Fredledingue

Windows doesn't write on disk 5in normal times). Only third parties do.

Of course it's hardware managed (before OS boots). How else?

I'm going to try it on a 400 Gb HD. I'll post the results here. (in one week or so, the time to manage/save the datas which are already on it, on a downsized partition.) That was it! Many thanks! Actualy F8 let me choose the boot drive (floppy, HD, CD-rom etc). I still didn't make up my mind about the size and number of partitions. Would be fun to have one single partition of 400 Gb, but for safety sake, I may do 3 x 135 Gb or 135 Gb + 265 Gb. Or a 5 Gb partition for Windows and program files, the rest, 395 Gb for documents. That way I could easily ghost it and roll it back by restoring the whole partition whenever I need without affecting the documents.

Yes. Or the uSP3.0 by Gape. (see member's project subforum) The auto-patcher seems more complete and more regularly updated while uSP is smaller in download size and straight to the essential. Both are very good. The patcher and the uSP as they install the most important updates, are enough if you want a w98 without BSOD. The latest updates to install individualy are only for us, w98 fanatics who want to be always at the top of the top.

Eck, I think your explaination is clear. Thanks for it. I summed up the most important things (dropping Norton and Partition Magic stuffs) On my machine I just have a problem with "F8": It doesn't display boot options such as Dos mode etc. It displays somthing else irrelevant and I didn't figured out how to get to the boot options. The same advice applies for the 512 Mb memory patch. In this case I let the computer fail to boot and then reboot in safe mode. In safe mode I fixed the stuff and it worked. Do you think I can try it like that? Well, I'll see. Another trick would be to insert a floppy and force it to start on a boot floppy. Then moving the ad-oc file(s), not from the floppy but from the second HD. -------------- That's what I'm thinking too. But it's interresting to discuss all the possibilities here. And why 120 Gb and not 137 Gb (125 GiB)? ------------ Thanks for this clarification: I4'm going to correct the initial post above. Are you sure? I think that doing so you will have to re-partition the whole drive and erase all datas on it. This even if you just want to add a partition. Or does it depends on the partition/formating utility?

That's a solution. As you said, I indeed would like to make a fresh install. In this case it could be possible to do this fresh install on the small HD then transposing it to the large HD. Now I would like this conversation to be as general as possible, not to discuss my specific case. Reading on...

The issue is with disk material size exceeding 137 Gb. As said above, the way you partition doesn't matter except that the only work-around on an unpatched W98 is to create a single partition per HD less than 137 Gb. If you do that you won't have problem because no data will be written beyond the 137 Gb barrier. Problems come not because the disk itself is large, but as soon as datas are writen on sectors beyond that limit. TBS, I strongly recommand you to using one of these patch allowing to use the full capapcity of your HD. It's very easy to do, but you may have to try one or another version of the patch. Check if the "system is configured for best performance" in the System control applet after applying the patch. Edit: I just read that SATA doesn't need the patch HTH

Especialy in your case, but also in general, I strongly DO NOT recommand uninstalling any uSP (2 or 3). Better make a windows reinstall-over (over the already installed windows).

What are the steps to install w98 on a HD which capacity exceeds 137 Gb (aka "large drive")? JUMP directly here to the LAST EVOLUTIONS on this topic. From what I have read there are some risks if you don't know what you are doing. This is how I plan to do. 1-FDISK, originaly, doesn't support large drives. So, first of all, format your new large HD from an existing windows platform. That can be done from w98 installed on a small HD and using a windows based disk-formating application. The new HD would be installed, of course, as Primary Slave (not as Primary Master) for this operation. The catch is that you need another physical drive with W98 installed on it to format the new drive because you cannot format a drive Windows is running from even if you do another partition on this drive. 2-How to format? If you installed the right patch to allow w98 to fully use large HD (link) there should be no problem for formatting the whole disc. However native w98 Scandisk and Disk Defragmenter will crash or corrupt the datas on large partitions unless you updated these application from a fix found on MDGx update thread. But if you forget to do so before defragmenting your partition you will corrupt the datas and may lose everything on it. So IMO it's preferable to partiton the large drive into several partition of less than 137 Gb (125 GiB). 3-How to install from that? Shut down the computer. Swap the HD's in the case, setting the new HD as Primary Master (don't forget to adjust the jumpers). Insert a bootable floppy disk and run the installation from there using basic Dos commands. 4-Once w98 is installed, immediately apply the Break-137Gb-barrier patch (and the 512Mb-Memory-barrier fix at the same time). As I'v never done it, I'm not sure how the w98 installation will react on the large drive since the patch cannot be applied before the installation. Theoricaly there is no problem until you fill the drive beyond the 137 Gb barrier. But several partitions could already consist of elementary datas beyond that limit and therefore be erased or corrupted - I don't know. Please help me if you have experience in this matter.

Turning off eye-candy themes does very little or at all to improve overall performance. W98 is still faster than XP and can work properly but it can be of some work to cope with all the updates. If you want the easy solution, buy some ram and keep XP. If you want the most of your machine try w98. It takes time but it's cool at the end of the day. My advice: Reformat your HD to FAT32, and type "setup"...

Thanks for this info, Gape. That's a good thing to know what will NOT be included so that we won't ask why it's not there in the future. I'll check this out once I have time. Could you please clarify That's important because some system, like mine, supports only the .2222 version, while others prefer the more recent .2225 version. Using an unsuitable version cause hard drive to work on Dos compatibility mode (until ad-hoc version are reinstalled). It's an annoyance detected since uSP 2.01a. As it may be difficult to automaticaly detect which version each computer requires, idealy there should be a place where the user could choose and/or the possibility to manualy replace one file by another if the problem appears.

I agree with Sfor, Nowadays a PC is not slow because the processor is slow, but because the OS and/or the applications are slow. Normaly you should never see a delay between the time you double-click an icon and the application opens (unless you artificialy slow it down by enblaing animation effects).

I don't use any Anti-virus. Well, from time to time I crank up ClamWin and SpyBot just for the sake of it...

The reason why MDGx fix didn't work was that the "System" applet (from control panel) became very unstable when I removed the drives from it. I had to Ctr+Alt+Del my computer to restart. As a result I didn't remove properly, or at all, the IDE controler. I retried, with the same system freeze but this time making sure all the drives (save the floppy) and the IDE driver were removed. While the system failed to shut down, then failed to restart for a reason I can't explain, I rebooted in safe mode, then again in normal mode and then the drive and the IDE drivers were reinstalled as advertised on MDGx's website and DMA was by default enabled again. Hi RetroOs, I actualy solved the problem. Thanks for your reply anyway. edit: Just burnt 4.125 Gb on DVD in 6 minutes (16x).

Hi, Gape! Very nice to see that you are still updating uSP! Very nice job. I had posted a long time ago (see previous pages) the list of fixes found and those not found in uSP3. HTHed. Fred.

The DMA Check Box does not remain checked (click here for description) despite several attempt and various fixes. I tried MDGx fix for that problem but it didn't work. I tried replacing the esdi_506.pdr file (tried the orginal version, the 4.10.2222 version and the r.Loewe version). It didn't help. I'm quite sure I already had DMA enabled on my DVD drives because I have burnt 4 Gb + in 4 minutes or so in the past. (In IOP mode it takes more than half an hour.) I don't know what event cause this problem. Some website are talking about registry entries, but these entries don't exist on my w98se installation. Both DVD drives are secondary master and secondary slave. The HDD have DMA enabled normaly. Please Help!!

Hi, somewan Yes my w98 computer is only/already 5 years old. The fun is that this cmputer is XP capable, yet runs exclusively on w98. That makes all the pro-XP/w98-detractors angry! LOL I use it as a telephone, a video recorder, a multimedia convertor, a cd-Audio duplicator, a DVD duplicator/re-author, and... HOO-Hah!... also as a computer (e-mail, internet, Word, OCR, translation, photo retouching etc.) It just doesn't serve me cofee at break time but that's not a problem because I don't drink cofee.

USB sticks doesn't need to be disconnected or ejected via software on W98 (SE) as they do on XP. Thought, with recent devices and drivers it may have changed. IMO you can hard-remove the stick without doing anything. Just make some tests before to be sure.

Who the hell is checking if you have a license for w98 these days? We are dinosaurs. We are subjects for IT archeologists not for M$ copyrights department.

Small improvements: 4.4 -Improved: Use of registry for communication among separate scripts (should avoid "file already exists" errors) -Added: WSH version detection (click "About") -Fixed: Comment field disapearing after "Closing Help" Click here Enjoy!

I'm using a Linksys KVM 2-port switch (KVM2KIT) between my w98se and XP computers with no problem. ...if you plan to buy another one.

First time I read about GiB, KiB etc... eventhought the convention was created in 1999. Why no one ever used it? Why M$ never made a patch to diplay GiB instaed of GB, starting from w98se? Maybe to maintain the confusion about data tranfer speed and storage. I maintain this confusion is intentional. I also wonder why hard drive manufacturers never do 160 GiB HD, and do only 160 GB... After a Vista OS installatiom, a 160 GB has only 134 GiB of storage left. I wonder how many consumer complained that they didn't have the right HD in their new computer...

IMO, it's safest to divide the drive into 127GB partitions in case you reinstal windows and forget to update defrag and scandisk to ME. 160Gb vs 149Gb: Maybe it's legal, yet it's not honest. The bigger the drives are the bigger the difference and the disapointment of the poeple.

Hard Drive manufacturers are all cheating about the number of Gb. They say 160 Gb while it's infact 160 billions of bytes. 160 000 000 000b is 149 GB indeed. ((160 000 000 000/1024)/1024)/1024 = 149 So it's normal. Download Dingue Calculator on my website (signature). I included a data unit convertor...

So 22 is for older desktop PC. Maybe I should install the one for older PC? Now I'm a little bit at loss how to proceed after I installed Lowe's patch to test another patch. I'v started to use the HD and don't ant to erase everything now. Can I change the vxd back and forth file and continue with the current HD drive partition (144 Gb) and content? About the $10, I would be glad to give them to him if that's the solution I need in my case. The problem is more the hassle of moving my derriere to make the payment. It's never clear whether my pay-pal payments are accepted.