Dave-H

Sorry Dave, I can't remember what I deleted to bypass digital signature check thing. You're on your own, good luck. No problem. If I do manage to find out what's wrong, I'll let you know!

Thanks again loblo. I tried installing with the original msi file and your modified cab file, and as expected I got an error message about the cab file not being digitally signed. I've tried to compare your modified msi file with the original msi file, using Orca, but I'm having trouble spotting any differences! Could you tell me exactly what you changed in the msi file? Thanks, Dave.

Thanks loblo. Just wanted to report that your modified version will not install on Windows XP either. It does exactly the same thing with the same error logs, so it's not a Windows 98 or KernelEx problem. I suspect something is amiss with your modified installer file. I'll have a look at it with Orca and see if I can spot anything wrong. Presumably it did install on your system OK?

Hi loblo. I've just tried installing your modified version of Java 6 update 32, and it's failing all the time. It just rolls back and says the install could not be completed and please try later. It's not getting as far as writing any files to the disk. There are no messages from the installer to say why it's failed, but in the Windows Temp folder, the java_install_reg.log says - -- QueryCurMSIValue: Open failed. -- Exec: QueryCurMSIValue(INSTALLDIR) failed. The jusched.log says - Sat Jun 09 13:59:13 2012 :: MSICheckPendingFileRenameOperations: RegOpenKeyEx() failed with ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND: 2, Error Code: 0 And the msievent.log just says - 09/06/12 13:59:20 (Info ) Product: Java 6 Update 32 -- Installation operation failed. Any idea what's going wrong? I've tried installing to the default folder and to a custom folder with the same result. I also uninstalled the previous version and cleaned out all its files and registry entries. I have the most recent version of KernelEx installed, and Java 6 update 31 installs and works fine. Thanks, Dave.

Oh well, I guess I'll have to stick with Java 6 on Windows 98 then. Very bad news about Opera 12, I hope some way around this can be found once it's released and we know how bad the problem actually is in the final version. I really don't want to have to use two different versions of Opera on my two operating systems!

Has anyone got Java 7 runtime to work in Windows 98 with KernelEx? I've tried using the normal method I've been using for installing Java 6 runtimes and I'm getting a "cannot unpack rt" message, followed by error messages about two dlls, msvcr100.dll and jvm.dll. I've tried applying KEx compatibility settings for 2000 and XP to both of them but no joy.

Thanks. Let's hope!

Oh dear, that is very bad news! Opera would be completely useless to me too without the plugins working. I really hope the KernelEx guys can fix this before the release of Opera 12.

Confirmed here. As a matter of interest (sorry if this has already been stated) has anyone tried the beta version of Opera 12 on Windows 98 with KEx? I'm awaiting its release with some apprehension and trepidation that it will no longer work.

Yes I can disable legacy USB support in the BIOS, but the pen drive isn't then detected of course. There are no USB speed adjustment options. Sorry, you've lost me! None of those file exist on my system.

This is the relevant section from my motherboard manual - The Intel E7505 chipset is a high-performance chipset with a performance and feature-set designed dual processor servers. The E7505 chipset consists of three major components: the Memory Controller Hub (MCH), the I/O Controller Hub 4 (ICH4) and the PCI-X 64-bit Hub 2.0 (P64H2). The MCH has four hub interfaces, one to communicate with the ICH4 and three for high-speed I/O communications. The MCH employs a 144-bit wide memory bus for a DDR-266 memory interface, which provides a total bandwidth of 4.27 GB/s. The ICH4 interface is a 266 MB/sec point-to-point connection using an 8-bit wide, 66 MHz base clock at a 4x data transfer rate. The P64H2 interface is a 1 GB/s point-to-point connection using a 16- bit wide, 66 MHz base clock at an 8x data transfer rate. The ICH4 I/O Controller Hub provides various integrated functions, including a two-channel Ultra ATA/100 bus master IDE controller, USB 2.0 host controllers, an integrated LAN controller, a System Management Bus controller and an AC'97 compliant interface. The P64H2 PCI-X Hub provides a 16-bit connection to the MCH for highperformance IO capability and two independent 64-bit PCI-X interfaces. I was a bit surprised to find that it does actually mention USB 2.0 controllers, but presumably that doesn't necessarily mean that it would use USB 2.0 if booting from a USB device. It could just mean that it has support for USB 2.0 when used with a suitable operating system. If it is already using USB 2.0 then presumably it's already working as well as it's ever going to do!

Thanks guys! Well I do have it working again, just rather slowly. I'm pretty sure my motherboard would only be natively USB 1 as it dates from 2003. If it's possible to get USB 2 speeds out of it in any way that would be good, if only that it might improve the stability of Windows 98 when running from the pen drive. The guy who designed Plop does say in response to a forum query about this that he was considering releasing a driver that gave read and write access for this specific configuration only (because of the need to be able to fit it all on a floppy disk) but that was written back in 2009, so I assume it's never happened. I also looked here as it was referenced in the same forum, and I did download the package, but I'm afraid my eyes glazed over when I started looking at the documentation, and I never determined whether there was anything there that would help with this.

I see absolutely no problem with having to install MDAC separately. Please don't delay the release of the final build just to resolve this "problem", as it's easily worked around!

OK, I've re-prepared the drive using the RM tool, copied my backup to it, and I now have a working bootable pen drive again, which will boot to Windows 98! I guess that the HP and RM utilities must do something to the drive which Plop undid, and we just weren't able to redo it, whatever it was! Incidentally it's no longer triggering the XP AutoPlay routine when I insert it, which must mean something. I've tried again booting with the Plop floppy disk, and accessing the pen drive using its driver. Unfortunately, this is just producing the write failure error message again. It boots fine without Plop, but won't boot with it. I does look to me as if the Plop USB driver does indeed make the drive read only, in which case we were onto a loser with it right from the start! Any other options for USB 2.0 in this scenario?

Hi again jaclaz, I didn't realise you had been away. I have downloaded and installed RMPrepUSB 2.1.630 (not the beta version) ready to be deployed if necessary. I tried den's latest MBR file, and sorry to report it's made no difference. It still gives "OS not found" if I try and boot directly, and via Plop it will only go to the command prompt without an immediate write error. I noticed this time that if I do boot to the command prompt with it, I cannot access my system drive (normally drive C: of course, but in this case drive D:). I can access all the other drives fine, but with drive D: although I can get to a D:> prompt, if I try and actually access the drive I get the error message "Invalid Media Type Reading Drive D". Very strange. I get the write error on the C: drive again if I try and copy anything to it from one of the dives I can access. I'm beginning to think that jaclaz is right, and we're running out of options to actually fix this, educational though it has been, and maybe it is time to just reformat the pen drive, copy my backup to it, and hopefully then be able to boot to Windows 98 from it as before. What do you reckon den?

I used the HP "USB Disk Storage Format Tool" HPUSBFW.EXE. Do you remember this?! Well, it's the same pen drive! I remember ChipGenius from back then. Anyway, here's what it says about the pen drive now - Description: [i:][J:]USB Mass Storage Device(Integral/Integral ICE Flash Drive/ICE Flash Drive) Device Type: Mass Storage Device Protocal Version: USB 2.00 Current Speed: High Speed Max Current: 200mA USB Device ID: VID = 13FE PID = 1D21 Serial Number: 909A1F2A0006 Device Vendor: Integral Device Name: ICE Flash Drive Device Revision: 0110 Manufacturer: Integral/Integral Product Model: ICE Flash Drive/ICE Flash Drive Product Revision: PMAP/PMAP Chip Vendor: Phison Chip Part-Number: PS2251-56(PS2156) - F/W 01.01.10 [2006-06-26] Flash ID Code: 98D384A5 - Toshiba [MLC-2K] Tools on web: http://dl.mydigit.net/special/up/phison.html Yes, there is an "eject" entry in the list.

My system's BIOS certainly does have a boot order menu, which is what I've been using all along to get it to boot from the pen drive instead of the hard drive. Normally the hard drive is set as the first boot device. If I want to boot from a floppy I have to move "removable devices" to the top of the list. If you expand the hard drive entry all the hard drives are listed, and the pen drive if I've booted with it inserted. I just move it to the top of the list to boot from it, and that always worked fine until I started messing around with Plop.

OK, I think we're getting warmer! The pen drive does boot to the the Windows 98 startup options screen (as it should do) when the system is started from the Plop boot floppy. However, it will only work to the command prompt. All the CD-ROM and mouse drivers load fine in that case. However if I try and load Windows, in normal or safe mode, it starts loading and almost immediately stops with a drive C: write protect error. So it looks as if something on the pen drive has become write protected/read only. I can write to it fine normally, so I think this is something to do with Plop again. There is a section in the Plop documentation which worried me at the time I read it, but then thought no more of it. It's in the "DOS and the USB driver" section of readme.html, and under the "The Boot Manager as USB hard disk driver for DOS" heading it says - "I know this is very special. Maybe it's useful for some people. You have to configure the plpbt.bin with plpcfgbt to use int19h instead of booting the operating system. plpcfgbt int19h=on plpbt.bin Now you have to start plpbt.bin with a boot manager like grub, syslinux or whatever during boot time (supported boot managers see here). Choose USB and the boot manager will install the usb driver and go back to your boot manager. If you start DOS you will have access to your usb drive as last hard disk. But remember, the usb drive is only as "read only" device available. If it works for you then use plpcfgbt int19h=on stm=hidden cnt=on cntval=1 dbt=usb plpbt.bin" Is this significant? If it means what I think it means, we've been wasting our time all along! I don't think we're actually using this scenario, but is it possible that the pen drive has indeed become read only as far as Plop is concerned?

Thanks den, and thanks even more at this moment to loblo! That program was a lifesaver and rescued the damaged disk with no problem whatsoever. I'm so grateful, I thought my carelessness had resulted in a whole lot of tedious grief. :thumbup :thumbup Now back to why the flash drive won't boot any more............

Well, I now have some bad news, and some VERY bad news! I managed to copy and paste the MBR data from your file to the flash drive successfully, and I was pleased to find that Windows now recognised the drive again and I could display its contents and read from and write to it fine. The first sector now matches the contents of your file exactly, with no mention of Plop. I did the SYS command again, and verified that COMMAND.CON, IO.SYS, and MSDOS.SYS were present and correct. Unfortunately it's still not working! I'm still getting "operating system not found" if I try and boot from it. I tried booting from a floppy with the flash drive set as the next boot device, and it is being seen as drive C: so it's not a drive letter problem. It seems to now be all correct, but the drive just doesn't seem to be bootable. Anyway, now the even worse news. Unfortunately when I copied and pasted the data from your file the first time, I managed to paste it into the WRONG DRIVE! Apart from total stupidity on my part, my only explanation is that mbrwiz had always identified the flash drive as drive 3, and when I went to use the hex editor, I thought, "oh yes, drive 3" and selected it. Of course what I'd selected was "HARD DRIVE 3"! So what I've done is screwed up the MBR of one of my hard drives. Thank goodness it wasn't one of my system drives, so I can still boot both of my operating systems. The drive I've screwed up is my archive drive that contains all my pictures, documents, videos etc. Fortunately I do have a backup of the whole drive which was only made on Monday, so it's not the unmitigated disaster that it could have been, but is there any way of recovering this now? It's just being seen as an un-formatted drive at the moment. I will just reformat it and copy the backup to it if necessary, but I just wondered if there's any change of rescue. Yours ashamedly, Dave. :( :(

Neither fixmbr or winhex will work under Windows 98, even with KernelEx. I thought I would try undoing what I'd done with Plop by using Plop, so I booted from a Plop install floppy disk again as I did the first time, and told it to completely uninstall Plop from the flash drive. This it did, and I now get "operating system not found" if I try to boot from it. I looked at it with Norton Disk Doctor, which said it had no MBR and offered to fix it. I tried that but it didn't sort out the problem so I undid what NDD had done using the undo data I had saved. Windows is now just seeing it as an unformatted drive. Looking at the first sector and comparing it with the equivalent data in the DAVEMBR.BIN file you gave me, they are completely different, but I was pleased to see that all references to Plop seemed to have disappeared from the flash drive. I've tried loading your file onto it again using mbrwiz, but it still obstinately refuses to actually do anything! I could, as far as I can see, copy the data from your file and paste it into the disk using the HxD Hex Editor I downloaded, and I'm sure you can do it with Winhex too. Do you think that's worth it for one last try before I re-format it and start again?!

Tried again with mbrwiz.exe and davembr.bin in a folder C:\Temp. Same result. Tried again with both files in the root of the C: drive. Same result. When I check with winhex after using mbrwiz, nothing has changed in the data at the start of the drive, plop is still in there! Good thought about the space in the path, I know some DOS programs don't understand that, but they usually put up an "invalid path" or "invalid filename" message. I'm getting no error messages from mbrwiz, it's just not doing anything! Of course it would be very easy to just re-format the drive and transfer my backup to it, which should give me back what I had originally, but this is all good learning stuff, and I'm as intrigued as I'm sure you are to find out exactly what's happening (or not happening) here!

It looks as if the problem is that mbrfix isn't doing what it should be doing. I've tried it again twice and then checked again with winhex, and it didn't look as if anything had changed. The output I'm getting is here - When I put in the command line the light on the flash drive flashes briefly, so it is being accessed at that point. There is no further flashing when I press "y" though, and it just goes back to the command prompt with no further messages, which doesn't look right to me.

OK here's the new WinHex export. I hope it provides a clue what's going on! WinHexExport.zip

Thanks Den. I've also noticed that the Flash Drive is generating error messages in the XP System log "RSM could not load media in drive Drive 0 of library Integral ICE Flash Drive USB Device." This is an error that always has appeared when I use SD cards from cameras in USB card readers. It's a known issue apparently, and the error messages can be safely ignored. It's something that MS have never got around to fixing, at least not in XP. The flash drive didn't use to generate that error though, so something has definitely changed in the type of device that Windows XP is seeing it as. Just to give a bit more background, it was formatted using the HP USB Disk Storage Tool 2.1.8, which allows you to make it bootable. I'm just wondering if whatever that did to it has been undone somehow.