awkduck

I'll take either elaboration, as long as your sound is working :)

You can run scandisk from Dos. During boot, press the "F8" key and select "Command Prompt Only". Then type: Have you set (P)ATA compatibility in BIOS? Or have you already installed a SATA driver? Beyond this, you might wait around for another person's suggestion. But for me, I usually delete all devices out of "Device Manager", to eliminate any possibility of an issue there. You can back-up your registry first. That way you can restore it later, and still use this Windows in the old computer. Again, from the "Command Prompt Only" Change directory to "C:\WINDOWS", if already not there. Then do the following: If you need to restore the old registry: Delete "C:\BOOTLOG.TXT" and "BOOTLOG.PRV" Then delete everything out of "Device Manager", and boot Windows Normally. If you can run "Regedit", you could instead delete the key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Enum", and restart Windows normally. Before Rebooting, it might be a good spot to install rloew's SATA patch/driver. If Windows manages to startup, it should start detecting your hardware. If the machine locks up, it is important to take note of the current device type being detected. Sometimes this doesn't help, as it locks up before listing the device. If Windows does actually load, but does not detect new devices, you can open "Device Manager" and click the "Refresh" Button. If Windows does not load, or locks up during device detection, you could examine and post your new "Bootlog". It is not guaranteed to provide the answer. But it might help.

@GUS Were you able to resolve things, with access to safe mode?

"Free Paragon NTFS for Windows 98" seems to work, for me.

You've tried before, on a previous install. You can read about it on Sierra Help. After you've installed it, and followed the directions, you will need to run DOSDRV.BAT from a command prompt window. From that same window you can go to the directory of your game, and run the executable that starts the game. There is another batch file that disables VDMSound. But this will also disable any sound you normally had under Windows SBlaster emulation. You might be able to reset the SBlaster environment for your card, to enable normal emulation again. I've never tried. For certain, a reboot sets everything back to normal. To fix the "Tip of the Day" issue, create a .reg file with this contents: Then double click on it, and click yes.

Can you provide more information on the hardware used? This has happened to me, but it was an issue related to the harddrive controller. Did this happen after/during a fresh install? Or after using the system successfully for a time? Perhaps if you have a good bios you could set it for ATA compatibility.

The SBlaster emulation automatically configures itself. You can run command.com and type: On one of my machines I get "A220 I5 D1 T4 P330" as a result. Since some games check the autoexec.bat for this information, you would add it like this: This only help for games and software that do not check the %BLASTER% environment variable. Sometimes using a WDM driver provides better results for SBlaster emulation. It seems to just depend on the games and audio chip. On one of my machines the VXD SBlaster emulation provides no sound at all, with Wolf3d. Where the WDM SBlaster emulation provides me with sound effects, digitized sound, but no music. I can use Wolfdosmpu/wolfmidi to get the music. But no other sounds, unless I set effects to PC Speaker. But it will lag unless I disable everything but music. The only way I have gotten everything to work, on that sound card, was by using VDMSound. There is an older version (1.3.3) of ECWolf that works fine with Win98. So you might consider that an option. However that only solves the issue for Wolf3d and SOD. I haven't tried using NTFS yet. I plan to, if I can't get Win98 reading Ext3 partitions. Hopefully someone with provide that info. If I get a chance, I'll format a pendrive and do some tests.

Sounds good. I've forgotten the model number of your laptop. Could you share that again?

Are you trying to duplicate some of the progress you've made before? Or are you trying to get alternative strategies, to the ones you've previously received?

@justacruzr2 Could you message me the contents of the wdma_int.inf file? Or maybe upload it somewhere? I don't think the forum would allow it, since it is part of a commercial product. wdma_int.inf is the inf for your card. And putting it in the inf folder should work. You could test by putting wdma_int.inf, and all of the files for, it into a new folder folder. Then install it manually by directing "Device Manager" to install a driver from the new folder. You may first have to remove the wdma_int.inf file from the inf folder and remove the "non working" device from device manager. If wdma_int.inf has the ID VEN_8086&DEV_2415&SUBSYS_3151109F&REV_02 in it, Windows will pick it and install the driver. Unless the Millennium inf files for KS and wdmaudio have the exact same contents, as the ones from Win98, you should remove them and use the ones from Win98. The inf files contain all of the registry info you need. You should not need to enter them yourself. If the inf files provides different instructions for registry entries, between ME and 98, then you might be causing yourself a problem. If not, then it probably doesn't matter. Just something to keep in mind. I understand that you may already know all of that. So it may be redundancy for the sake of thoroughness. You may very well be capable beyond the suggestion you've received. If it is redundancy, it is just to help get everyone on the same page. There is a very small chance that the driver isn't compatible with Win98. It does happen that, from time to time, a driver from ME isn't meant for 98. I doubt this is the problem. If it is, rloew's Wdmex might fix the issue. I was able to get a driver that was compatible with Win98SE, but not Win98FE, working on FE that way. You can get Wdmex here.

That is true. And disabling the controller in bios isn't always an option. I've had a thinclient that had floppy support in the S.O.C. but no pinout on the board. The bios page was very basic. But at least the controller was listed in Device Manager. Glad you found a fix. Tweak UI is an option in most Win9x unofficial service packs. I myself, don't care for it. It seemed not to correctly undo some of it's own settings. And sometimes it would try to change something that had already been changed, by me or another program. The result also caused issues reverting the change. Until I learned how to remove "Network Neighborhood" from the Desktop without it, that ended up being all I trusting it for.

Well, I today I can't download anything from them. So I was right and "now" partly wrong. It must be a server maintenance thing. I was going to see if the VEN/DEV/SUB/REV in the inf file matched better then the one I shared with justacruzr2. In messaging I mentioned that wdmaudio.inf and KS.inf are Windows 98se Specific. So maybe replacing them with the originals allowed wdma_int.inf to work. Today I downloaded and examined a wdma_int.inf, it is definitely the inf for the card. I'm hoping the issue was resolved.

It gets past the captcha robot acknowledgement . It says "Your download will start in a moment", "If it doesn't restart the download." But it also does nothing when I click the restart. Since I can still download other drivers, from them, I'm wondering if it is just that driver that is down. But if it is still active for other people, it would be pretty strange.

You can disable it in device manager. Then search the registry for the device name, as shown in device manager. Delete only the string value with the "name" of the device. Leave the other entries alone. If you delete the whole device, from the registry, the drive will just show up again on reboot.

There is the open source-port Wolf4gw/Sod4gw. It seemed to support the unique resolution your video card is using (probably over S-Video). That I can share. 4gw.zip

@Goodmaneuver It could just be my browser. I've downloaded several drivers from "driver guide"; but this one never starts. Even after clicking "restart download", I get nothing. I don't personally need it. But could someone else check the download? Maybe it is just a temporary server issue? I've noted that the device ID also matches up in the AC97 Win95 pack. How important is it that the subsystem ID matches? I have found one where everything matches with the exception of "&REV_02" (intel/crystal cs429x); but it is a WDM driver.

@SweetLow Thanks for the info.

Does this include 98FE? Most likely not 95. I imagine these are the ones included in USP3.66?

Dell-AA-Mayweather, any millennial born in 1979 is welcome here.

Nah, listing the outline of your family, birth place, date of birth, and current residence is totally normal Internet behavior. Probably more common than using the same USER/PASS for everything you do online. I've personally been thinking about using my S.S.N. as a forum signature. On a more serious note, I'd pay more attention to the "AA". Could be coincidence, but that's a tag in active use. But I'm getting too old to keep up on all of that.

That's fun to learn. Thanks

Wow. I've used MplayerWW in Linux/Wine. Never imagined it would run on Win98. But it runs fine (default KernelEx). Released 1-13-15.

Some of the early Sherpya releases came with Mplayer's original GUI (gmplayer). I believe others compiled it too. Just can't remember who. It was skinable. I think the default skin was a CyberLink PowerDVD clone.

Some Sherpya build versions, earlier than I have listed above, have a GUI. I don't know which ones, but a couple worked well. I guess someone should make a cheat sheet, for the Mplayer key controls. Maybe even a tutorial on how to use Mplayer and Mencoder to video chat/screen cast. Ffmpeg and Vlc have some use there too. The documentation for Mplayer/Mencoder is pretty long. But the key to using it, without the GUI, is the config file and key controls. Then you can just drag video/audio/playlist files over a shortcut to mplayer.exe. Off the top of my head, [ Volume down = 0 up = 9 ] [ Skip 12 seconds backward = <- forward = -> ] [Skip minute backward = \/ forward = /\ ] [ Fullscreen = f ] [ Pause = space ] [ Framedrop = d ] [ Subtitles = v ] [ On screen display = o ]. I know this has worked in Linux, for aspect ratio. You'd thing it would work with Windows too. In mplayer\input.conf F1 switch_ratio 0 F2 switch_ratio 1.3333 F3 switch_ratio 1.7778 F4 switch_ratio 1.85 F5 switch_ratio 2.3 Here is a larger list of keys. I know this is a lesser reply then you had hoped for. But I mean well.

I've recommended a PDF file printer on MSFN before. I've since bumped into better options. Doro PDF Writer is the best one I've seen so far. It doesn't even need a reboot, to work. There are a bunch of these PDF file printing applications out there. From what I've seen, they are all just running off of Ghostscript's steam. So you could just do this on your own. Well, kinda. I don't know what most recent version of Ghostscript runs on Win98. I've used 8.6. Doro PDF Writer uses some 9.0x version, for which the inf specifies W2K on up. But Doro works fine. You also need the GSview. Then go Start > Settings > Printers > Add Printer. You'll need to find a printer that ends in PS, Postscript, or Postscript+. HP seems to have some good choices. You'll want a color printer, with a good printable area. Then you can print to your Postscript printer (any application), which in turn outputs a Postscript File (.prn). Then you open ghostview > Open the .prn file > Convert > Select Pdfwrite > choose PDF options > Ok. Obviously, Doro is easier. Or if you have it, Adobe Writer.