LoneCrusader

Use Catalyst 6.2 unless you are able to find an X600-specific package that was explicitly designed for Windows 9x. Windows 9x video drivers MUST be in .VXD format; yes Windows 98 and ME support WDM drivers like 2K/XP but video drivers are the exception to this. if the 2K package you found does not contain a .VXD file it will not work. As for where to put your device in the INF, you will need to "study" the organization of the INF and be sure to direct your device to the correct install section for it's particular GPU "family" (R360, R420, etc etc, Wikipedia may be useful for this if you are not familiar with it, search "List of AMD graphics processing units"). The best thing to do is find the "closest" device to yours that IS listed in the INF and follow the methodology used for it.

It's been a long time since I actually used FDISK to partition a drive, but I did use it a lot back in the day. Now I use System Commander in most cases and rloew's RFDISK or Partition Magic for certain specific purposes. If a drive is larger than what FDISK can properly display you will have to do the partition sizes by "percentages" of the entire disk rather than MB count. Try this, or use a different program to partition and format your drive and set the partition active. Then run your experiment from the beginning, setting Legacy Mode in the BIOS and disabling onboard devices. Note that it is possible for even a PATA IDE controller to be running in Native SATA mode if SATA ports are present as well (rloew correct me if I am wrong!), so be sure to check for "Legacy/IDE/PATA" settings. The size of the HDD should have no bearing whatsoever on compatibility with RAM.

I probably can't even begin to address all of your issues, but you need to concentrate on one problem at a time for starters. First of all it appears that laptop uses an Intel 915 chipset. Prepare yourself for resource conflicts that may or may not be fixable. The 875 chipset is the last chipset that truly gets along properly with Windows 9x. Second if the laptop has more than 512MB of RAM and you are determined to use it, don't rely on "tweaks" to fix it. I was never able to get any of these "RAM tweaks" to work on any system of mine. I purchased rloew's RAM Patch and never looked back. Third, if the hard drive or optical drive in the machine are connected by SATA, you will either have to hope that the BIOS will allow you to set "Legacy IDE" mode for the drives, or you will need rloew's SATA patch as well in order for them to function properly and not run in "Compatibility Mode." Fourth, when installing your OS of choice, always disable any and all possible onboard devices in the BIOS, then once you have your OS set up, re-enable them one at a time, installing drivers for each separately. This should help you narrow down problem devices. Use the last 9x version of the ATI Catalyst driver, 6.2 I believe. If that doesn't work verify that your Device ID is listed in the INF file for the driver. If not, add it.

If and when Rloew decides that his solution is "complete," and gets it working for all flavors of 9x, and is reasonably certain it has no adverse side effects then I think I can repack the driver package with the patched file included. I'm confident that is what MDGx did originally when he expanded the INF's anyway.

As far as I know no such things exist for Windows 95. Only USB Storage and the small handful of older devices such as scanners that originally came with 95-compatible drivers are known to work when connected by USB under 95. It may be possible to support such devices but they would require the ultra-experimental Hybrid 95/98 system that rloew and I developed.

Definitely trash the Celeron. Celerons are garbage. But be sure that you do not need to update the BIOS on your motherboard in order to have support for the P4 3.06GHz before you attempt to change the processor out. I would highly recommend rloew's RAM patch, and by all means either max out the RAM on the board to 3GB (or use 2GB if you want it to run in Dual-Channel mode). You can never have too much RAM. If you plan on playing any games that run in DOS or in a DOS Box inside Windows and use more than 2GB of RAM be sure to mention this to rloew when and if you get the patch, because an additional fix is needed to limit DOS Box DPMI memory to 2GB in order to run certain games, especially those that launch with DOS4GW.EXE, such as WarCraft I and II. I've always been partial to ATI cards over NVidia, although I have been experimenting with NVidia lately. The 9800 XT is a very good card that can handle anything that was ever made to run under 9x. There is also the X850 XT Platinum Edition, although this card sometimes does not get along with WarCraft II and possibly other DOS games. A GeForce 6800GS is supposedly better than a Radeon 9800 XT, but a Radeon X850 XT PE is supposedly better than the 6800GS. Later 7xxx NVidia cards will work with the 82.69 driver found here, but many of them may not play well in your small case. There is no need to disable Hyper-Threading in order to run 9x, but unless you plan to multi-boot with another OS that can use it it will make no difference.

I tested both the 81.98 and 82.69 patches. The 81.98 patch works fine on a SOYO 875 Dragon 2 Platinum with a 6200GS. I did notice that the "Windows is shutting down" screen never appears, it just goes black from the desktop and then shuts the machine off after a second or so. The 82.69 patch works fine on an Intel D875PBZ machine with a 7950GT. Same notation about the "shutting down" screen. I have also seen the "blinking DOS cursor" screen before, along with a screen that reports "unable to write to device AUX" or something like that. Both of these situations kept the machine from shutting down, but neither of them left the system "dirty" or caused SCANDISK to run on the next boot.

Can you upload that version somewhere if you have it? I have been looking for it but all of BFG's old links are dead and not saved on the Wayback Machine, and rloew may not have it to examine. Thanks!

You're welcome. Glad you found it useful!

this is odd, i have a working windows 95 build that works with acpi support, computer automatically shut downs when selecting shut down option without showing the "it is now safe to turn of your computer" message. i believe windows 95 osr 2.5 was the first to implement this function, im not sure why other people had problems with acpi, even with windows 98 which should have better support. No official version of Windows 95 has any ACPI support, you must be confusing it with APM. It is purely unrelated that Windows 95 turns off the machine and does not show the "It is now safe to turn off your computer" message when shutting down; this is a difference between older AT-powered machines versus newer ATX-powered machines. It has nothing to do with ACPI, it is simply a normal function of an ATX motherboard and power supply.

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that the point of this project was only to update the Windows 95 Shell (i.e. the NON-Desktop Update/IE4/98 shell) to include functions that were added to the Desktop Update/IE4/98 shell so that the 95 shell could be used under 98 and/or with things like 98 Lite, etc... So for anyone already running the Desktop Update/IE4/98 shell under 95 it would actually be a downgrade and be incompatible with the newer shell if installed. WarCraft 3 incompatibility with Windows 95 was one of several factors that forced me to move from Windows 95 to Windows 98SE several years ago. Oddly enough the other factors that forced the decision at the time have now been remedied, but I digress. I never got past the "unsupported operating system" part on 95 back then, but admittedly at the time I didn't have the first clue how to begin to circumvent it. WarCraft 3 and the Frozen Throne do work properly under Windows 98SE though, I played them for years that way. However one of the later Blizzard patches (1.24B) breaks the game under Windows 98. I reported this to Blizzard tech support but of course they never gave any meaningful response, they never even bothered to try to tell me to upgrade or the like, they just acted like they didn't comprehend what I was saying. I don't know if it was ever corrected later or not. So, you may need to verify that the version you are installing is prior to 1.24B, and I would be very careful about the digital version, which may introduce this or other incompatibilities.

You are telling a SATA (Native) IDE controller to limit its functions to only those functions available to a PATA (Legacy) IDE controller. Both SATA and PATA are IDE. SATA is Native, PATA is Legacy. Legacy vs. Native are the key terms of importance here, not IDE vs. SATA. SATA is IDE, but a more advanced type not supported by the original ESDI_506.PDR. This is why rloew said that terms used in various BIOS'es are ambiguous - they don't clearly establish Legacy vs. Native and don't always use the same standard terminology for a given mode setting. Again SATA is IDE - Native IDE. I assume when you say IDE mode you mean Legacy PATA mode. Most likely Native Mode. Possibly AHCI depending on BIOS settings and whether or not an AHCI controller is even present. A board can have PATA/SATA connectors and NOT have any AHCI capability at all. Most likely not. See above. No.

Amen. To hell with running my computer in a limited mode! And off-topic but just for good measure - to hell with all of the Linux people who act like its some kind of sin to enable the root account or run a system as root! I can't express how annoyed I get by this...

Unfortunately I have no idea how the memory errors (or lack of them under certain conditions) affected your setup. I was never even able to boot with more than 512MB of RAM until I purchased rloew's patch, so I'm surprised you got as far as you did. Maybe rloew or someone else can elaborate on this... Have a look at this thread, especially a few posts in where it turns chiefly to nVidia drivers. Since no one could tell me which version of the nVidia driver package was the last one to work 100% properly with Windows 95, I ran a series of experiments to find out. You may be able to use the version in my last post if it supports your card. If it doesn't, you may be able to pull the nVidia Control Panel files from that package and use them with the later drivers. @dencorso - Maybe the thread I linked should be added to your "nVidia GeForce 9x Relevant Threads?" I actually had to search for that thread myself to find it again!

I'm not surprised that you are seeing the memory errors with that much RAM. I was never able to even get a 9x system to boot with more than 512MB of RAM no matter what settings I tweaked in SYSTEM.INI. I would see the "Insufficient memory..." error always, without fail. So I purchased rloew's patch and never looked back. You may be able to get it to work, but you're in for a lot of trial and error. I think the RAM issue is the root of your problem; until you solve it then you can't get reliable results with XUSBSUPP. The motherboard driver INFs are separate from the Audio/LAN drivers and from the GART driver. Essentially all they do is inform you that you have an nForce Chipset in the Device Manager, rather than saying "PCI System Management Bus" or something to that effect. The GART driver and the Audio/LAN drivers will each have their own separate INFs. It is possible that the 98/ME GART driver may work under 95 because it is a .VXD driver and not a WDM (.SYS) driver. It is also possible that the Audio/LAN drivers may work under 95 as well, but this is more doubtful. In their cases I would look for an older 95-compatible driver package for similar hardware and experiment. I'm not familiar enough with GART drivers or anything to do with GART to advise you on that point... other than the testing system I mentioned I have virtually all Intel-based hardware, and Intel systems don't use a GART driver. I'm not certain what exactly a GART driver does or whether it is even necessary. What video card are you using? Maybe it at least will have 95-compatible drivers!

Very strange. I actually used almost the exact same board in the machine on which most of the extensive testing of this package was done. I believe manufacturers make that disclaimer just so they won't have to actively support 9x users on their boards. Kind of like saying here's the driver but you're on your own to use it, don't come to us for help if it breaks or doesn't work. As for "drivers," when it comes to the motherboard itself essentially all the package contains is a set of .INF files that properly identify the devices on the board by name. If you install 98SE or ME and use it to unpack the driver package, you should be able to copy the INF's to Windows 95 and still use them. This will not give you 95 compatible drivers for any onboard devices such as Audio or LAN however. Also, the 98/ME version of the AGP GART driver may not work under 95, in which case you could try to track down an older driver package that does have an nVidia GART driver for Windows 95 and use it. I would think that a USB hub on a monitor would need to be physically connected to the USB on your motherboard in order to interface with it... In any case USB Keyboards/Mice/Joysticks and other such peripherals are NOT supported under Windows 95, even when using this package. These devices are not properly supported until early Beta versions of Windows 98, and there is no way to fix this without extensive reverse engineering and backporting significant code from Windows 98. Trust me, I have spent many hours trying. A solution might be developed, but it probably would not be free. Why do you already have USB devices showing up? Did you attempt to install XUSBSUPP on a system where Microsoft's original USBSUPP was already installed? This can also cause problems... Windows 95 may not be able to properly support add-in USB cards without some of the backported code from Windows 98 that I mentioned before. I remember reading somewhere years ago that 95 could not support PCI USB Add-In cards. In any case, if it is a USB 2.0 card, then no natively 95 compatible drivers exist. In any case this should not affect your PS2 keyboard though. Try removing the PCI card before installing. How much memory does this machine have? Did you have any patches or tweaks in place for using more than 512MB of RAM, especially rloew's RAM patch? This package updates VMM.VXD, which can overwrite patched files. In this case the patches need to be removed before XUSBSUPP install and reapplied after installation is complete.

Sorry to hear it, that machine must really not like Windows 95... Do try Windows 98SE if you can obtain a copy; if it works then all your efforts won't have been in vain, you can still use it for everything you could use Windows 95 for.

Haha, I see your point. I suppose it should be called "best of both worlds" then, rather than "retro." Retro operating system for compatibility + latest compatible hardware for operability/performance.

Yes, I have a couple of 9x machines that will be running 4GB under construction. Mainly to be used for retro-gaming and such. One has 3584 MB of RAM visible to Windows 98SE and the other has 3712 MB (sometimes reads 3711 instead). Having issues with an old game and the video card at the moment, but I already have a thread about this going on elsewhere. You can never have "too much" RAM.

Maybe it uses GlobalMemoryStatus() instead of GlobalMemoryStatusEx(). The former can only acknowledge 2GiB of RAM, while the latter can go all the way up. Same goes for the page file, it's retrieved by the same APIs. Try MemPanel from my repository, it should use the correct API depending on operating system type (Win9x don't have GlobalMemoryStatusEx() implemented). It does detect the whole amount of installed RAM (when less that 2GB as per above) even when it's limited in SYSTEM.INI on 9x systems. I'm not sure if it works under WIn95, couldn't test it. Nice tool Drugwash. Apparently you are correct about the API, MemPanel only sees 2GB of RAM on a 4GB machine as well, same as DXDIAG (and now that I think of it I believe CPU-Z suffers from this as well).

Because of the manner in which you make your request. If you want to help with something you don't go around making demands or lecturing others and most certainly do not start throwing around talk of legal matters, no matter what your intent. There exists no intent here to violate any law, GPLv2 or otherwise. So if you really have "good" intentions and wish to contribute, I suggest you adjust your attitude.

Seriously? It's not enough for you that someone has taken it upon themselves to continue this project, you have to come in here and start nitpicking about all the sources not being available? Be glad someone is willing to spend their time continuing to work on KernelEx in this day and time. And I certainly support jumper in the stance that releasing bugged versions and sources helps no one. He is under no obligation to spend his time on this project for you or anyone else - if it takes him some time to polish his current version and make the sources available, then that's his business and his alone.

So I take it you are still getting the Windows Protection Error? Try disabling the CDROM drive again once you have run SETUP and FIX95CPU if this is the case. A CDROM drive should not be causing problems like this... If you can get past the Windows Protection Error then it can be set up later. If the CDROM is indeed causing these problems, it may indicate a hardware problem with it. Otherwise it would seem that your system and Windows 95 just don't get along for some reason.

FORMAT is a .COM file rather than a .EXE. It should be in the \WIN95 folder on the CDROM...

Right. But Prehistoric has a laptop. I'm not aware of any laptops that have SoundBlaster cards with IDE interfaces (of course I may just have no knowledge of such a configuration but it sounds like a very strange hardware combination... ). Uh-oh. Several possible problems with this setup. You should only need a standard Windows 98 Boot Disk and your 95B CDROM to complete this installation. You shouldn't have to be modifying AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS or copying any files from the XP installation CD. Remember XP drivers are not compatible with Windows 95. You should FDISK and FORMAT the HDD with the 98 Boot Disk and the 95B CDROM and use FAT32, not FAT16. There is no reason to use FAT16 with 95B OSR2 and limit yourself to a 2GB HDD partition unless you want or need FAT16 for some specific purpose. Do NOT use any DOS 6.22 disks or programs in the setup process. Take these steps: Download a Windows 98 Boot Disk and write it to a Floppy. Use this floppy to boot your machine, choose "Command prompt with CDROM support." The CDROM should be recognized and accessible with the default driver. Use FDISK to partition your HDD, a single 32GB partition is fine unless you want to install another OS dual-boot. Navigate to the \WIN95 folder on your CDROM and use FORMAT to format the partition as FAT32 (it will take a while for 32GB). Once this is done you can either run Windows 95 SETUP from the CDROM or copy the contents of the WIN95 folder to a folder on the HDD and run it from there. I recommend copying them to the HDD, but its up to you. If you choose to do so, create a folder such as \WIN95CD on your C:\ drive and copy all files from the \WIN95 folder on the CDROM to it, and then run SETUP from inside the \WIN95CD folder on C:\. Then use FIX95CPU as before and let us know what happens.