morris

Hey Dietmar, thank you. You rule. The Ramsey USB mode worked and I was able to install from a CD directly to a USB drive on the target laptop. I had some problems booting. After the first stage I got a flashing cursor. Grub4dos helped with that. Now the system is fully functional! but there are some remaining questions, namely, Should I have a pagefile? Upon boot it complains about it not existing, despite the option being set correctly. It seems that the system can't create it because it actually detects that it is being run from a removable disk (C:\ has the removable disk icon). The sequential write speed is too low (6-10 MB/s) for a USB drive, but the read speed is on par compared to a regular 2.5" IDE HDD speed (~31 MB/s). Should I enable write caching on disk? (Optimize for performance). I did but it doesn't help with the write speed test. Any other tips?

I appreciate your answer as I was banging my head against the wall with the linked Vista method... What do you mean with "then it should be configured to boot from USB (you should look for more options)"? Apply UsbBootWatcher? What other configuration should be done? I tried this approach, installing it to a virtual machine on my main computer and then copying the files to a USB drive, then applying the UsbBootWatcher patch, but it didn't work on the target laptop. I suppose some system file or registry should be modified, yes? I tried setting the hard drive drivers to the Microsoft defaults, but it didn't help.

Hey, thanks for your suggestion. Have you actually ever been able to perform such full XP install to a USB flashdrive using UsbBootWatcher? I have spent many many hours, followed the steps to the letter, but haven't been able to create a .wim image that can successfully boot from a USB drive. The first problem is: where do you get a .wim image to feed imagex? I've used XP2ESD v1.6.2 to create it. After about 2 hours you get an ISO and the two .wim files (boot and install) inside the _output\sources directory. But there's something wrong about the install.wim file, because it doesn't include a boot directory inside the Windows directory, and bcedit complains accordingly. After being patched with UsbBootWatcher, it does start booting, but unfortunately it always crashes with a 7B error and then reboots. If you have created such a compatible .wim image, can you please tell me how did you make it? FWIW I used these ISOs, but I don't think they are particularly relevant. en_windows_xp_professional_with_service_pack_3_x86_cd_vl_x14-73974.iso And for Config.ini WINBASEISO=en_windows_7_professional_with_sp1_x86_dvd_u_677056.iso WINENGINEISO=en_windows_10_pro_10240_x86_dvd.iso

I'm trying to build an XP USB bootable environment with sound (Connexant AC'97) and video drivers (Intel GMA900/915GM) for an old laptop that lacks a hard drive. So far I tried BartPE but I haven't been able to get either driver working (adding them to the drivers folder). I also tried the driverpacks approach, adding the Graphics packs, and the Audio pack. The latter required some renaming to be included into the build (it was being ignored), but nevertheless, none worked at all. I also tried UBCD4WIN which should have work better, but to no avail. Can you please suggest what's the best software and way to achieve this? It seems like this software has been abandoned for many years and information is scarce and hard to find. As if it was removed from the web, or maybe it never was very popular. Any help to solve the mystery would be greatly appreciated.

Hello guys, Is there a way to enable the back and forward arrows in Windows 95's file manager? Is it possible at all? Going up one folder is possible with backspace. It's not the same but it's close to backwards. What are other light file managers that have this functionality?

You don't need to create a separate partition to do it, you can copy the WIN98 folder from the CD to the partition where you are going to install Windows 98SE (first partition, first hard drive). When you create this partition, before copying the files, make sure to make it bootable. To make sure it's bootable, format it with: format /s C:\ Then you can boot directly to DOS from that partition, and then go to the WIN98 folder and run setup.exe and that's it! So the short answer is: yes, it can be done, but make sure your partition is bootable. To copy the files and all subfolders you can use "xcopy /e". Good luck

Here's another take if you don't want to spend a lot of time: Get another hard drive or Compact Flash card (with an adapter) and set it as your bootable drive in your BIOS. Install Windows 9x there. Then grab a copy of GRUB4DOS from here http://dl.grub4dos.chenall.net/grub4dos-0.4.4-2009-12-03.zip and copy it to your Win9x disk. Run grub.exe from DOS before booting Windows. You can boot directly to a DOS prompt by editing MSDOS.SYS and setting BootGUI=0 (you can also create a boot menu by editing CONFIG.SYS and automate this process creating two entries, e.g. Windows 98 and Windows XP). Once you run grub.exe it will show you a menu with many options and among them you can select XP as a preconfigured option, and it should boot XP. Keeping the systems on different disks is the way to go IMHO. Windows 98 is not as stable as XP and it may give you trouble down the line. You could use that extra FAT partition on your XP disk to share files with your 98 installation. Good luck!

Link to latest portable version: https://sourceforge.net/projects/winscp/files/WinSCP/6.1/WinSCP-6.1-Portable.zip/download Hello guys, as you know WinSCP is the best alternative for FTP/SFTP/SSH file transfers on Win98SE. The latest compatible version with Win98SE/ME is 4.4 The problem with it is that it lacks support for current SSH key exchange algorithms, which forces the host to allow dated and less secure algorithms, and that's why we need a newer version. With the help of KernelEx, starting with versions 5.x.x this is what I get: Complains about WINHTTP.DLL being missing - I copy it to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM Complains about DWMAPI.DLL being missing - I copy it to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM Then it complais about a missing export: "The DWMAPI.DLL file is linked to missing export NTDLL.DLL:NtTerminateThread" I'm neophyte to KernelEx's ins and outs but I'd like to learn more. And hopefully this program can be made to run. If you know about a similar software that supports connections to modern systems I'm all ears. I know about PuTTY, luckily the latest version works fine even without KernelEx (w32old) but it doesn't have a GUI and it's more involved.

You're right about GRUB2. I profoundly disliked it when it came out, I remember studying the manual and those dedoimedo articles you posted. I remember printing them out. The thing is that if you use a modern distro you don't have any other choice but to get used to it. You just edit /etc/default/grub to alter general boot options and kernel parameters and /etc/grub.d/40_custom if you need to add entries, and then you run a script that creates the new grub.cfg If you manually edit grub.cfg you are asking for trouble because with many package updates the grub update script runs and the cfg file is recreated. I think you're right when you say there's a resemblance to systemd which I personally loathe. But as awkduck said, it brings improvements. In the end most of my boot problems were related to bios config issues and quirks of this particular motherboard configuration, I finally sorted it all out and I'm happy with the results. Thanks for your help guys!

Thank you very much for your detailed comparison and for remembering me that I should use "kernel" instead of "linux". GRUB4DOS is much closer to GRUB legacy (which also has the kernel command) than GRUB2 (linux command). I was able to boot GNU/Linux but only 0.4.6a is compatible with ext4 partitions. I found 0.4.4 to be more stable when chainloading Windows XP. I got the best results by chainloading GRUB2 on the SATA drive and then starting XP with GRUB legacy. There's a big difference between 0.4.4 and 0.4.6a but I didn't find anything new/improved about 0.4.5. By the way, what's the difference between "map --hook" and "map --rehook"? My setup: IDE CF - Win98 - HDD0 (internal motherboard controller) SATA SSD - GRUB2 - XP, Linux, GRUB legacy, etc (bootable PCI SATA controller), identified as "SCSI" by the motherboard. Currently I boot the CF and in the CONFIG.SYS Menu I can choose between Windows 98 or chainloading GRUB2 (using GRUB4DOS 0.4.4).

What do you think about newer 0.4.4 versions such as grub4dos-0.4.4-2009-12-03 ? I'm looking at this website and the latest 0.4.5 seems to be grub4dos-0.4.5c-2016-01-18 What's the difference between them? Have you tried them? There's also 0.4.6 under active development (there's even a UEFI version).

No offense taken! I appreciate your input. I come from the GRUB 2 and GRUB legacy world. I see there are some differences. I come from GRUB legacy and GRUB2, and this is the normative way to boot Windows 9x. Only GRUB legacy supports rootnoverify. And it works fine and it only poses problems if you plan to Restart in MS-DOS mode and then again go back to Windows. Only in those circumstances it presents a problem. Thanks for all the information and clarifications. Your commands and the ones I posted both work to boot XP (SATA as secondary disk) from GRUB4DOS, but I couldn't successfully boot Windows 9x with the CompactFlash as secondary disk (starting GRUB4DOS from a floppy). It freezes when it's loading the desktop, you can only see the wallpaper. I'm using the latest 0.4.4 and it works quite well (I confirm it does load in "Restart in MS-DOS mode"). The only major drawback is that it doesn't support ext4. I tried 0.4.6a and while it does support ext4 there's no linux nor initrd command to load the kernel and initramfs. So my solution is to leave the Compact Flash as primary, and with the aid of GRUB4DOS boot XP if necessary or chainload the SATA disk to use my full GRUB2 menu. I'll see how I implement it the most convenient way

I have one more question. Why is Win98 able to stop working and boot back into DOS but you can't start GRUB... it means it's not real "real mode"? What are the limitations? Worse performance/compatibility? Could you provide examples?

Hi jaclaz. Yes, I do alter the BIOS drive table in order to multi-boot between 98, XP, and different Linux distros and more... GRUB2 (on the MBR) is fine for most stuff, but if you want to boot a fully functional Win98 you need to remap the drives, and that's where GRUB legacy comes in. I install it to a partition and use it to boot into w98. It does work in most use cases but not for "Restarting in MS-DOS mode" and exiting back to Windows. This is not a deal breaker since I could simply reboot but... I like challenges. Before I read your post I remembered grub4dos (telepathy?) so I set the Compact Flash as the first boot device and I successfully managed to boot into GRUB2 (SATA disk) with: rootnoverify (hd1) chainloader +1 And I could boot into XP too, with this: map (hd0) (hd1) map (hd1) (hd0) rootnoverify (hd1,0) chainloader +1 makeactive I'm kind of surprised that it can boot into the SATA PCI drive without problems (no need for extra modules). So it seems this build will end up being a multi boot system but with two menus, one in the Windows 98 disk with GRUB4DOS, and one in the SATA drive with GRUB2 for extra functionality. Thanks for the idea! Now I'll see how I sort everything out.

Hello everybody. Long time lurker here. Considering the amazing level of knowledge you guys have, I think this is the best place to ask this question. I'm booting my P3 system from a SATA PCI card, which loads GRUB2, which in turn loads GRUB1 (legacy), which remaps the "second drive" (first drive from the on-board IDE controller) to hd0, and then Windows 98 boots and works perfectly. This long procedure allows me to boot multiple systems from a single menu without having to modify the BIOS every time I want to change. If I "Restart in MS-DOS mode" it works, but if I exit back to Windows I get this: While initializing device SHELL: Cannot find or load required file KRNL386.EXE. The file was not found. Press any key to continue... I tried disabling the SCSI controller on Windows 98 but it didn't help. I don't have any more ideas to try to find a workaround. If I define C as the first booting device in the BIOS, this problem goes away. I can change back and forth between MS-DOS mode and Windows but I lose my fancy menu and it implies entering the BIOS every time I want to change the system and that defeats a little bit the point of this build. I'm open to suggestions and advice. Thanks!