Fredledingue

One possible solution to this problem, because I see that you have 1.25 Gb of memory, is to edit system.ini and add: Under [386enh] ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1 MinSPs=16 MaxPhysPage=3FE00 DMABufferSize=64 Note: 3FE00 with two zeros (not the letter O) then, under [vcache] MinFileCache=100000 MaxFileCache=100000 to edit the file under Dos, Type: edit c:\windows\system\system.ini But you could also have issues with discs larger than 137Bg, like I did (see here, or here and Install w98 on Large Drives (Above the 137Gb Barrier) . HTH

I have installed both the separate patches and Gape's uSP3 beta 3, no problem. No side effect. However I still recommand alternative file managers like Xplorer2 or Total Commander which never had this sort of problem even without the patch. TotalCopy, is also an excellent utility to copy/move realy huge amounts of datas. HTH

Thanks for your answer, BatSoftware. It was not the mouse or its driver. The culprit was IO.SYS. I solved the problem but how! I tried maybe 15 times to replace IO.sys under DOS (the only mode that I could access my computer with) and it always yelled "access denied". I tried several ways of booting, either from boot disks (2 different versions) or by restarting and pressing Ctrl. Everytime the access was denied and I couldn't update IO.sys. The old installation of windows was still on the old drive, which became primary slave in the meantime. The new 400 Gb drive was primary slave before and became primary master in order to install windows on it. I had to do it because the new drive is faster than the old one. So, I reset the jumpers at the back of the drives and switched the ribbon cables to get back to the old hardware configuration. When I rebooted with the old windows on the old disk, I was able to replace IO.sys installed on the new drive with windows explorer. So, you can change IO.sys under windows but not under Dos! Maybe IO.sys was also the reason why windows installer didn't want to start before (see above). I don't know how I would have made it without a second drive (<137 Gb) with windows already installed.

During various tests I got the following errors: While initializing device IOS Windows protection error. You must restart your computer sometimes IOS is replaced by VMCPD or VDD... Please help!

I'm trying to install w98se on a blank, freshly reformated drive. It scanned all drives, found no error, I exited scandisk then he used to show this: Please wait while Setup initializes Scanning system registry... Copying files needed for Windows Setup... and then nothing happened. ==> I solved this problem by rebooting via floppy boot disk (original) in "Safe mode command prompt only". Then he accpeted to install windows. During restart, after the installer had copied all files, I pressed Ctrl and rebooted in dos mode to replace all files for supporting big hard drives, and to edit system.ini to support more than 512 Mb of memory. Anyway, windows doesn't want to work: Windows protection error. Pffft...! During a test under "one by one confirmation mode", everything went ok until msmouse.vxd. I replaced msmouse.vxd by the one I had on the old system (still on the other drive). The I got a different error when trying to load msmouse.vxd: Invalid vxd dynamic link call to device member 3, serie B. Your Windows configuration is incorrect. The drived is partitioned as following: C: 38 Gb E: 345 Gb On another physical drive: D: 120 Gb That's the drive where windows was installed previousely and is still installed. I think I formated and partitioned properly.

no, I rebooted several times, and the fdisk on the ME - custom bootdisk didn't delete the original partition.

Update: I re-partitioned from the begining using the BHDD30.zip versions of scandisk and format. Now format display the right volume (38 Gb) for drive C: and hopefuly will format accordingly. I can already draw the conclusion that we shouldn't use the bootable ME disk - custom from bootdisk.com. Its Fdisk doesn't seem to delete partitions properly.

I'm trying to partition, format and reinstal w98se on a 400 Gb drive using the advices we had been talked about. See more here To put it shortly: I used ME bootdisk custom from bootdisc.com (maybe a bad idea). From this boot disc, I used fdisk to partition the hdd: First I deleted the existing Primary Dos partition Then I created: Prinary Dos partition: 10% of total hdd, or +- 38Gb Extended Dos partition 90% or +- 344 Gb Logical Dos Partition 100% of the extended Dos partition Results as follow: C: 1 PriDos 38162 Unknown 10% 2 ExtDos 34338 9Unkown 90 % So far everything is ok. Part 1 is 38162 Mb and part 2 is 343389 Mb, the "9" being pushed next to "Unkown" because of a well known display bug. The problem is when I formated the partitions: First it told me to reboot windows: Impossible since windows is NOT installed and the drive where it was installed before is physicaly disconnected. So I didn't reboot and went ahead with fdisk. When format C: was done, the size of drive C: was 145 Gb!! The same size as the Primary Dos partition which existed before on this hdd and which normaly had been deleted and replaced by a 38Gb partition! Finaly trying to install windows, first it gave me warning so that I have a disk-cache utility that I need to remove. I ingored this warning. The setup froze after reading "copying files needed for setup". Trying with the original w98 bootdisk, no warning, but after "copying files needed for setup" it doesn't do anything and display "A\:" with the flashing cursor waiting for a command... I used the updated fdisk from the BIGHDD pack, and it displayed also the expected amount for the drive partitions: Drive C: being 38Gb, drive D: 343 GB. When using format from this same package, it shows "Checking 143 Gb", which is theoricaly impossible. Please Help

Thanks for the updates! Just one/two question: I see that Maximus Decim's MDIECU6 includes Q950759 and that DXM9X comes from Q950759. Does that means that if we install MDIECU6, we don't need to instal DXM9X? I also see in my archves an IE6 updater called IE6UPD. Is it an older version of MDIECU6?

Thanks for these valuable informations, 98-Guy! This confirm and precise what we have been talking or speculating about.

Xzian, What I wanted to say was not to go back to w98. Of course that trying w98 on new hardware is a nightmare if not totaly impossible (we know it too well at the w98 forum! -LOL-). I talked about an Windows XP/Vista as simple and as fast as w98. It doesn't mean without driver support or without all the cool stuffs. W98, as a concept is much simplier for a home user than XP or Vista. In fact, it can't be simplier to use and maintain. About coding, yes, when one piece of code doesn't change anything since the time gain is counted in milliseconds, sure there is no point losing time optimizing it. Maybe, with Vista all piece of code taken separately looks fine as their ineficiency is irrelevant when the process is run alone, but weight on the performance when everything is bundled together? The worse about Vista and XP too, is that much of the poor ferformance doesn't come from the code itself (AFAIK there is nothing to tell about it) or from the bloat, but from default settings. If M$ can't iptimize the code in a realistical manner and is pathologicaly allergical in reducing installation size, they could at least try to set system default "for good performance". Crahak, Vista fares much worse than XP, althought numbers would seem to tell otherwise. XP was out barely two years after w2000 and 3 years after 98SE (yes 3 years, seems short isn't it?). But the world has been waiting Vista for 5 years and half. If Vista was so advanced a technology, we would expect everyone massively switching from obsolete XP to Vista. That didn't happen. In term of pure sales numbers, the market is many times larger today than 5 years ago. Also every new computer (PC and Laptop) were being shipped with Vista pre-installed practicaly as soon as it was released. That was not as radical for XP. Talking about apples and oranges... Know I have a question: Why everytime we critic the last Windows release, there are poeple like you who, version after version, repeate exactely the same things again and again, to tell how the last is the best, how the old one was a PoS and how our words makes no sens. It's boring, because we can never have a normal discussion on what is good and what is bad with Windows. We are not here to bash Vista! (Did I bash Vista?) We are here to express our ideas as to how to improve it. This constant and obsessive defense of the last windows version commercialised, starts to grow old. I can already hear, when windows 7 will be out, how you will tell us that Vista was such PoS, that w7 does so many more things and so on... edit: Well, you should!

Crahak, You are oversimplifying the whining history. "We" are not saying the same things at every version. What happens is that some points remain unaddressed and are reppeated again and again, and they will be repeated again and again until M$ listen, especialy if M$ makes these points even worse. Some things are removed, some things are added. I won't go into details. Criticism of Vista are also much virulent and widespread as then, for XP. In general XP was a success, despite the whining, Vista definetly is not. You can read any analyst who has written about Vista, they will point out that Vista didn't deliver as expected, in user view or in sales numbers. I don't remember that for XP. I don't remember poeple asking NOT to have XP and have w2000 or w98 instead (except myself - LOL - but initialy it was for a driver compatibility reason). I don't remember M$ charging MORE for the right to downgrade one year after XP's release. I don't remember them writing a special letter to their customers about why upgrade to XP now. It was unthinkable less than 2 years ago. You are 100% wrong when you say that programming is not a matter of code optimization. Of course it is. If not Windows wouldn't run at all. With XP and Vista, M$ choosed to ignore a little bit OS optimization, counting on rapidly growing hardware capacity. With XP it worked, with Vista it works too, but we feel it's sort of the end of it and that it went too far, too irresponsibly. M$ will have to do more clever coding. It's going to be a matter of business and profitability from now on. There are enough gadgets and applications and skins, to finaly think about cleaning all this up even if it's less sexy. I'm sure that if M$ would release a windows XP as fast and as simple to use as w98 (save the crashes and missing libraries), they would do a killing. Everybody would buy it. No, why nobody is buying Vista (except when buying a new computer of course)? Ho, and you said... you had to buy a new Graphic Card...?

Well, you talk about that if you want. No problem, but the original point of this thread, was, I think, what M$ should do, in light of what Apple has said recently. Crahak, my dear friend, the art of programming is to make a software faster and smaler while keeping all the features. Adding features is relatively easy when you don't care about bloat or performance at all as both Apple and M$ have been doing. So now the next task, the most difficult one, is to turn the Frankenstein OSes (plurial) into something less monstruous. I agree, but I was not talking about that. When Vista came out in 2007, it would not run, all options turned on, on one year old computers. M$ underestimated the number of old computers and overestimated the willingness of users to buy new ones. They also discontinued their very own hardware architecture. No, poeple asked for the next OS to be safer, not to add an antivirus and a firewall. Adding an antivirus and a firewall offer a protection, and it's a good idea to sell your OS with such protection, but it doesn't make the OS itself safer. And yes, poeple do like gadgets, personaly I like the new clock, but I have never heard anybody saying "I wish there was more gadgets". The unhappy minority is tiny, but who wouldn't be happy with its brand new computer, two or three times faster than the previous one? It's tiny because only very few poeple know what a computer is, and what a software is. So, is M$ hopeless? Reading you, M$ OSes were and will always be a serie of disapointement and technical regression, because "it's like that". I say "No", I'm not as pessimistic as you. The tiny minority has been loud enough for Apple to hear the noise. M$ can't give a deaf ear. And, you know what? I'm proud to belong to this tiny minority of whiners, because we make things moving.

I tried the link, and surprisingly I got the error! That's just incredible. Why the webmaster wanted to display web content in a javascript popup?! Ok, it's not the first time a webpage doesn't display (honestly when that happens I sent this website to hell), and I always assumed it was by ignorance of the webmaster. But here it can't be ignorance since he wrote a specific error message abot that! That's incomprehensible...

I don't think it makes sens to discuss OSX vs Vista. What is more meaningful is that Apple said it will make teir OS simplier, faster and smaler and that's something Vista realy realy realy needs too. No, but that's exactely what they did with Vista. Let's see if with w7, M$ will finaly understand that what we need is not gadgets and yet one more security app. Criticisms of Vista is widely visible on the internet. Looks like the one who is reading is Apple. Let's see if M$ can read tech forums too...

If the autopatcher is too large, you can try also uSP 3 Then if you have time download separately these updates notyet icluded in uSP. Q932590.EXE COPY2GB.EXE WIA11.EXE CNTROL98.EXE Q942763.EXE CRYPT9X.EXE GRPHFLTS.EXE PNGFIX.EXE VS6SP6U.EXE Mdie6cu.exe WINFIL98.EXE SCANFRAG.EXE DX90C.EXE HELPHLP.EXE IE6UPD.EXE IE939653.EXE IE942615.EXE BHDD30.ZIP NUSB.EXE WIA10.EXE SCR579X.EXE Q311561.exe Q272991.EXE USBFDD98.EXE Q304708.EXE Q271277.EXE Dx9cpl.exe Dxm9x.exe Links here The problem remains, with new computers that you may not find drivers for w98. You will find more info about these issues here HTH

I have RICHED20.DLL 5.50.99.2014 installed and C:\Program Files\Common Files\...\RICHED20.DLL is version 5.40.11.2220. Word loads the dll from comon files (the 5.40.11.2220 version).

Thanks for this info. It happens that I have Word XP and RICHED20.DLL 5.50.99.2014 installed. Thought I almost never use Word, I made a test at the moment and no crash and no line of pixels on the text. Could you describe what operation you are doing exactely, what settings and after how much work it freees?

I imagine that we need to find a good command line utility to cab. Then create a script replace all the new files into cabs. We can either replace all the files or make a file check with my hta installed files checker before and after all the updates, then use the list of modified files to compose our script or take all files created after 1999. One possible problem is with new file, I mean newly added files which doesn't exist in the original version. Maybe setup won't install them. but I don't know, to be honest. Another problem would be with non-file changes, I mean reg keys and ini settings which update packs could be doing. Also read this thread. I didn't have the patience to read it entirely, but it discuss something like that.

spplus, Thanks for the infos. I wanted to know was if it came from a patch. If yes which one. "it's more professional", ehehe, sarcasm sarcasm... Don't feel offended be cause we have been asking question on you Service Pack. You have to admit that there was absolutely zero information about your pack until we realy insisted. Don't be angry, we just try to work toghether in a constructive manner.

Gape Thanks for this update. Nice to see that your project and you (as a person) are still alive! Could you tell us where MSIMG32.dll comes from? ______________ These updates/packages are not included into uSP3-0-beta3 (Either because they were released after uSP3 or because Gape never included them.) Q932590.EXE COPY2GB.EXE WIA11.EXE CNTROL98.EXE Q942763.EXE CRYPT9X.EXE GRPHFLTS.EXE PNGFIX.EXE VS6SP6U.EXE Mdie6cu.exe WINFIL98.EXE SCANFRAG.EXE DX90C.EXE HELPHLP.EXE IE6UPD.EXE IE939653.EXE IE942615.EXE BHDD30.ZIP NUSB.EXE WIA10.EXE SCR579X.EXE Q311561.exe Q272991.EXE USBFDD98.EXE Q304708.EXE Q271277.EXE Dx9cpl.exe Dxm9x.exe These ones are included (not a complete list but some of the most recent updates) VBVM60.EXE OLEUP.EXE Q265854.exe Q329048.exe TRIEDIT.EXE HHUPD.EXE 237493usa8.exe rootsupd.exe FDSKFRMT.EXE Q931836.EXE Q926247.exe Q929120.EXE RUNHELP.EXE SHELL98.EXE Q918547.EXE KB917344-x86.Exe SHELL98b.EXE ______________ What exactly is this problem ? I got a hdd related problem in that when i enable dma on my second hdd it screws the fat (tho its fixable with minimal data loss) & when i copy files between hdds crcs change. Is this related to esdi_506.pdr ?I don't know. The problem I had was that the drives were working "on DOS compatibility mode". You still can test the other version.

If you have Nero, you can create a copy of the boot floppy on CD and the CD will act as a bootable disc. To do that: insert the bootable floppy into its drive, open Nero, create "new", select CD (Boot), save, insert a blank CD-rom and burn. While burning Nero reads the datas from the floppy and copy them on the CD.

Does skipping mouse redetect (since it's called like that) make windows booting faster?

The point I wanted to make was why would M$ go on witch-hunt after w98 users while: 1- w98 userbase is less than or near to one percent and next year it will be half a percent at best. 2- w98 loses market share versus any other M$ OSes. 3- Mac and Linux both eat into M$ market shares at great speed. 4- We do nothing for money Any action by M$ against the tiny minority of w98 nostalgics will damage their reputation even further. It will cost them money since none of us could pay them a fine that would come even remotely close to their attorney fees and legal expenses. + since most of us are from europe, we could even win an anti-trust case against them at a EU court.

The easiest way to "extracting the file" is still to apply the patches and pick the files manualy. The idea is that you have already w98 running (either on the same machine or on another one), then it make sens to apply all the patches. If you don't, let's say you have only an XP computer and you have another computer without anything or you want to downgrade an XP cmputer to w98, in this case you can try different methods for extracting the files. But even easier would be that I upload the files on my website. Note: batch script updated! (Added: io.sys)