KerguelanAvon

Hi, I've been trying out WUD and WinToolkit to build new a Windows 7 install disk, and after a few hiccups, I can get Windows7+SP1+Updates+Add-Ons+Silent Installers to install in a VM successfully. Thank you very much to everyone who works on these tools and lists. I'm also about to do full installation of WS2012e on my ex-WHS box after my Essentials evaluation version expired, and would be interested to know if anyone has an update list for Windows Server 2012 Essentials, or where I might be able to find or make one? Most of the integration guides I can find seem to be for Client versions of Windows rather than Server builds, which I suppose makes sense since I'd not expect that servers need rebuilding as often as client PCs. However, I'd prefer to be able to install the new server fully up to date if that's possible, without having to wait for the usual slow downloads and installs of Windows/Microsoft update afterwards. If WS2012e doesn't do slipstreaming/integration of updates, the next best choice would be to download all updates before doing the new installation, and then install them offline. I read something suggesting that Windows7 updates would work on Server2008 - would the same be true for Windows8 updates? Can anyone help with this? Avon

I've installed the new Beta 2 of Windows Vista x64 to a spare partition on my Samsung Spinpoint 250Gb drive on a Nvidia SATA2 connection, and it seemed to go quite well. It took about an hour overall before I got into the desktop, but i was away for dinner for part of that time, so it may have been waiting for me at the user name section, and it gave my system a 3 rating at the end. Anyway, in poking around, I've found that there are a couple of unknown devices appearing in the Device Manager, and also that Vista tries to install drivers for at each reboot. But it doesn't seem to be able to locate these, and when I've tried pointing it to a download that I got from the nVidia website, the original drivers CD that came with the PC, and the folders were I'd last downloaded drivers, it kept saying that it couldn't locate the required drivers. I've also tried right clicking on the .inf files in the Nvidia beta drivers for vista that I'd downloaded, but it aborts with "Install Failed" and no other explanation. I've also tried pointing the device manager at each of the folders from the extracted Nvidia beta drivers, but it keeps failing to find the correct driver. I've had a look through the list of items in the driver manager, and I can't see anything that is missing, so does anyone know what these devices are, or how I would go about finding out what they are, so that I can find the right driver to install?

Couldn't find how to do an attatchment at Bashrat's new forum, so I've borrowed some space on an old post of mine, relating to a different problem. Driver_Viewer_Reports.rar

Thanks, I have on DVD+RW so I'll blank that and try to rebuild it. Avon

Hi, I put together my second sliptreamed DVD, to bring the driverpacks and RVM fixes up to date, but although my first disk managed the installation without problems, if I remember correctly, this disc crashes during text mode setup with a stop error. Stop: 0x0000008e (0x0000005, 0xf97e2554, 0xf8b7c6a8, 0x00000000) setupdd.sys - Address f97e2554 base at f97c8000, Datestamp41107c8f. The last message I remember seeing at the bottom of the screen was Copying DriverPack_So, and then it changed to show another couple of things before this crash happened. Does anyone know what caused it?

Thanks Bâshrat for letting me know that this is still on your radar.

I had hoped that someone might have responded to my request for help in understanding why the Driverpacks don't seem to install the drivers that I expected on my laptop, and indeed regards the drivers from the laptop manufacturer as incompatible in a couple of cases, especially now that I've posted some HWID files. If there is any information on this that you need, which isn't at this thread http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=67661 please let me know.

As a means of bumping this post, and apologies if I have twittered on for too long in the past, here are some HWID files from my laptop. Each one was run on a different installation, and FC says that there are differences between them, only one of which is obvious to me, where the same modem seems to be identified differently in file 3. Does this help determine why the driverpacks want to install different drivers for 3 of my devices, and why it considers the drivers from Samsung as incompatible? Laptop_HWID_files.rar

OKay, I've now created another WinXP Pro Boot Disk, with SP2, RVM hotfixes up until January, along with all the Driverpacks, both officially supported by Bâshrat, plus all the other unofficial ones supported by third parties. Sorry that this has ended up going on for so long, but to summarise, I'm still having problems with 3 drivers (that I can find so far) that are not being detected correctly. As expected, the correctly downloaded Graphics Pack B solved the detection problem with my Video controller , and even gave me a version of the software that I'd not seen before, because I'd been relying on SamsungPC.com keeping their drivers up to date. The PCI modem no longer appears on my list of other devices, but it seems to have been installed as a SmartLink 56K Voice Modem, but I think that I'd have remembered if it had been the same modem that I had in my old Desktop system. When I went to the Samsung drivers downloads that I'd previously ran the installs from, it shows that the Modem Driver was from Agere Systems (v2.1.46). I see from the unofficial DriverPack Modems that it contains both the Agere Driver (I'm guessing that the one for my laptop is the second of the two (v2.1.47.6)), and the Smart Link one that has been installed, but don't understand how I have ended up with a driver for a different manufacturer's modem? A similar thing has happened with the touchpad, it is still being identified as a Microsoft PS/2 Intellimouse, even though another of the unofficial Driver Packs (HID) has the Synaptic's driver v8.1.2 (again a newer version than the one from the SamsungPC website (v7.2.9). I couldn't uninstall the device and then reinstall it manually quickly enough, before Add Hardware managed to restore the Intellimouse Driver on its own, so I told it instead to update the driver, and that I'd select which one I wanted to install. It came back with a list of Mouse Drivers: Alps Pointing Device, Logitech Compatible Mouse PS/2 v2.47.0.0 & v9.8.0.0, MS PS/2 Intellipoint, PS/2 Mouse, Synaptics PS/2 Port Pointing device, touchpad/touchscreen & VMware pointing device.so I don't understand why it didn't pick the Synaptics one out of that list on its own. Also, once I updated the driver to the Synaptics driver, it didn't seem to include the application that lets me fine tune the touchpad settings, things like drag-zones and tap-corners etc. Maybe this is something that I'd need to build into v3 of my slipstreaming efforts as an application install? The problem with the wrong sound driver being selected seems to have re-curred, since it has still selected Crystal WDM AC'97 Driver for ICH4, and then put a Pling overlay on the icon.The control panel on my production partition identifies this as Sigmatel C-Major Audio, and the driver from the SamSung website is "AC97 WDM SigmaTel Driver Disk" with the driver at version 6.14.01.3774. One of the DriverPack Additions packs has a SigmaTel driver v6.14.01.3798, so again it seems to me that the wrong driver has been selected when the correct one was available. Trying to update the soundcard driver from Device Manager, and asking to select the driver manually, comes up with another list of items, the first two of which are Digitally Signed. Crystal WDM AC'97 Driver for ICH4SigmaTel C-Major Audio v6.14.1.3774C-Media AC97 Audio DeviceC-Media AC97 Audio DeviceRealtek AC97 AudioSigmaTel C-Major Audio V6.14.1.3900Vinyl AC'97 Codec Combo Driver (WDM)Yamaha AC-XG Audio DeviceUnfortunately, the same trick does not appear to be working for the modem Driver. The list this time only has: CXT AC-Link Modem for IntelSmart Link 56K Voice Modem.I should probably say that for each of these examples above I tried to get Windows to search for the correct driver automatically before I went with the manual approach, (having elected to keep the drivers again), but it kept saying that it couldn't find a better match than the one it had already. It does the same thing for the modem, but there is nothing to match it in the manual selection list either, unlike the other two. Can I ask side-question here - If I set KtD to No, and tell the Add Hardware wizard to took on the CD Drive for Drivers, does it search all of the way through the drivers that have been slipstreamed onto the installation disk (since this is also still in the drive) or does it only look in certain places, such as where Windows would normally expect to find its driver databases? So my first thought - that this might be the result of having used Method 3 and there not being enough time to decompress the drivers before devices started to get detected, doesn't seem correct. Surely if the problem had been that some of the drivers were not available at the Detecting Devices stage of the installation, a request for an automatic update after the install was completed should have found the correct driver? Then I remembered that there is a "Compatible Hardware" box that I can uncheck in the "Let me pick the driver option", and when I did this, it returned a wider list, seperated by Manfacturer. Agere Toshiba Software Modem CXT CXT AC-Link Modem for Intel eMachine HSP56 MR Fujitsu FMV-FX52Z2 Intel Intel Pro 100 LAN+Modem 56 Cardbus II Intel Corporation Intel 536EP Modem Intel 537EP Data Fax Modem Intel 537EP Modem Lucent Lucent Technologies Soft Modem AMR NEC NEC Fax Modem 56K Data+Fax(EJQ) PCTel HSP56 MR Samsung Samsung LT56ADW Modem Sharp HSP56 MR Smart Link Smart Link 56K VoiceModem (Microsoft) Smart Link 56K VoiceModem (Smart Link) Toshiba Toshiba Soft Modem AMR I think I can kind of see what it is doing here. It has selected a driver from the list of "Compatible" devices, settling on the SmartModem one (from Microsoft), but given that the driver for my modem appears to be there (the entry under Samsung looks familiar - I think I've seen the LT56ADW before on my production partition), why did it not select that one instead, particularly since it has been digitally signed? Of even more concern is that the Add Hardware wizard regards it as incompatible with my device. Out of frustration, I let it connect to Windows Update and it downloaded what looks like the correct Driver (SENS LT56ADW Modem - I know that's different to what I said above but I remember it from my production partition, although I also remember an Agere application from the system tray that was used for something - modem on Hold possilby). Actually, when I looked at the details of the driver files in the properties panel, three out of the four files come from Agere Systems, so this definately makes sense. Encouraged by this, I tried updating the drivers again for the touchpad and the Audio driver, this time letting them connect to Windows Update, but the bloody thing has only gone and put the Intellipoint and Crystal drivers back in again!! I can change them back manually ok, but does this mean now that every time I connect to Windows Update, it is going to want to "update" these drivers to the correct ones? If so, this seems to me to be a definate sign that something isn't working out correctly, since when I connect my production partition to Windows Update, it doesn't try to offer me any "new" drivers. Futhermore it raises concerns that if I have found 3 devices for which the installation seems unable to locate the correct drivers, it makes me wonder whether there are other items for which it has suffered similar problems with driver identification that are going to cause me problems later. Is this something that anyone else has encountered, and can anyone help me resolve this problem? === The next thing I'll be trying is the XP Home version of my slipstream experiments on my main system (again using a spare blank primary partition on a new hard disk (and pulling the connectors on the other two disks to protect them from overwrites) once I've hidden the other two primary partitions on the new Drive (although one of them is just the result of a previous test - I think)). The only thing I remember going wrong with the first test with that system (but trying the XP Pro disc) was a repeating BSOD once the GUI part of the installlation had completed and it was trying to load Windows for the first time. I tried booting it into SafeMode, which let the log in complete, and after that it was fine. But can anyone advise what might have caused this? I have an A8nSli Deluxe Mobo, which currently has the Realtek AC97 sound system active (until I can get a new sound card for it), and I've heard that this can cause this kind of problem. Is there a workaround for it?

Actually, I've had a look back at the script in the RunMe.bat file, and it looks like the "Cannot file the file specified" message is from the RD command to remove the DPFiles folder, and presumably the error is caused by the previous RoboCopy command having successfully moved DPfiles to $OEM$\$1. Is that right?

Hello Bâshrat, Further attempts at getting a new integrated and slipstreamed disk, this time using method 3 and incorporating the UnOfficial Driverpacks that you referred me to earlier. (Actually I've put all of them in there for the moment, and tested to make sure that each of the Driverpack files will decompress without error before starting). I've noticed the following output on the Slipstreamer output window, and wondered what the file was that the program reports as being missing? If it isn't obvous from the position of the error message alone, can you guide me towards what I should be looking for? Is this something that is likely to cause me problems? I'm off to bed now, so won't see the response until the morning, but I'll leave the slipstream where it's paused at for the moment and hibernate my system, so that I can continue from where I left off, if appropriate. Stuart Bashrat the Sneaky's DriverPacks Slipstreamer - STEP 3 [DONE] A) cleanup [BUSY] B) slipstreaming DriverPacks C) settings The system cannot find the file specified. _ [M3] DriverPacks slipstreamed. _ [M3] necessary files copied. _ [M3] OemPnPDriversPath entry added to WINNT.SIF. _ [M3] WINNT.SIF updated with method 3-specific settings. _ [M3] DriverPack MassStorage slipstreamed... _ [M3] Intel Chipset .INF files copied to $OEM$\$$\INF. _ back-up of PORTCLS.SYS made... Microsoft (R) File Expansion Utility Version 5.1.2600.0 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp 1990-1999. All rights reserved. Expanding i386\svcpack.in_ to i386\svcpack.inf. i386\svcpack.in_: 618 bytes expanded to 1714 bytes, 177% increase. _ KB888111 hotfix for high-definition audio slipstreamed... ################################################################################ Press any key to continue . . .

Thanks Bâshrat for confirming that I'm heading in the right direction. All the drivers for this laptop are linked from this page, http://www.samsungpc.com/products/x05/x05_...rteddrivers.htm, and the audio Driver is at http://www.samsungpc.com/gb/support/x05/dr...nitialaudio.zip. What I don't know is whether or not there are more up to date drivers than these that will work with my laptop (and these are just the last ones that Samsung have tested and confirmed to work), or if I am going to be stuck with no driver updates from now on. I know it seems like a lot of work, but from what I can tell, Samsung have all their Laptop drivers available on this site, so if you wanted to include support for all of their laptop's, this site should provide everything that you would need. If I was tackling this myself, I'd point Teleport Pro at the http://www.samsungpc.com/products/ site and with the right settings, it should grab most things automatically, but then I expect that it would also duplicate a lot of what you already have, and I wouldn't know how to get an an archive file containing the replica of their site to you, or how big it would be. I also hadn't realised that there were unofficial driver packs that I could use. I'll check those out, and maybe if I can figure out how to build my own driverpack, I could put together an unofficial one myself for all Samsung laptops, based on the content of their site? Or does that go against the whole driverpack philosophy, of having all the drivers required for any PC on one disk, not just for one brand of PC? Or is this something that people would find to be useful, because laptops tend to get built with more esoteric hardware choices, and as such are less likely to find all their drivers in the DriverPacks because of this obscurity than would be the case for a regular desktop system? This would be a project for the longer term though, since at the moment I'm trying to get all the little niggles out of my PCs by doing rebuilds, both of the hardware (new kit into a new case, so that I can rebuild my old kit in my old case) and software (multiboot environments with different software profiles in each one), and hoped to have everything back to a useable and stable state again before I have to go back to work next week.

Hello, I was going to post this under the chipset sub forum, but realised in working through it that it might not actually relate to the chipset after all, so I'm posting it here instead. It covers a few things that I've noticed on my experiments so far. I've just completed my first two attempts at slipstreaming an install disc, the first build just by integrating RVM's hotfix bundles, and now the second one by integrating the Driver Packs, and am really pleased with how easy it been, thanks to the instructions provided at various sources. However, although the installation seems to have gone smoothly, there are still a few items on my laptop that are not getting recognised in the device manager, and as far as I can see, the chipset on my laptop is supported in the current DriverPack 6.01. I used method 1 for the slipstreaming of the drivers, and wondered whether this might be the problem, since the system seemed to copy all the drivers folders over to the hard drive when I first logged onto the laptop, but I thought that the point of slipstreaming the driverpacks into the installation disk was so that the system would be able to see these while it was detecting devices? Or is the batch file that copies in the drivers at first log on just a result of having elected to Keep the Drivers? I've had a look in in the system drive, and it has saved all the drivers into a folder called D, and I think that the files that it should need are at C:\D(rivers)\C(hipset)\I(ntel)\ and they are called 855.cat, 855.inf & 855.pnf. The devices that it doesn't seem to have recognised each have a Query icon with a Pling overlay and are listed as Other Devices: "PCI Modem", "Video Controller" & "Video Controller", and when I open the property panel for each of these, it says "The Drivers for this device are not installed (Code 28)". Also there is another entry, this time under Sound, Video and Game controllers that has the correct speaker icon, but which also has a Pling overlay and is decribed as "Crystal WDM AC'97 Driver for ICH4", and the properties panel here says "This device cannot start (Code 10)".Just to test things out, I am trying to install the drivers for the missing items manually. The modem driver has just gone in as a SENS LT56ADW Modem, but I made the mistake of letting it connect to Windows Update and so while I can't be certain that it isn't included in the DriverPacks, I can't find this on the supported devices pages. (There isn't a Modem Driver Pack, and I don't see it listed amoung the LAN or WLAN driver packs. Is a modems DriverPack in development, or is it just that I have an obscure modem that should otherwise be in the LAN pack?) Unfortunately, I can't get the Graphics Drivers to install at all. I had a whole paragraph here, but have traced this to an incomplete download of the Graphics Pack B, which I've now downloaded again and it opens correctly in WinRAR. I'll let you know if the next attempt I make works okay. As for the problem with the Crystal WDM AC'97 Driver for ICH4, when I change the active partition and boot my laptop into my production environment, I cannot locate any sign of this component. However, comparing the layout of the device manager tree when I view the devices by connection, the entry that turns up in the same place as the Crystal WDM AC'97 Driver for ICH4 (on the slipstreamed instal) is Sigmatel C-Major Audio (on the production environment), so the driverpack doesn't seem to be identifying this correctly. If I remember correctly from the last time I ran an installation from my original System CD, I seem to have made some progress by slipstreaming the hotfixes and drivers into a new installation disc (and so like I said at the outset I am very grateful), since the system does seem to recognise the network cards okay (which it didn't do when I used the System Installation Disk, until I had also run the System Software disk). While I could probably reinstall the drivers after each reinstall from the slipstreamed disk, it would be preferrable to work out why they didn't get detected during the OS installation so that I could fix this when I burn my next disk. It also turns out that this will be sooner than I thought, since the product key on the back of my laptop won't activate, and I've discovered a totally different one in the WinNT.SIF file on the installation disk that came with my laptop. Another thing that I've just noticed, is that it my trackpad has only been recognised as a PS/2 compatible mouse, and it normally installs as a Synaptec something or other. Oh, and the Shortcut buttons at the top of the keyboard don't seem to be recognised either. Actually, I've realised that these items are probably not considered to be part of the chipset, so if this is the case, where would I find the correct drivers for things like the Modem, Trackpad and "Magic Keypad" (as the system calls my shortcut buttons). Actually that isn't maybe the correct question to ask, since I do have the drivers on my System Software CD, so what I should have asked is whether the drivers for these are included in the Driver packs, and if not, how could I integrate them myself?

Hi, I see from the supported devices list that the driverpacks work with the A8N-SLi Premium Motherboard, but there is no mention of the A8N-SLi Deluxe that I have. Furthermore, although the page says that the driver packs work with that board, they don't specify which version of the chipset drivers are included. I'm currently running my Mobo on the first BIOS version to support my CPU (1007), and want my integrated installation disk to include the latest v6.65 Chipset driver that is apparently required to run this motherboard with any BIOS from 1013. The idea is that I'll be able to update my BIOS, and then run any installs after that from the integrated installation disk, and so hopefully avoid any of the disk corruption problems that the Asus support website talks about when you try to use an older version of these drivers with the new BIOS. Can someone either tell me whether this version of the driver is included in the current driverpacks, or point me to somewhere that I could find this out for myself, in the event that my attempts to search for this haven't been as exhaustive as they might have been? Avon.

I have another question about slipstreaming an installation CD. As a home user, I don't have the situation of having to run installs to a large number of PCs, or even of having to run the installs very often. However, the idea of not having to go though all the driver updating and hotfix patching whenever I do an installation appeals to me. So instead of having to burn a new CD every time I want to do a new installation, to get all the latest drivers and patches, would it be possible to burn the CD in such a way that it pointed to a drive that is already on the system as its source for most of the installation files? Then all I'd have to do is keep that up to date with the latest drivers. The first problem I can forsee with this is how to judge how the new installation would allocate drive letters, but could this be countered by specifying the pathnames in the same way that they are listed in Boot.ini, by including the controller number/drive number/partition number in the pathname? I remember doing something similar to this with a Windows 98 installation, by copying the Win98 installation CD (and the SE upgrade disc) onto a partition on the hard drive, and then running the setup after booting the computer into DOS (from an old rescue disc, I think), with the added benefit that the whole installation process went much faster than it did when running from CD. Ideally, I would like to know if there is a way that I can boot from a Floppy (or preferably a CF Card on a USB connection (or does this have to be a USB pen-drive in particular to work) so that I'm not having to swap disks) or maybe a CD, to an XP command line, and then run the installation process from the slipstreamed and RVM'd and BTS'd installation source on my hard drive?

Having a shared "programs files" folder was something that I'd done manually before with some success. I had set up 2 primary partiitions on one hard drive, each with a seperate installation of Windows XP, and another two on a second Disk, one with Windows 98 and the other with a third WinXP installation that I used for testing things. I would then use the Active Partition Hiding function of the BootMagic component of PowerQuest's PartitionMagic to have only one of these four primary partitions active and visible at any one time. What I did in the past was to allow some installations to go into the normal Program Files folder on the currently active systems partition, but changing the installation path for some things (like Office 2000) to go into the D drive (Shared Applications), which was the first logical partition on the main drive. It still meant repeating the installation on each of the system partitions on which I wanted to run the software that was being installed to the Shared Applications Drive, but by having all the application files on the D drive, all three versions of Windows XP referred to the same set of files, so there were not three sets of files taking up precious hard drive space. What I originally hoped to do was use the WinNT.SIF file to make ALL the Programs Files and Common Programs files go to the D Drive on each WinXP install, so that I could have 3 or 4 smaller WinXP partitions, and one medium sized Shared Applications partition, instead of having 3 or 4 larger Win XP partitions with all their applications self contained. However, I have been thinking about this a bit more, and although I can't see why it wouldn't work in the shorter term, (ignorance is bliss) I can forsee a scenario in which it will cause me more problems in the longer term. If it turns out to be stable in the longer term, what happens when I come upgrade some of the shared applications? This is the opposite scenario I postulated in my opening post to this thread, where I was concerned about how NIS would handle updates on some installations being behind others because they didn't get used as often. While it might be possible for something like NIS (which updates on a rolling basis) to look at where it expects virus definitions and firewall rules to be stored, and just go with whatever it finds there, most other applications will probably want to un-install a previous version before applying the upgrade. My concern now is that something like upgrading from Roxio EMC7 to EMC8 will make significant changes to the file structure from the previous version, which would cause any attempt to use that application on either of the other two partitions to fail. My first reaction to this was that I could just apply the upgrade to each system partition in turn as was done with the original installation of the application, but if the old version of the program has already been uninstalled on another system partition, the second attempt at the uninstall is probably going to fail, because it can't finds the files it needs to delete before installing the new ones. Then I realised that the un-install of any application shared between multiple system partitions in this way would also fail on the second and third partitions, making it more likely that I'd mess up my system, and have to start again from scratch. Overall, my conclusion is that the space saving benefits of sharing the application space is not worth the problems it would cause further down the line, even if it worked in the first place. So unless someone else has tried this and has tips of how to get it to work, details of which applications can and cannot be shared successfully in this way, or can offer any advise, I think I'll leave this idea alone for the moment. After all, it is my first attempt at slipstreaming an install disk, so maybe I shouldn't run before I can walk.

Hello there, I'm trying to put together a slipstreamed installation disc, and have reached the point of customising the unattend.txt answer file. I see that there are options for changing the location of Program Files, Common Program Files and Documents & Settings folders in the unattended guide, and I wonder if I could use these in a multi-boot environment? What I hope to do is have a few different XP installations using the first 3 primary partitions on each of 2 hard drives (not necessarily all of them, but I can envisage using 3 or 4 out of the 6 that should be available), and use the BootMagic component of Partition Magic 8 to select which one is started each time (and automatically hiding the rest of them), but I don't want to have to put an installation of all the applications that would be common to most of the installations into each of those primary partitions, which would use up valuable disk space. It seems to me to be much neater to have the applications installed to the first logical partition on the drive (which we'll call the D Drive), and have each of the XP installations point to that D Drive for their Program Files and Common Program Files folders, (effectively sharing a common source) but I'm not sure if this is likely to cause me problems later on. For example, the most radical example I can think of (in terms of how often it would update) is NIS 2005. Would I be able to install it to each primary partition in turn (but sending the Program Files to the D Drive) or would I have to install it to one partition (again sending the program Files to D Drive), and then mirror that partition to the others instead? Would this also apply to other 'system' applications like Roxio or Diskeeper etc? Furthermore, if I was able to get NIS2005 installed on multiple XP partitions with the Program Files on Drive D, would running LiveUpdate on any of those partitions, automatially keep all the partitions up to date, or is it more likely to cause problems if (for example) some of the partitions aren't used as often as other ones and get left with out of date components that will always get installed to the system drive. Or for that matter, out of date registry keys, for example? Should I instead limit myself to having only using the D drive for my Program Files folder, for those applications which are more 'user' based? Things like Office 2000, Get Right, Opera, Roboform, etc. Avon

Nice observation and good suggestion... thx Glad that I could help.

I had this problem yesterday, and noticed that the link on the DriverPack homepage for the WLAN pack seemed to point to a different server than (say) the Graphics A pack. Until the link is corrected, you should be able to paste the filename of the WLAN driver pack onto the end of the pathname (minus the file name) for the GraphicsA driverpack, and get the download to work.

Hi Bashrat. Can I point out that the link on the Driverpacks website (once you've opened and accepted the terms of use) doesn't seem to work for the Wireless LAN pack? It links to a path at <removed URI> but to download it I had to copy the link address from one of the other downloads and reassemble the address manually, by pasting the file name for this pack onto the pathname for the other pack (the one I used was the Graphics A pack). I'm guessing that you won't want me to put in the direct link to the correct path, but thought that you'd appreciate the heads up.

I managed to get around the set up hang by using step by step confirmation, and turning off the MOUSE.VXD driver at each restart. The mouse still worked afterwards, and then at one point I forgot to intercept the restart and thought it was going to hang again, but it managed to get past the ususal sticking point, so I guess that the the driver got replaced at somepoint during the SE upgrade. I managed to get the OS fairly up to date though, but without the chipset drivers, it didn't seem worthwhile continuing. See http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=56255

I had wanted to use my Norton SystemWorks CD on the Win98 install to run an undelete on a freind's Camera's Flash card. I'd done this before from Win98 on my own camera's CF card, either from the CD, or from having NSW installed, but the undelete doesn't seem to work for CF cards when I run it on WinXP. The problem was that I'd just replaced most of my system after a processor failure kickstarted an upgrade cycle, and I hadn't appreciated the lack of Win98 support when I was updating my components. In the end, I ended up taking a different approach, and getting some undelete applications off the net and doing it that way in my WinXP installation. The only reason for having a Win98SE installation now, is so that I might one day get the chance to play all those old games I never seem to have time for, but it would seem that to do this, I'll need to get an new Athlon XP processor and motherboard to hook up to my old graphics and sound card and memory. I think that I'd rather replace the motherboard in my StrongARM RiscPC first, so that I can play the original StarFighter 3000 again.

Afraid it was just regular PATA drives. I havent the slightest idea, other than google. The only thing I can really say (from what Ive read) about nvidia chipsets and 98se, is that everyone reports that nvidia's 98se drivers suck wind. Ive never read anything anywhere about someone running 98se on a nvidia board, and actually being satisfied with the results. Im not ready to give up on 98se support just yet either, so Ive been looking at s754 boards with sis and ali/uli chipsets. Sis and uli AFAIK still have 98se drivers available. Unfortunately no manufacturer has stepped up with a decent sis board, so it looks like my chipset options are limited to uli. Via also has 98se drivers available, but Im not willing to put up with their neutered PCI bus any longer. <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Even though the Win98 SE disc has its own installation key? I had copied the FE and SE discs to a FAT32 partition on the hard drive, set up a seperate active primary partition for sending the installation to, before using the FE disc to boot to the command line, and then running the set up for FE from the hard disc. I think I remember trying to run the set up for the SE disc first, but it rejected it saying it needed to run under Windows, I think. Is there a way of running the 98SE installation from the command line? But once I got the FE install into the desktop without using safemode (see the Mouse.vxd stuff above) I was able to run the SE upgrade, but still had !!!s on the Device manager for most of the motherboard components, and base level drivers for the ones that did install.

Once I figured out about turning off the Mouse.VXD driver, it went fine. Win98 FE finished the installation and then I was able to start up the SE upgrade. As you said there were no drivers for any of the motherboard components, so it went with the safest minimum versions of the drivers. Every time it rebooted I had to intercept the start up to disable the Mouse.vxd driver. Even so the mouse still worked, and by the time SE had installed, the system booted up without turning off Mouse.vxd. But you're right, I couldn't do anything else about the rest of the drivers. I managed to get IE6 SP1, .Net framework and a few other things from Magazine cover disks, (no network drivers) and I had to abandon the build. I even tried installing recent GeForce Drivers, but they couldn't see the card, because there was no driver for the chipset presumably. I don't know anything about trying to force older drivers into the install, so I had to abandon the build. Can you help with this or point me somewhere I could find out about it? I also have Athlon64 3700, Asus En6600GT Extreme & 1Gb Dual Channel memory, but if I'm not going to be able to get Win98 to install on the new set up, I might have to try to ressurect my A7A266 motherboard and get a replacement for the XP1700 processor that died and triggered the upgrade in the first place. I've also transferred the WDC 60Gb and 120Gb discs from the old system, but might also drop in some SATA discs once I figure out how to slipstream the drivers and service packs into my XP home installation. I wondered if it might be possible to get Win98 drivers for the individual parts of the motherboard seperately, instead of getting it as a complete motherboard package? Can anyone help with this? I suppose the other thing I could try is putting Win98 on my X05 Laptop. It's also fairly new, and although the Win98 drivers on Samsung's website are unsupported, at least drivers are available. I'll probably have to replace the 30Gb disk in the laptop so that I'll have rooom for a proper dual boot environment with WinXP Pro.