Dave-H

Good news! So, should I replace muweb.dll with the "right" version again, or leave it as it is with the earlier version which will hopefully be insurance against future failures? Any security implications leaving the older version?

Thanks jaclaz! I'll check it out and let you know if I find any issues. It's been really fascinating doing this with you, and thanks for all your perseverance and patience with me at times! Cheers, Dave.

Thanks jaclaz! I'll check it out and let you know if I find any issues. It's been really fascinating doing this with you, and thanks for all your perseverance and patience with me at times! Cheers, Dave.

Thanks jaclaz, but that link just seems to go the the first post on this thread, or am I missing something?

Well, I've tried again today, and would you believe it, I now can't fault it, the label is switching correctly all the time! Yesterday, it quite consistently wasn't. Just one of those anomalies that make you love computers I guess, but it doesn't look as if there really is any problem after all.

Yes, that's great! One thing I have noticed is that often the display of the label on the drive in Explorer doesn't update, and still shows the old label even after switching, although the drive works fine with the new configuration. Refreshing the display doesn't seem to fix it, only removing and replacing the drive fixes it. I guess that's a Windows thing that can't be fixed.

Yes, that's better, especially as it now tells you the volume label it's going to assign to the drive, which will tell people why the drive ends up labelled as it is! Just one last suggestion, when it prints "Bootsector is the "other" XX one" I think it would be better if it printed "Bootsector is the "wrong" XX one". I think that would be clearer, and would agree with what it prints if you run the switcher when it's not actually needed, when it prints "Bootsector is the "right" XX one".

That's fine jaclaz! Works when double clicked and when right clicked and run as an administrator. Also works fine from a desktop shortcut, non-elevated or elevated. I've only checked on 8.1, but I have no reason to think that it won't be fine on XP too. There's still a short pause on my system after "Mounting volume to drive letter J: ... OK, done:", but I really wouldn't worry about it! Great work, now get that final release out and get on to your next thing! Cheers, Dave.

Is there any potential problem with just keeping the 7.6.7600.256 version of muweb.dll installed? I rolled back to that version to fix the MU site when it first failed last November, but when it was apparently fixed at the other end I put the original version back. Now it's failed again I've had to revert to the older version again. I'm thinking to just leave it like that now!

Yep, not working for me again either! Fixed it (again) by replacing muweb.dll with version 7.6.7600.256 from here. What a PITA!

That is good news that we should get an "official" fix this week! What is the version number of the new win32k.sys file, will it be OK if the unofficial patch is already installed?

OK, that seems to work fine! Works OK when double clicked too.

OK, that's working! This is going from 512 to 4086 - Microsoft Windows [Version 6.3.9600](c) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.C:\WINDOWS\system32>I:I:\>switcherqev"DUAL" disk found as \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE4, connected as 4096 bytes/sectorThe NTFS Volume is Volume{e308684d-bc26-11e4-bfa7-00304879f908}Checking drive letters ...In use: C: D: E: F: G: H: I: S: W:Free : J: K: L: M: N: O: P: Q: R: T: U: V: X: Y: Z:Mounting volume to drive letter J: ... OK, done:Press any key to continue . . .Volume 7 J RAW Partition 931 GB HealthyFilesystem is RAW, we need to switch ...OK, switched:Next is the LABEL commandPress any key to continue . . .LABEL J:Data_4kbPress any key to continue . . .Volume 7 J Data_4kb NTFS Partition 931 GB HealthyEverything is cool ...Press any key to continue . . .I:\>This is going from 4096 to 512 - Microsoft Windows [Version 6.3.9600](c) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.C:\WINDOWS\system32>I:I:\>switcherqev"DUAL" disk found as \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE4, connected as 512 bytes/sectorThe NTFS Volume is Volume{e308684d-bc26-11e4-bfa7-00304879f908}Checking drive letters ...In use: C: D: E: F: G: H: I: S: W:Free : J: K: L: M: N: O: P: Q: R: T: U: V: X: Y: Z:Mounting volume to drive letter J: ... OK, done:Press any key to continue . . .Volume 7 J RAW Partition 931 GB HealthyFilesystem is RAW, we need to switch ...OK, switched:Next is the LABEL commandPress any key to continue . . .LABEL J:Data_512Press any key to continue . . .Volume 7 J Data_512 NTFS Partition 931 GB HealthyEverything is cool ...Press any key to continue . . .I:\>Again using elevated command prompts. The "you need to format the disk in drive J: before you can use it" window is still popping up when the script runs though, which is a bit off putting!

OK, this is what I got. Elevated command prompt attempting the switch from 512 to 4096. Microsoft Windows [Version 6.3.9600](c) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.C:\WINDOWS\system32>I:I:\>switcherqev"DUAL" disk found as \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE4, connected as 4096 bytes/sectorThe NTFS Volume is Volume{e308684d-bc26-11e4-bfa7-00304879f908}Checking drive letters ...In use: C: D: E: F: G: H: I: S: W:Free : J: K: L: M: N: O: P: Q: R: T: U: V: X: Y: Z:Mounting volume to drive letter J: ... OK, done:Press any key to continue . . .Volume 7 J RAW Partition 931 GB HealthyPress any key to continue . . .Press any key to continue . . .Press any key to continue . . .I:\>The "you need to format the disk in drive J: before you can use it" window pops up as soon as the first part of the batch prints.

@cdob Thanks, off topic but I actually fixed it using this brilliant tool SavePart. I had fallen into the hole of ending up with a new system drive that was being given the wrong drive letter, and SavePart fixed the registry of the new installation from the old one, which I thought was pretty cool! @jaclaz I tried the new switcher, and sorry to report that it again works perfectly in XP, but doesn't work at all in 8.1! I've tried running it every possible way in 8.1 (it works fine from a double click in XP) and it won't switch in either direction. It doesn't put up any error messages, but when it runs the "you need to format the drive" message from Windows keeps popping up, and when the batch ends, the switching hasn't been done.

Hi jaclaz. Sorry for the delay again, but I'm wrestling with another problem at the moment. I am trying to get my 98/XP system over to another drive, and it's been causing endless problems. I'm now stuck with a 98 system that say "invalid boot drive" when selected in the boot menu, and an XP installation that logs on and then immediately logs off again and endlessly loops this! Why do I think these things are going to be straightforward with computers? I never learn! Anyway, irrelevant to this forum, but I will have to wait until I can restore the hardware configuration to normal before I can test your new version, so please do bear with me!

Thanks guys, but I am pretty convinced now that it isn't a hardware problem, it only because I've substituted the card, and it made no difference, and also it all works perfectly on Windows XP and Windows 8.1. There are no relevant BIOS settings that I can see. The problem with going completely over to Nvidia cards, apart from the driver files clashing if I want to be able to use both cards on any of my operating systems, is that I also have an old Canopus DV video capture card, whose editing software uses hardware overlays to display the pictures. I have never had any success getting this to work with anything other than ATI cards, and even recent models of those don't support it. I had to put up without it when I had the single AGP Nvidia card fitted on the old motherboard, and it was very annoying not to have it, so I wouldn't want to go back to that, it would be only a very last resort! I might PM rloew now to see if he has any suggestions.

Sounds good, but I must say that I never thought that the diskpart delay was a problem. I only mentioned it at all because on my system at least there was an apparent pause in the script at one point which wasn't explained, which might lead impatient people to think that something had gone wrong! It's only 10 seconds at most though.

Yes, I remember AGP aperture settings being critical as well, but that was with my old motherboard. My present one isn't AGP, it's PCI, PCI-X, and PCIe. I certainly had the AGP version of the X850 working very happily with my old motherboard for several years, and the 256 MB of memory didn't seem to be a problem. I even for a while had an AGP Nvidia card installed on the old motherboard until the fan died, and that had 512 MB of memory! All made possible by the RAM limitation patch of course.

My "new" X800 card arrived today, and I put it in in place of the X850. It found the drivers and seemed to work fine, but it's still crashing exactly the same! I then did some more experimenting. I put the X850 back in, and removed the Nvidia card. Still crashing. I then moved the X850 into the 16x PCIe slot where the Nvidia card normally lives. Still crashing. So - 1/ It isn't a hardware fault in the card. 2/ The presence of the Nvidia card doesn't seem to affect things. 3/ It doesn't matter which PCIe slot it's plugged onto. I still suspect a memory issue. Not main RAM of course, some other low level memory issue that didn't happen with my previous motherboard, but does with this one. I am using the RAM limitation patch from @rloew, which may have an effect, but Windows 98 wouldn't work at all without it I suspect!

OK, I've been through it and here are my suggested changes. The changes are marked in red so you can see what I've altered, and because of that I've converted it to a Word document, which I hope you can read OK. ReadMe.doc

The only thing I saw immediately is that the readme still refers to "mkdualmode.cmd" in a number of places, which should be "mkdualdisk.cmd" of course!

Yes, that's good! It is strange that the pause is a lot longer going from 512 to 4096 than is is going the other way. Anyway, it doesn't matter, and the output does now tell you that there's going to be a pause, so that's fine.

Hmm, mine's nowhere near as quick as that! Running diskpart from the command prompt it goes to the diskpart prompt almost immediately. On running "rescan" there is about a four second pause before the next output appears, but only the first time it's run. If rescan is run again it's instant, the pause only re-appears if diskpart is closed and run again.

Yes, that's good, as the whole output now fits in the window without scrolling. There is a definite pause after "OK, written 4096 bytes at offset 0" before "Please wait while DiskPart scans your configuration..." comes up. It's about 10 seconds when going from 512 to 4096, and about 6 seconds when going from 4096 to 512. I've only tried in on XP as that's what I happen to be running at the moment.