Dave-H

Bit disappointed that there's been no response to this. I have tried a few more experiments. I do have a Windows XP SP2 installation disk, and I've tried transplanting a few PTP support related files over to Windows 2000. I transplanted ptpusb.inf, ptpusb.dll, ptpusd.dll, and sti.inf, which is referenced in ptpusb.inf. This allowed my camera to be detected as a generic "Digital Still Camera" in "Scanners and Cameras". It was also reported to be "ready" and passed all the diagnostic tests. This was great improvement on the results with the Nikon generic PTP driver, which seemed to rely on the OS support files already being there. Unfortunately, even with the generic XP driver I still don't seem to be able to actually do anything with it! I am assuming that I still need the necessary XP WIA support, and I'm not sure how to add that. I also tried a Canon camera Windows 2000 TWAIN driver I downloaded (Nikon seem to have never published a TWAIN driver for their cameras, only for their scanners.) This installed fine, but wouldn't recognise my camera (perhaps not surprisingly, as it's a different brand!) So, anyone any other suggestions?

I assume you're getting the files from the off-line download for the patch. As I have Windows 2000 and Windows 98 on a dual boot system, I'm getting it from Windows Update. Maybe that's the difference. danim.dll is indeed a strange one. It is included in all the IE6 SP1 cumulative updates. but always seems to be the same version, just with a different date stamp.

@CharlesF Yes, the new update seems to work fine under Windows 98SE. Doesn't seem to include SHLWAPI.DLL for the first time that I can remember, but as you say adds TDC.OCX instead. Still only 16 files to patch then, not 17. @cluberti I take it from what you say that this is the reason why no-one to my knowledge has ever got IE6 SP2, let alone IE7 or IE8, to work on Windows 2000. A shame, but I guess it's just not possible.

I recently upgraded my Nikon digital SLR camera from a D-70 to a D-5000. The D-70 had a "mass storage" USB mode as well as a "PTP" mode. It appeared in "My Computer" as a disk drive, and worked fine. Unfortunately, when I got the D-5000, I found that it had no "mass storage" mode, only "PTP". I spoke to Nikon about this, and was told that the mass storage mode had now been dropped from all current cameras as "all current operating systems" support PTP. Windows 2000 apparently doesn't, and I was told that if I didn't upgrade my operating system I couldn't connect this camera (or any new camera for that matter) to a Windows 2000 machine, and the only way I could get the pictures from it to the computer was by using a card reader. This I can do of course, but I was wondering if anyone had managed to get PTP working on a Windows 2000 machine. There is a PTP driver on the Nikon software disk that came with my new camera. It's not intended for my specific camera, but with a bit of INF file hacking I was able to get it to install rudimentary support for the D-5000 (and the D-70 in fact!) When I connect the camera, it now appears in Device Manager as a still image device in "Scanners and Cameras" in Control Panel. I don't seem to be able to do anything with it though. It doesn't appear as a TWAIN source in any of my imaging programs. I'm not quite sure how PTP is actually supposed to work, and I don't have access to an XP or later machine to try it so I know what to expect. Certainly the "Nikon Transfer" software (which installs and runs fine on Windows 2000!) doesn't recognise the camera as a source, which it should do if things are running properly. Anyone any ideas on this? Thanks, Dave.

Well, I just want to report that I've now connected my other main USB devices to Windows 98, including my HP printer with its card readers, and everything seemed to work OK. I think we can consider this closed now (finally!) and I'd just like to say again how great everyone has been in sorting out this problem. See you over on the Windows 2000 forum very soon!

Wow, thanks guys! A lot of differing takes here on the same things. I do actually have a drive imaging program, which is part of Norton Utilities. I have it run every time Windows 98 starts (it doesn't work in Windows 2000) and it writes a data file each time, with a backup of the last one, to my C:, D:, and E: drives. I assume that with this data, and a separate backup of all the system files on the drives, I should be able to restore my drive configuration and operating systems, using Norton's DOS recovery utilities. It's not something I've ever tried, and I hope I never have to! I've only had a hard drive fail once, and I managed to coax it into life for long enough to get all the files off it onto another drive, and I did manage to restore the system without using the drive imaging files. Anyway, this is way off topic from the original subject of this thread, and I don't think we should keep it going on this track for too much longer, especially as the original problem has now been declared to have been solved!

Thanks jaclaz. I must say that I've always been a bit confused about the various backing up options. What actually is the difference between "imaging", "mirroring", and just "backing up"? I always assumed that once you had all the files on a drive copied to another drive, that was sufficient as a backup, especially if you run a dual boot system where hopefully at least one of the operating systems will always be working, allowing you to copy files to the other one if necessary. Of course if I had a complete hard drive failure, both operating system would become useless, as they are both on different partitions on the same physical drive. All I could do in that case would be to fit a new drive, boot into DOS using a Windows 98 startup disk, partition and format the new drive, and copy the files from the backup drive to the new partitions. Doing that in DOS would destroy all the long file names though, so is hardly ideal. I appreciate this is off the topic of the original thread, but I would value your recommendations on this. I have now used the mirror program to back up my Windows folders and respective Program Files folders to a removable drive, and also I've added the Windows 2000 User Files (Documents and Settings) as well. Thanks, Dave.

Thanks guys! I do have a disk mirror program which I already use regularly to back up my archive drive, which contains all my documents, videos etc. to a removable IDE hard drive. Would it be adequate to also back up my \WIN-98 and \Program Files folders with that, to the same drive? I could even back up my \WIN-NT Windows 2000 folder too when in Windows 98, as I won't have any locked files problem if Windows 2000 isn't running. (I love running a dual boot system!)

Not quite yet, but rest assured it will be done before I try anything else!

WOO HOO! FIXED IT!! :thumbup :thumbup After a lot of experimentation and process of elimination, the problem turned out to be caused by one single file. This was lurking in the System\IOSubsys folder, and is called DMSHBA.VXD. Disabling it by renaming it has made everything come good! All my card readers and memory sticks are now installed and working perfectly. Also my USB ZIP drive is working fine too. The only major thing I now have to try plugging into the USB port is my HP photo printer, which has card readers built in. I will try that soon, but only after some major backing up of what I've got now, in case any more nasties appear! I will report. The DMSHBA.VXD file describes itself as "FirePort System Software", and is part of a utility from Diamond called "SCSI Diagnostics" which I've had since I used to have a Diamond SCSI card (I now use a much better Adaptec card.) It scans the SCSI bus and shows information about the connected devices. It still works without that VXD present, but throws up an error message when it runs saying "Unable to access the DMSHBA.Vxd. The Fireport SCSI ID Number may be incorrectly reported. This is not a critical error." Otherwise it still seems to work fine. There are no references to the file in the registry, however its presence was still stopping NUSB working properly. Why NUSB should be affected by a SCSI utility I'm not sure! Thanks so much to everyone who has contributed to this thread. I've learned so much! Special thanks to Multibooter, jaclaz, CharlotteTheHarlot, and dencorso. You guys are the best! Anyway, now that "little" eight forum page problem is resolved, I suppose I should give the background to all this, and why it happened in the first place, and why I'll be starting another (hopefully not as long!) thread over on the Windows 2000 forum! I recently bought a new Nikon digital camera, a D-5000. This replaced an older D-70 that I had. When I came to connect the D-5000 to my computer, I was annoyed to find that, unlike the D-70, it has no mass storage USB mode, only PTP mode. Now I wasn't really expecting it to work in Windows 98, but it turns out that it won't work with Windows 2000 either, as only XP and later OSes have PTP support. When I rang Nikon about this, they said that Windows 2000 was not supported, and I would have to use a card reader to access my pictures. Apparently they dropped mass storage mode from their later cameras, as all current OSes support PTP (the usual story.....). I then found my existing card reader didn't read the SDHC cards that I was using in the new camera, and that's why I had to buy a new card reader. I then thought it would be nice to be able to use it in Windows 98 as well as 2000, and the rest is history! So.......... Having sorted out the problem of the new card reader not having Windows 98 drivers, I will now be going over to the Windows 2000 forum to see if anyone's managed to get PTP to work in Windows 2000! See you there guys...........

Well I compared the INF folders from the working Win98 and the non-working Win98. As there was over 1000 files in each, I restricted the search to *.inf files (ignoring the *.pnf files) which contained the text "storage". I identified a few possible culprits. There were quite a few inf files from my HP photo printer, which contains card readers. There was jmusbsto.inf, which came from a USB-SATA interface. There was UFD.inf, a Microsoft mass storage driver. Also USBZIP.inf, which goes with my USB Iomega ZIP drive. I disabled all of those by renaming them, but no difference, still a system lock-up on the installation of the second drive. I also tried using the autoexec.bat and config.sys files from the working system in the non-working system, and that made no difference either.

@herbalist Thanks very much for that feedback. I think I've now confirmed that there is actually nothing wrong with NUSB. It's something peculiar to my system. @dencorso Well, I tried installing NUSB on my "clean" Windows 98, and it worked perfectly! I installed both my card readers, the original and the new one, and both the HP and Integral memory sticks. All worked with no problem at all. So, at least I now know that the problem isn't with NUSB. I did save the USBSTOR, USB, and complete ENUM registry keys from the working system. I'm wondering whether to try importing at least the first two into the faulty system to see what happens......

That's good to know! Done all that. The second update (the MS one) didn't seem to replace any system files, so I may well have had it installed already. The first one updated and added quite a few. Unfortunately, none of it made a scrap of difference. First "USB Disk" mounted fine, second one, immediate system freeze. Anyway, here's what Chip Genius made of the card reader. I'm wondering if there would be anything to gain by firing up with the clean new Windows 98 install that I did on a separate drive, and try installing NUSB on that. If the card reader works on that, at least we'll know that it's not an intrinsic problem with NUSB and my card reader. What do you think of that idea Den?

OK, I've done all that. Installed NUSB, rebooted and it found my USB 2 motherboard hardware and successfully installed drivers for it. Restarted OK. Backed up the registry again. Checked in HP System Diagnostics for any unconnected devices and removed them. Still restarted OK. Backed up the registry again. Put my HP single drive memory stick in. Drivers installed correctly and drive appeared in "My Computer". Restarted, still OK. Backed up the registry again. Put my five drive card reader in. Mass storage device found and installed OK. First USB Drive found and apparently installed OK. Second USB drive found, and..........immediate system lock-up! So, I'm back exactly as before, after all that! NUSB will install one drive, but freezes the system if it tries to install any more. One clue which might be important. On one occasion when the system froze, before the keyboard stopped responding I did manage to hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete and the close program box did come up. It showed that msgsvr32 was not responding. Looking at what this file does, I'm wondering if that's what's crashing and bringing the system down on the second drive install. The version I have is 4.10.0.2222, which seems to be reasonable. I don't need a later version for this to work do I, the Windows ME version perhaps? What I would like is confirmation from someone with NUSB installed that it will indeed mount more than one drive from the same device. If it's an intrinsic problem with NUSB then I'll have to abandon it and try something else.

Thanks Den! Here's my Device Manager. It does look the same in Safe Mode, so there are no hidden devices lurking. The "PCI Universal Serial Bus" in the Unused Devices section is the USB 2 hub, which NUSB will provide support for. If you're happy with this, I'll do a final backup, go ahead with the NUSB install, and we'll see what happens!

OK, I think the system's as clean as it's ever going to be of spurious junk, both in the registry and the files. I'm thinking of just reinstalling NUSB now and hoping for the best. Is it safe to leave my other USB devices (listed in the previous post) or should I disconnect, uninstall, and clean the system of their files and registry entries before I try NUSB again? None of them are mass storage devices, so my gut feeling is that they will make no difference. Any advice appreciated.

@stuck Ah, I thought that would probably be the case, but thanks very much for the thought anyway! @dencorso Thanks yet again Den. It appears the the waters were extremely muddied by the fact that Realtek posted a driver that doesn't actually work in Windows 98 (not on my system anyway) even though the download page clearly says that it supports all Windows versions from 98 Gold to XP! The second fault condition, with the error in the Device Manager resources tab, was caused by the faulty driver. The original fault, where there was no error in DM, but just no sound, seems to have gone away now I have cleaned out my system. For anyone else with a Realtek AC'97 sound system and Windows 98, beware! Version 4.00 works, version 4.06 (the latest posted) doesn't. I have informed Realtek of this, I'm not holding my breath while waiting for a reply! So, I am now going through my system cleaning the registry of all the obsolete junk left by the "dummy" clean Windows 98 installation. I now have very many fewer devices registered in the system. The only USB devices there are the ones that are actually part of the motherboard, plus my mouse, which is connected via a hub built into the keyboard, my Epson printer, and my Wacom drawing tablet. They are all working fine. All other devices, including all the pen drives and card readers, are gone, and I have been through and deleted all their associated files too. So, when I'm happy that the system is as clean as possible (and fully backed up!), are we ready to try installing NUSB again (it seems so long ago.........)

Well, I'm pleased to be able to report significant progress! I did as you suggested Den, and ran up the system with the System32\Drivers folder files and system.dat file from the working installation. The system started OK, and the sound worked! I then tried just restoring the original system.dat from the non-working installation. The resource allocation error on the sound hardware in Device Manager did not reappear, all seemed to be well, but the sound was not working. This was the interim condition that I had before, where the sound failed but with no apparent device errors. I then tried reinstalling the driver for the sound, using the latest version, and the error reappeared in Device Manager! I suspect this is what happened before, and the device error actually first appeared when I tried reinstalling the driver. Uninstalled the driver, even used Driver Cleaner on it, reinstalled the old driver from the motherboard installation CD (which I had used on the dummy Windows 98 install) still no joy. Went back to the "working" system.dat, and it all came good again. This is still using the very old version of the sound driver from the motherboard installation CD. I then wondered if the latest driver in fact doesn't work with Windows 98, despite the fact that the download page says that it does. http://218.210.127.131/downloads/downloads...p;GetDown=false Anyway, I'll look at that later. I then merged the SOFTWARE key from the non-working system into the working system. That still worked, apart from a few error messages on start-up about missing files. That I fixed by merging the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD] key from the non-working to the working system. So, I think I'm nearly back to a system which is getting close to as it was before, but with working sound! I've still got a few drivers to sort out, and I'll have to check that all my software applictaions are still working properly, but given time that can and will be sorted. Of course, that still hasn't answered the question as to what caused the problem in the first place! Until I know that, I'll always be worrying that it will happen again. At least if it does, I will have a full backup next time, I promise! I can't believe that it is a problem with the sound driver. I only went to the latest version after the problem had already appeared, and the installed version had been working for at least a year without any problems. Anyway, I'll plug on getting the system back to "normal" and then we can go back to trying to get my card reader working (remember that?)! Thank you all so much.

Thanks Den! Tried all that. The first attempt was a non-starter because I'd installed the working Windows 98 to a different folder to my normal installation (C:\Windows instead of C:\WIN-98). I therefore had to do the whole re-installation of Windows 98 to the new drive again. Did I say "D'oh!" before? Well I'll say it again! Anyway, after all that, and making the working installation as identical as possible to the faulty installation, I tried what you suggested. It all worked, and the system did start OK with the system.dat file from the working installation, but, exactly the same result! Still a resource error on the sound hardware. Nothing had changed at all in Device Manager. So, what now? I think this just confirms that it isn't a problem with anything in the registry.

I'm afraid I didn't have a lot of luck with regedit in DOS. It seemed to work OK to delete a key, but I couldn't import the key I wanted to import from the other Windows 98 installation with working sound. It went through the motions of importing it, with a count from zero up to 100%, but as soon as it got to 100% a message came up saying - "Couldn't import enum.reg: Error accessing the registry." I made sure that system.dat and user.dat had their read-only and hidden attributes off, but it made no difference. It certainly deleted the enum key OK, judging by the mess I was greeted with when I rebooted, but it would not import the replacement key that I wanted it to. Presumably it will import registry data from another Windows 98 installation? The only thing I could think of that might have made the new data incompatible was that the new installation was installed to the default C:\Windows folder, and my original is in C:\WIN-98. I can't see any path specific data in that registry key though. So, I gave up on that, and tried again just removing the enum and config keys and letting everything install again. I also this time deleted the two .bin files from the INF folder. After a huge amount of messing around I was back where I was before. The system absolutely refuses to allocate a working configuration to the sound hardware. I even un-ticked the "automatic" option on its resources tab, and then found that it was now apparently on IRQ 11. I had written down the resources being used on the working system, which was also IRQ 11, but some of the Memory Ranges and I/O Ranges were different. I changed them so the information in the resources tab was absolutely identical to that on the working system, and still the drivers refused to load and no sound! All the other hardware can be made to work fine. I really am puzzled completely by this now. I think that we're perhaps looking in the wrong place by playing with the registry. If you remember, I did restore a very old copy of the registry, from long before this problem appeared, and nothing at all changed. I suspect that the problem isn't being caused by anything in the registry in that case. We know now that it's not an actual hardware fault, as it works fine with the new installation. So where does that leave us? Surely it can only now be a configuration error somewhere that isn't stored in the registry, or a system file problem. Are there any files associated with NUSB that could conceivably cause this sort of problem? I think I've got rid of them all now and restored the originals of any that NUSB replaced, but you never know, I could well have missed one or more!

Thanks Den! I will do that thing. Just one quick question. The links you gave say that the version of regedit.exe that came with Windows 98 is buggy and should be replaced with a "fixed" version. I actually have the version which came from ME, 4.90.0.3000. I can't remember exactly where it came from, possibly soporific's Auto-Patcher. Is that OK to use for this exercise? BTW, I completely forgot that Partition Manager would have done the necessary formatting for me!

It's gone very quiet............. Anyway, I have news to report! I finally bit the bullet and tried making a completely new install of Windows 98SE. This was not without its problems, needless to say. Fortunately I have IDE drives in removable cradles, so that bit was quite easy physically. I disconnected my system drives (which are SCSI) and booted up using a boot disk. I then found that Windows wouldn't install on the drive, because of course it wasn't a primary active partition. D'oh! Once I'd sorted that out with Fdisk, and then spent ages reformatting the drive, it worked. It went through the setup process until the last restart, and then said "not enough memory". Of course what it actually meant was "too much memory"! I have 4GB of RAM fitted. Double d'oh! Fortunately I still had the original two 512MB DIMMs from before I upgraded, so I had to take the machine even more apart, and put them back in, praying that setup would complete with 1GB of RAM. Fortunately, it did. I've now told it to limit the memory to 512MB, so hopefully it will still start now without me having to physically swap the memory again. I then put the Supermicro setup CD in, and installed just the sound drivers (an ancient version, but would prove the point). The sound worked! I then installed the Intel chipset drivers, which includes the USB hardware (I made sure that no USB devices were actually connected during all this of course.) They installed fine, and the sound still worked. I then installed the drivers for the ethernet controller. That eventually also worked fine after a bit of messing around, and the sound still worked! So, the only things on the PCI bus without drivers were the modem, my Canopus video capture card, and the USB 2 controller, which has no Windows 98 drivers of course. I didn't think it was worth installing the first two's drivers, as I think the point had been proved. At least I now know that this is a configuration problem, there is nothing wrong on the motherboard, which is a relief. I have a few files to post, if anyone would like to look at them. This contains the Device Manager "printout" plus a save of the System Information from the working Windows 98. I also saved the Enum key from the registry of the working system. Dare I put it into the non-working system?

Dave, in case you decide to follow Multibooter's idea, which may in fact help, I've decided to quote myself from elsewhere, just to point you to the right version of it: However, I'm begining to think that you ought to image your system or even put in a spare HDD in place and do a clean install of 98, using RegShot before and after the audio driver's installation, for us to find out which entries are created in the register and which files are needed and where do they go. It would also require the creation of a full file list before and after the sound drivers installation, so it must be planned carefully beforehand to be effective. This is a really time consuming task, but might be the way to go in case all else fails. Thanks for that Den and Multibooter. Tried using Driver Cleaner, but it made no difference. The only thing I didn't do was actually physically disabling the sound hardware, as that involves taking the machine to bits again. I will try again when I've got it apart, if it comes to that again! Swapping drives and installing Windows 98 from scratch are my very last resort. I really hope that it doesn't come to that!

Tried that, and the COM1 port and the LPT1 parallel printer port were put back by the plug and play system even though they were disabled in the BIOS! Didn't make any difference to the sound problem. I did update the BIOS version ages ago acting on the the instructions of Supermicro technical support to resolve a problem with Seagate hard drives. I ran the update again recently just in case it had any bearing on this problem, but it made no difference. Don't worry! That's exactly how I resolved the problem! Tried again, but still no joy! Created a bootable floppy, copied HWINFO.EXE and HWINFO.DAT to the floppy (I assume they're the only necessary files, any more would have been too big for the disk!) When I booted to the floppy and ran HWINFO, it just said "Program is too big to fit in memory". Tried copying himem.sys to the disk, and creating a config.sys on the disk just with "device=a:\himem.sys /testmem:off" in it, and it still threw up the same error message. Yes, well I might try that next! I'd like to know too! That option doesn't appear in my BIOS settings. I have the latest version (1.3b)

Good thought Multibooter, but even with the audio drivers uninstalled, the audio hardware still appears in the Device Manager as an unknown device, with the same resource problem, i.e. no IRQ (IRQ 00). I will give it a try though once I get to the end of all the other avenues I'm currently following!