBSUPP package.) NTKERN.VXD is added which contains an "embryonic" implementation of WDM under Windows 95. Worth mentioning here that rloew and I were able to create a hybrid version of Windows 95 OSR2 + the Windows 98SE version of NTKERN using WDMEX and some other custom modifications. It allows one to use USB2 drivers, USB-HID devices, FireWire (1394 Bus and Storage) and possibly other 98-compatilbe drivers under 95 OSR2. The main problem we face is that even if one implements all WDM functions that are missing from a 2K driver under 98 using WDMSTUB/WDMEX there is still no guarantee of success. WDM functions are sometimes implemented differently and expect differing return values under different operating systems. One could spend a lot of time working on this with no idea whether or not it will all be wasted. Yes, very interesting. Have a link? Find anything else like this? If anyone can manage to track down a copy of the "IHV Enabling Kit" mentioned in these links, it might be the holy grail for this issue... ftp://ftp.micro-square.nl/Drivers/Audio/CMedia CMI9880/v5.12.01.0008/XP_2003_64bit/README Microsoft x64 prerelease HD AUdio drivers.txt http://microsoft.public.development.device.drivers.narkive.com/2cX5zfSm/uaa-hd-audio-function-driver-sample-code

What's wrong with the VMware driver? I know there is one that works under 95 because I have used it. This is possible under XP (and 2K I assume) but not under Windows 9x (that I am aware of ). Under Windows 9x one must dig through HKLM\Enum key of the registry or use a third-party tool do get specific hardware ID's.

Hello, Welcome to MSFN! Sounds like you already have a fair amount of experience in working with Windows 9x and newer systems. I've recently been experimenting with Windows 95 and 98 on a Gigabyte GA-X79-UD4 board so I know what you're dealing with. I know these aren't directly related to your question, but I wanted to ask. What's wrong with your USB mouse? It should work... And, what did you change in BIOSINFO.INF? It's common practice here to run SETUP with the "/p i" switches to disable ACPI, but another solution is always interesting. On the subject of HD Audio, I have also tried to get the HDAUDBUS.SYS driver loaded with the help of our resident expert rloew and his WDMEX.VXD (an expanded replacement for WDMSTUB.SYS). So far I managed to get the driver to load without errors in the Device Manager but it also doesn't function properly. It does not enumerate the \HDAUDIO "child devices" tree as it should. So far we don't know why, and I don't know what else to try. rloew may be able to elaborate further on the subject. As far as getting the driver to load with the INF, I removed all of the mentions of NT and all of the NT-specific sections from it and added the following two lines, based on my examination of the last version of the RealTek AC'97 WDM driver package INFs. HKR,,Driver,,hdaudbus.sys HKR,,NTMPDriver,,hdaudbus.sys If this line is present, I get a BSOD during boot. I don't know if it is necessary or not. HKR,,DevLoader,,*NTKERN Since you are getting an error in the Device Manager it sounds like your WDMSTUB.SYS is not covering all of the necessary WDM functions used by HDAUDBUS.SYS. EDIT: Struck out incorrect or superseded information. HKR,,DevLoader,,*NTKERN line IS REQUIRED. Without it driver does nothing; with it produces a crash. Enumeration is not the current problem based on these findings.

You probably just need a 9x compatible version of VMware tools, which provides a display driver. Google "VMware tools Windows 95" and you will find some links; supposedly this one should work.