azagahl

I do not think the ESDI-506.pdr will work with SATA, it is the standard hard disk controller driver. Also note that you do not even want esdi506.pdr as it has a bug and will cause data corruption as soon as you write beyond 137 GB (it will start overwriting existing data at 0 GB). Partitioning doesn't help with this bug. You should probably be using a special driver from the motherboard manufacturer. For example, I use a UltraATA 100 PATA IDE 200 GB hard disk on 98 SE. For my VIA motherboard I install the Via Hyperion drivers, and I end up using viadsk.mpd for my hard disk controller and NOT esdi506.pdr. Maybe you can install the special drivers in safe mode?

I use Daemon Tools to mount iso, ccd, and similar files (CD volumes stored on hard disk). It creates a virtual SCSI device in Windows to do this. I have a couple of minor complaints about Daemon Tools- slow boot times and rarely, system instability - and was wondering if there are any good alternatives?

Thanks a lot, Eraser seems to work great. Unfortunately Zila Data-Nuker is a 15-day trial. Also there website is bloated and slow. Blechh...

I tried disabling my floppy disk controller, then renaming HSFLOP.PDR. After doing this, the time delay was still there, it was instead all being blamed on the monitor enumeration (~15 seconds). However, I think I've solved the slow down problem. I took a wild guess and renamed d347prt.pdr (Daemon Tools) and it boots much faster now even with the floppy re-enabled. This could be because I had a couple of iso's mounted when I booted, or it could just be that Daemon Tools are slow. Unfortunately, the BOOTLOG.TXT did little to help diagnose this problem I still have the problem with the boot logo (LOGO.SYS) vanishing shortly after it appears. After commenting things out in my AUTOEXEC.BAT it now disappears when VMM loads. Is it memory-related? I will try disabling EMM386...

I strongly recommend using the Prime95 torture test. Be sure to use Advanced options and set the Priority to maximum. (You have to use password 9876 to do this.) Another good tool to try is superpi (super_pi.zip) Some people like memtest86 but it didn't help with my bad memory chips at all.

Boot Log Examiner is showing a lot of wasted time during boot up on my 98 SE PC. The floppy disk controller seems to be the biggest waste. The disk doesn't spin up, and it doesn't matter whether I have a disk in or not. I have "Search for new floppy disk drives each time your computer starts" disabled. Has anyone else had this problem? 1.33 seconds - VIDE-CDD.SYS 2.94 seconds - SBEINIT.COM[00006768] starting 1.22 seconds - Initing viadsk.mpd 3.17 seconds - Enumerated ViewSonic VX900-2 (MONITOR\VSC9011\PCI_VEN_10DE&DEV_0330&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_A1_000800) 11.39 seconds - Enumerated Standard Floppy Disk Controller (ACPI\*PNP0700\0) Another problem I have is that the bootup logo tends to disappear prematurely, so the PC just shows a black screen with a blinking cursor. According to Boot Log Examiner, programs like SMARTDRV.EXE or DEBUG.COM that are run inside of AUTOEXEC.BAT are usually logged with a "(logo disabled)" message after them. Why would these programs cause the logo to be disabled? Is it perhaps due to the memory area they use? Trying to hide output from the programs (e.g. with CTTY NUL) doesn't seem to help.

Is there any good, free software for deleting files thoroughly, such that they are unrecoverable? Ideally it should follow some standard for deletion; at the least it should write over it with random bits or something. I know there is one program called BCWipe that you can install and it lets you right click on a file and delete it. Unfortunately it only works for 30 days so it's not freeware.

You want to make the SP bloat to 100Mb or what? Sounds good to me

Thanks guys, but how often should I defrag? IMHO, once a week is more than adequate. It takes an awfully long time for fragmentation to build up to the point where your PC slows down noticably. I bet most users could go on for a year without noticing a slowdown. However, I'd be more worried about scenarios where your hard disk gets corrupted or damaged and you can't recover much data because it is scattered randomly all over your disk. Executive DiskKeeper is a good defrag program, free for personal use I think - http://www.executive.com/coverpage.asp

You are worried about performance? What are your PC's stats? CPU speed? Memory? Using a RAM disk will consume memory, meaning there will be less memory available for caching or paging. This will probably decrease performance. One thing that might help is to turn off as many features and services in XP as you can. I believe there is a program discussed here called nLite that is designed to do this. Make sure your PC isn't infested with spyware and viruses. In the Software forum you will find a lot of recommendations. For spyware try CWShredder and SpyBot S&D 1.4RC1. For viruses, I like AVG Free Edition. Also, defrag your hard disk. Give yourself a large fixed page file, at least 1 GB. Ideally it should be located at the beginning of your disk, on the first partition on your disk, and even on a second disk if you have one. FWIW I have an Athlon 3400+ 1 GB RAM and I love using Win 98 SE due to its decreased bloat and increased responsiveness. If you really want to try 98 I recommend using 98 SE specifically. Also, there are a lot of expert 9x users on the forums here. They've made some great upgrades for 98 SE such as the Unofficial 98 SE SP 2.0. Also, if you have a Windows ME disk, you can install the 98SE2ME upgrade. i again apoligize but do appreciate the help No need to apologize, we are all here to help & be helped. Welcome to the forums!

I want to change my vote, I am going to stop using F-PROT and use AVG Free Edition instead. AVG Free Edition has auto updates, runs on boot up, does scheduling, etc.. Are there any other nice, free virus scanners?

www.gromada.com does not seem to carry 1st impression any more In fact it is difficult to find, I tracked the file (1st250.zip) here: http://www.simtel.net/product.download.mirrors.php?id=54088

I am not sure about resource consumption but I have found Agnitum Outpost Firewall adequate and easy to use for 98 SE. Sygate Personal Firewall caused me problems with shutdown and also mouse motion stuttering. BTW, what is AVG free edition? Isn't there a 30-day trial only?

It's a 3 GHz P4, XP, with 1 GB RAM. So a 2.5 MB file should not bring it to its knees! I also use Athlon 3400 1 GB RAM 98 SE with the same file and its extremely fast and responsive - no slowdowns whatsoever. Maybe the XP PC is misconfigured somehow? I tried cutting the file in half but the random problems and slow downs persisted.

I tried using a hosts file which maps a bunch of bad hosts (e.g. malware sites, porn, etc.) to 127.0.0.1 to block my PC from accessing these or sending packets to them. However it seems to cause intermittent instability on XP. For example, pings to valid hosts (e.g. www.google.com) take a long time to succeed, or do not succeed at all; at other times they work instantly. Changing the hosts file (adding or removing) causes the behavior to get better or worse, but its unpredictable - sometimes adding hosts cures the problem temporarily, which makes no sense. Blowing away the file cures the problems instantly. Also if I ping a numerical address it always works fine. My DNS server isn't listed but I still have random problems with pinging it. I didn't have any problems whatsoever on 98 SE so I am wondering if there are known problems with the HOSTS file functioning properly on XP? Or could this just be a problem specific to this particular PC? Any ideas? My hosts file has about 80,000 entries and is 2.4 MB. Does XP have some kind of limit?

There are some longhorn screenshots here: http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index...ArticleID=46188 It looks a lot like the 98 SE I have installed. Actually, it looks worse. Can you see any compelling reasons to ugprade?

Sorry eidenk, I think I have more questions than answers. Basically my hard disk got trashed a few days ago and I am sure it has something to do with the 137 GB limit. How do you manage to assess that scandisk worked above the 137 GB ? Scandisk seems to process the partiton above 137 GB normally. However, in my case, I think the FAT is located just below 137 GB (the partition starts before there) and the majority of the partition lies above 137 GB. So maybe scandisk is grabbing the FAT correctly but if it sees an error (cross-linked files or something?) and tries to make a correction it might mess up? I am not aware of any situation where my PC should be using ESDI_506.PDR. So I don't fully understand why my disk got corrupted a few days ago. I did run scandisk on the high partition shortly before the corruption appeared, so I am afraid of runnig scandisk/defrag on that partition now. I assume you are speaking about scandisk.exe run from Dos and not scandskw.exe run from Windows. I think it was scandisk in Windows caused my problem. I've run Windows defrag on that partition without noticing any problems, so I am not sure what happened exactly. Do you mean you saw random ascii character when you used a disk editor No, I just did "dir X:/" (where X represents my normal boot drive) and it showed piles of garbage characters. Good thing I had images saved with savepart. I am curious. You say you are using a special PDR file. Which one and for which reason ? Actually I seem to be using an MPD file and not a PDR file, whatever those extensions mean. In my Hard disk controller driver file details, it lists "viadsk.mpd" and "ios.vxd". This is from installing the latest Via Hyperion drivers for my VIA motherboard (K8T Neo Fis2R). This is the only way I know to get my hard drives running at full speed (Ultra ATA 100) in Windows.

Scandisk, even ME windows version, causes corruption when used on partitions located above 137 GB. What do you exactly mean here ? I am able to run DOS or windows ME scandisk on my partition above 137 GB. However, if it detects an error, I think it writes it in a way that corrupts the lower 137 GB. I might be wrong as I haven't exhaustively tested these scenarios, but I think that explains how my disk got corrupted. I did have trouble booting and I saw the random ascii characters on the drive (when I booted from a different drive). Is it safe to use scandisk on a partition at byte x < 137 GB when there is a partition with data located at x + n * (137 GB)? I assume that this should be safe I hope you are right. Is there any way to disable scandisk from running automatically on drive X? I suppose you don't ignore scandisk can be disabled from automatically running in msconfig. Yes, you can disable Scandisk starting on a bad shutdown under MSCONFIG, General, Advanced. I was wondering if anyone knew a way to restrict it to a particular disk though? BTW, when you boot into Safe mode does Windows switch to using ESDI_506.PDR? If so, people like me that use a seperate PDR will need to be careful when operating in "safe" mode . I will test this out later...

Scandisk, even ME windows version, causes corruption when used on partitions located above 137 GB. Is it safe to use scandisk on a partition at byte x < 137 GB when there is a partition with data located at x + n * (137 GB)? Is there any way to disable scandisk from running automatically on drive X? Should / will Unofficial SP do something to disable scandisk on such partitions? It wouldn't be too hard to rename scandisk.exe to trashdsk.exe and then have an app named scandisk.exe that checks for partitions above 137 GB and calls trashdsk.exe only if it's safe. It sounds hacky but it's better than destroying your hard disk...

I prefer 98 SE to XP. Admittedly I havent' used ME or 2000 much. So I'm fine with the manufacturers dropping support for XP.

Is there any alternative to scandisk for Windows ME? I know there are tons of defrag programs, but disk checking programs..? Thanks!

I have "200" (190) GB drive with about 5 partitions totalling 120 GB, followed by a single 70 GB partition at end. I think I had corrupted the disk when I did a scandisk on the 70 GB partiton the other day. It wouldn't bootup and when i did "dir" on my normal boot drive it showed random ASCII characters. So scandisk and defrag are no good! From Win 98 though I use xxcopy to do backups to the 70 GB partition, and it works fine because I do not use the bad pdr file as my hard disk controller. What is strange is that in DOS I can view the 70 GB partition without a problem. I guess command.com does not have 28-bit ATA limitation??

I use Athlon 64 so I doubt my BIOS is old. Regardless of what PDR you have, DOS is still scary Maybe in DOS a tool such as LetAssig can help block out partitions above 137 GB? http://www.v72735.f2s.com/LetAssig/index.html I will try it later..

Yuck! I have some kind of Promise IDE chip on my motherboard. I use via 4-in-1 drivers and run an app called "VIA IDE Miniport driver" (I am not sure what it does exactly but I end up using UltraATA 100 anyway). I use a different PDR file so I think I might not have the bug. One of my drives is 200 GB. I've seen corruption occur... I can't use certain partitions in DOS, or run scandisk or defrag (not even ME version in Windows) Diskeeper Lite is an OK substitute for defrag. Is there any safe alternative to scandisk? Or is the only other choice, if a partiton gets corrupted, to just reformat it?

He didn't need any help as far as I can tell. He was showing off his cool autoexec.bat & config.sys. I looked at them a while ago - I never heard of the LETASSIG tool before but it looks like it could be quite useful. Thanks Stone-D. BTW, I have some nice initialization scripts myself and I may post them someday...