pangoomis

Hello @WhiteArmpits I have tried running Minecraft 1.8 as instructed in the video on my ThinkPad T42p with the ATI Mobility FireGL T2 that should support OpenGL 2.0 in theory as seen in TechPowerUp: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/ati-m10.g249 vs your GPU https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/ati-m7.g199 However, upon launching, all I get is a garbled screen and a complete system freeze. It seems that the ATI OpenGL driver for Win9x (for those laptop GPUs at least) is not fully compatible with OpenGL 2.0 as seen in AIDA64: (can you show how it looks like on your laptop?) Perhaps Windows XP driver has support for OpenGL 2.0 for those GPUs, I would have to check this myself, you can also try using Windows XP, should have much better luck there. I haven't tried Mesa, but from my experience, trying to run any software emulation of OpenGL or D3D9 is usually a pain in Win9x, since most of the time, it is not working at all, and even if it worked, the performance would probably be very bad, as SC7601 points out. Version 1.7.2 worked fine. I can try running 1.8 it on my Core 2 Duo PC with the GeForce 7900 GTX, it should work there.

I always used NetTime for time synchronization on 98SE but it isn't perfect. I'm interested to try TimeSync and see if it works better.

Hi I haven't forgotten about your topic, I have it on my lists of things to do, I'll post here when I test it out.

When it comes to RAM amount and 98SE, if you have between 512MB and 1152MB, the stability varies from PC to PC with no clear pointers to check if the system will work fine. On some systems it will work fine, on others there might be some minor or even major errors. If you have more than 1152MB of RAM, 98SE will throw an error at startup, and R. Loew's RAM Patch is then required...I can't find a reason not to install it anyways.

I saw your comment under TheMiningTeam's YouTube video Video in question, for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw1RcdOSlTo Perhaps if other people with similar hardware to yours replicated steps from the video to try to run Minecraft, that could narrow the cause. I have a ThinkPad T42p (15 inch version) which is similar to your laptop, but it has a ATI Mobility FireGL T2 GPU with 128MB VRAM and it's based on a newer architecture. I will try to run Minecraft as instructed from the video on my laptop and will let you know if it runs, if I find the time, life's busy.

Try grabbing drivers from a Restore CD of a similar model (eTower 633is): https://archive.org/details/emachinesrestorecdversion1.1etower633is2000

Pretty much all users on the Win9x section of this forum know that it isn't practical, we do it for fun. Or well, that's what I like to think

This does not solve the VCACHE error

I sadly confirm that on my new PC with Intel Core i3-12100F and MSI PRO H610M-B DDR4 motherboard with the latest UEFI version (1.70), I am experiencing the VCACHE Protection Error (needed to use HIMEMX to get to that stage). Unfortunately, unless there's a fix for it, this seems to be an end of an era of trying to run 98SE on latest hardware, most likely new AM5 motherboards will also experience this issue I could have tried older UEFI versions but do not want to risk my new motherboard just for this, I doubt that would help anyway...

Windows 2000's KernelEx and Windows 98SE/ME's KernelEx are two completely different things! No chance of getting any newer version of .NET Framework than 2.0 to work on 98SE/ME.

HardDiskDMABuffer is for Windows 3.1 only, per MDGX's site: https://www.mdgx.com/lastweek.htm

@Kahenraz We can talk on Discord, but for the preservation of information, we should be discussing this topic here as well, since this seems to be something new I can't remember people talking about before, and the verdicts might be interesting/beneficial for other Win9x related things. We all know Win9x is unstable, it would be nice to understand it more why it is so. @awkduck Very good points. The thing is that I prefer short and concise messages that are straight to the point, hence my gripe with how some people write their posts, of course this is personal preference and not everyone sees this as a problem, nor is it even a problem to begin with.

Try disabling KernelEx for the Virtual PC EXE file, and its DLL files, preferably one by one.

I have no bad will for Goodmaneuver, but I have been noticing for quite some time that some of his posts are hard to understand, mostly due to him misunderstanding the topics at hand, which makes him give advice that is not relevant to a given situation, even if such advice is useful and correct. Of course I might be in the wrong, just something I've been observing as an avid user of MSFN's Win9x section. I am eager to try your theory and tool to check if I can reproduce this issue on my 98SE rig - Core 2 Duo E8600, 4GB DDR2 1066MHz RAM, GeForce 7900 GTX. Maybe try using something more demanding than Notepad.

I assume you've tried the Realtek's AC97 driver? They support a lot of hardware IDs: https://tim.id.au/static/WDM_A404.exe Post the hardware ID of the sound card, the VEN/DEV thingy.

What I wrote applies to Intel Chipset Drivers, VIA Chipset Drivers (and from other manufacturers) should actually include some drivers like the AGP driver, their INF files also should have more stuff (like Registry/INI values) than just empty sections. I do not have any experience with VIA chipsets though to encounter/verify such issues. All I know is that for Intel chipsets, its drivers are not needed. For other chipsets like VIA, SIS, and nForce, most likely they are needed.

Remove KernelEx, you do not need KernelEx for VPC 5.1. Does the same thing happen in 98SE? Is there a way in the VM BIOS to enable Max CPUID Value Limit? (VPC 5.1 prefers this enabled - actually first time I noticed this setting make a difference for 9x)

"Intel Chipset driver" isn't a driver, it simply eliminates yellow question marks in Device Manager with "null" INF files that do not do anything besides putting the device in a category like System devices in Device Manager with a name. You can check for yourself by viewing the INF files. They are not required for Win9x (or any Windows for that matter) to work. They have been confusing people since 1995 (or at the very least 1998).

According to BCM4311 datasheet: https://pdf.dzsc.com/20090227/200902072256483771.pdf there should be a Win9x driver, but I can't find it. I have found this though, might want to test it out (on an Open/WPA1 network): https://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2020/12/broadcom-wireless-card-windows-98me.html

Have you installed the RAM patch with the "/M" switch as described on the website? It can be found here: https://archive.org/details/PATCHMEM (remove any MaxPhysPage lines from system.ini after installing the patch) Have you tried solving conflict issues as described on the website? What is the full hardware ID of your Wireless card?

I can't help with the AIDA64 BSOD, as it's an issue with its Win9x kernel driver, still not fully resolved. Sometimes it works for me, and sometimes it doesn't, mostly doesn't, bummer. Can you try with a different PC with a different motherboard? Preferably something more period-correct like Socket 370/478/A and older.

This also happens in Windows 10 in the Downloads folder since one of the many updates, look here: https://superuser.com/questions/1677995/what-registry-key-do-i-need-to-change-to-remove-group-by-downloads-folder-sear

Are you using latest version of Process Explorer for 9x (11.11)? Do you have IE6 installed? Have you tried using the SHELL32.DLL fix? https://msfn.org/board/topic/84451-98-fe-98-sp1-98-se-me-shell32dll-fix/ Try using AIDA64 to monitor the system, latest version still works on 9x, just use the ZIP version.

With Win9x having such a primitive and easy to understand structure of system files and folders, you can clean the system yourself with relative ease, there are no protections after all, mostly due to the usage of FAT32 filesystem that doesn't have all this permissions rubbish And no, cleaning registry doesn't do anything useful. WinME versions of ScanDisk and Defrag are much faster than 98SE ones, though this probably is against your policy of using only vanilla apps, so to each his own. Though I don't use Defrag at all when using 98SE myself, I only install 98SE on SSDs these days

Why not use the latest version 9 of Revolutions Pack?