rloew

I wrote a DDO called BOOTMAN that is on my website. It takes up a lot less space than the Disk Manufacturers DDOs.

Sure , but come-on, this is not really a "limit". There's more.This is only the minimum to get a system to work. The last Partition must start below 128GiB and cover all of the remaining Space. Otherwise Ghost Partitions may appear and potentially cause problems. If the Hard Drive goes into compatability mode, for ANY reason, corruption is almost guaranteed. The rules I listed previously also apply to Windows NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, and 8. If you want to use a LBA28 BIOS without a DDO, good luck to you.

A minor Patch eliminates this behavior entirely.Another Patch stops Windows from doing the same to non-standard MBRs.

Although I doubt it would be an issue in THIS case, I wouldn't use Windows 9x either, if I was worrying about theDisk being written to. I had an Amiga SCSI Disk disabled by trying to read it in Windows 98SE. The Volume Tracker in Windows 9x will overwrite unrecognized ID strings in the Floppies PDR. I haven't seen DOS write to a disk unexpectedly, although I can't guarantee that if DOS crashes on the Disk. FDISK 6.2 is another story. Don't even think about using it in anything with more than a few Partitions.

Yes, that will work. You will lose access to CD/DVD/BD Drives unless you install DOS Drivers for them.A lot of people don't realize that Patching Windows is not enough. The BIOS must also support LBA48. Real Mode operations done during Boot use the BIOS. This includes CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.SYS, VMM32.VXD, the Drivers themselves and others including the very unpredicatable WININIT.EXE. Without a DDO to correct this, a LBA28 BIOS would require that the Windows Boot Drive, Windows System Drive, and any Partition used for Installing Software (because of WININIT) must be entirely below the 128GiB (137GB) limit.

Recovery from this damage is complicated and a fair amount of data has probably been irretriveably lost. Newer Files that are assumed to be above the 128GiB limit may be recoverable, but NOT from XP. XP will copy them from the intended Sectors, not the ones actually used. It will be necessary to copy them using an UNPATCHED Windows 9x System. Previously existing files in the damaged areas are likely to have been corrupted, even if they pass SCANDISK. I would recommend that all files be backed up using the same UNPATCHED Windows 9x System to an USB Hard Drive or multiple Hard Drives that are smaller than 128GiB or have ONE Partition of less than 128GiB on each. If this was was the System Drive, reinstall Windows from scratch. Then apply a Patch for the 128GiB Limit.

Unlike many BIOSes and Windows XP RTM, Windows 9X does not wrap around to the beginning of the Disk.It actually jumps around to various areas within the first 128GiB. This is why ROTS's Drive is not a total loss. During the development of my High Capacity Disk Patch, I analyzed the code involved and verified this behavior.

It wouldn't be hard to add this function.

Free, if you don't count advertising, premium nagging, etc. Would you prefer if my Software were free but plastered you with advertising, or constantly nagged to upgrade to a Pay Version.

I have a SATA Patch for Windows 9x. I have installed Windows 9x on a USB Key. No other USB Devices will work with the configuration I used.

The USB Update package provides enough WDM support to make the Driver work. I removed the Power Management code in the UMSS Sample. I use a modified WDMEX in this case to attach a logger so I can record the data transfers of my Driver.

I have written a Mass Storage Driver for USB. It is a WDM Driver based on the UMSS Sample. I have been trying to adapt it for Windows 95. I have written a number of VXDs as well, but they are not Drivers. These include my Multicore, 64-Bit RAM, WDMEX and Logging VXDs.

No. No. No. Yes. KernelEx hooks into KERNEL32.DLL which operates in Ring 3. WDMEX and WDMSTUB hook into NTKERN which operates in Ring 0.

it shows me the option menu again and again =\ Are you putting spaces around each side of the dashes as I showed? The dashes are separate Arguments to the Program. The Menu appears if the Syntax is incorrect.

My revised recommendation got lost as well. Try: PATCHM /M - C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\VMM32.VXD - Do not leave out the TWO Dashes "-" shown above or the Command will fail. If you have reinstalled, as LoneCrusader suggested, use: PATCHM /M

Most likely it is due to the RAM, but there's always the possibility it could be something else. Go here and download the Demo version of the RAM Patch and install it. It will run for 10 minutes, and should allow you to determine whether you can boot Windows 95 without the Protection Error or not before the time expires. If it fixes your problem, you will know that the RAM is at fault. Then you can decide whether to purchase the full version, or to reduce your RAM to 512MB or less. unknown invalid or uncompressed vm32 You have installed a number of Patches according to your initial Post. The error my Patch is showing suggests that your VMM32 failed to pack or repack at some point. Try running my Demo Patch as follows: PATCHM - C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\VMM32.VXD - This assumes that your Windows Directory is called C:\WINDOWS. The two dashes are required.

My advisory was on AHCI in general, not the specific Chipsets mentioned. A DDO can switch to IDE Mode if the Chipset supports it. I wrote a DDO to switch a Highpoint Rocket card to IDE and replace the BIOS Driver, but the Marvell Controller was designed as AHCI only. I was able to switch it to IDE anyway but it was Read Only.

I would be careful with this suggestion. I don't know about the ICH7R or ICH7DH, but some AHCI Controllers do not support Non-AHCI modes. An AHCI only Controller would make Windows 98 unuseable.

The Boot Image on the CD is loaded by the BIOS and accessed in a "Floppy Emulation" Mode. CD-ROM support refers to access to the much larger CD File System that is not supported by the BIOS. The Boot Image has MS-DOS on it, so it can run without CD-ROM support, but you will only see the 1.4MB Boot Image, not the up to 700MB CD-ROM also on the Disk.

USB Audio Devices are also handled as USB Composite and HID Devices.

Is it possible to extend this API to get Windows 98 to have full multicore support, and the ability to run apps on both the cores? The Windows 98 Kernel does not have any support for Multi-Core, so the API is separate. Code written to the API can run on any number of Cores, but all Kernel functions are passed to the Base Core for processing. The API has specific Callback Functions that can be used by Application (non-Base) Core Code to execute Kernel Functions.

You're right of course. And I'm not trying to talk anyone out of dual, quad, octal, or deca (???) booting. Just mentioning two of many alternatives! So you got ten working? Way to go Rudy! P.S. there were some questions about last chipsets supporting Win9x and SATA quirks in this thread, I'll bet you probably have some good insight into these limits. 10 just happened to be the number I setup. They consist of: 2 Windows 95 5 Windows 98SE 1 Windows ME 1 Windows XP 1 Windows 8 Windows 9x itself is only capable of handling Legacy mode Hard Disk Controllers. This is typically the PATA ports in a PATA/SATA motherboard. Some motherboards allow Legacy mode to be used with 1 or 2 SATA Drives. Most modern Motherboards use Native, Raid or AHCI Mode for SATA Controllers. If you have Windows 9x Drivers for a specific Motherboard or add-in SATA Card you can use it. Otherwise you will need my SATA Patch to use Native or Raid Mode Controllers. AHCI only Controllers canot be used as they will crash Windows 9x before it can load a Driver.

We won't really have to. There are two alternatives besides dual-booting ( from a single HDD ). {1} Have several HDDs in one computer, each disk formatted to different OS, naturally they are only used once at a time. You have an XP disk, Win9x disk, Win7 disk. It takes a couple of minutes to shut down, open the case swap PATA or SATA and power cables, button it up, power-on. This eliminates the complexity of bootloaders and partition quirks. {2} Have several computers, each configured for different operating systems. With the advent of USB thumbdrives ( sneakernet ) and ethernet NIC there really is little reason not to! This has several huge benefits ... A virus attack on one can be managed thoroughly by pulling the infected drive and working on it as a slave in another system. One system can be used to backup another, this is playing the favorable odds that no two systems will die simultaneously. Naturally this does not include disasters like fire or lightning strike ( unless they are unplugged when not in use ). When you have some time-consuming task that ties up a system for a while, you can let it work undisturbed and move on to another. Happens to me all the time. Virus scanning a slaved HDD, full formatting a new 2 TB drive, full Chkdsk on a HDD, system burn-in, diagnostics or benchmark, etc. What some people do is virus scan without the actual full settings ( every file, period! ) or they do a quick-format, or they try to multi-task at the same time because they have no alternate computer. I never understood that quite frankly. Why limit yourself to dual booting from one HDD. I have 10 in one HDD. My RFDISK Partitioner supports at least 36. In your first suggestion, swapping cables is probably unnecessary as many BIOSes can select the Boot Drive.

This helps a lot. Thanks, and do the basic version install outlook express, bells, and whistles? Will users complain since its not a full version. Same as with Direct X. I also need to download the basic version, gotta link?. Thanks. I will add IE 6 SP1 first and see how that turns out before I work on a 5.5 SP2 version. 21mb for IE 6 SP1 and 15MB for Direct X 9c lite. I can work with this. I got DirectX from Windows Update. I downloaded IE6 using the Online Installer and saving the files. Neither works anymore so I have no links for you. I believe it includes Outlook Express. All other updates were in Windows Update. My SP0 which includes the entire Windows Update package and IE6 is 150MB.

The basic IE6 SP1 Package from Windows Update is 21MB unpacked. DirectX 9.0c is approx 35MB. I don't know how many updates there are but this is the starting point.