Dave-H

I had this same problem, and it was mainly due to too much stuff in my autoexec.bat. I went to this "bare bones" version, and it worked - @ECHO OFF PATH C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM MODE CON CODEPAGE PREPARE=((850) C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EGA.CPI) MODE CON CODEPAGE SELECT=850 KEYB UK,,C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\KEYBOARD.SYS This is set for a UK English configuration of course. Also I had to REM out a line in my config.sys to get Auto-patcher to run, as indicated - SHELL=C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM /E:768 /P REM ** REM OUT THE PREVIOUS LINE WHEN USING AUTO-PATCHER ** DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\ANSI.SYS COUNTRY=044,850,C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\COUNTRY.SYS DOS=HIGH,UMB,AUTO Give that a try. Good luck!

It seems protection from cheat by DLL injection as same as nProtect technology, cause of AVS is shareware. AVS isn't actually shareware, it is a paid-for commercial program. I do have a licence BTW! Is there likely to be any way around this? It won't work using the EzInstall trick that I used to get my Norton Utilities working BTW, I've already tried. I see, I wonder that irv files can be played as I play the rm and ram files on WMP 10. I think only that If there is any sample irv file , I try it on WMP10. I'm pretty sure that they won't play on any version of WMP. If VLC Media Player can't play them, I'd be very surprised if WMP 10 or 11 can.

Yes, I realise of course that I can't use NTFS if I want Windows 98 to read the drives. Really good to know that you have had systems with Windows 2000 on the C: drive and Windows 98 on the D: drive though. Thanks very much!

Sorry I don't have any to hand, but they are becoming more common. They will play in Real Player 11, but as far as I know in nothing else. Any chance of sorting out the problem with AVS Video Tools? http://www.avsmedia.com/videotools/download.aspx

Thanks win2000, I didn't realise that Real Player 11 was one of the applications that does work on Windows 2000 if KDW is installed. That's great news. Unfortunately if it needs your kernel32.dll installed, I can't do it because I still have the problem that my AVS Video Converter won't work anymore if your kernel32.dll is installed. If you can find a fix for that it would be great. It's strange because AVS Video Tools is a Windows 2000 and XP compatible program, so I don't understand why it doesn't like a modifed kernel32.dll file with XP entry points added, because surely they are there in the "proper" XP dll! Very strange.

Good news!

Yes indeed, sorry of course you were quite right! The order that my operating systems were installed in is the "correct" one. I just wonder if it is actually possible for a dual boot system to work correctly if Windows 98 is on drive D: and Windows 2000 on drive C:. There is a MS KB acticle which actually goes into this - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/283433

Glad you're up and running again win2000. Don't burn out this machine! I hope you might be able to now find out what the problem is that AVS Video Tools has with your modified kernel32.dll file. Also, could I put in yet another request (I realise that you've been getting loads!) I keep running into .ivr video files. These are coded using a Real Media codec, and can only be played using Real Player 11 or later. Of course on Windows 2000 (and Windows 98) you can only use Real Player 10.5, which recognises ivr files but won't play them. I haven't been able to find any other player which will handle them, even the latest VLC Media Player doesn't want to know. Is there any possibility of making Real Player 11 work on Windows 2000? Cheers, Dave.

Thanks again James. Yes, Ranish is a DOS program. If you run it in Windows 2000 it just prompts you to copy it to a floppy and boot from that. I just booted into "command prompt only" DOS mode (which I can do as I have Windows 98 installed of course) and used it from there. With regard to "installing the latest OS last" of course that wasn't the case with my system, which was Windows 98 only for years and then had Windows 2000 added. "the xt guy" seemed to be saying that Windows 98 has to be first as that has to go on the C: drive and won't work on the D: drive. This implies that it isn't possible to add Windows 98 to a Windows 2000 system, as two operating systems can't share the same partition and therefore 98 can't go on the C: drive as 2000 is already there! I'm getting really confused........ Now I just wish I knew why the first stage of Windows 2000 startup is taking even longer than it did before.

It's gone very quiet................. Does anyone actually know any reason why I shouldn't swap my operating systems over so Windows 2000 is on C: and Windows 98 is on D: ? I might actually be able to use the later NTDETECT.COM and NTLDR files then. More importantly, since I did all my messing about, although apparently everything is back to as it was before, Windows 2000 is now taking even longer to start up than it did before! Quite the reverse of what I was trying to do in the first place of course! Mainly it's now spending ages crawling along the very first "Starting Windows" progress bar, far longer than it used to, even though the NTDETECT.COM and NTDLR files are back to the ones that they always were. Anyone any idea why this might be?

Are you saying therefore that you can't add Windows 98 to a machine that already has Windows 2000 on it? In that case Windows 2000 would already be on the C: drive so Windows 98 would have to go elsewhere. My Windows 2000 Resource Kit Book doesn't seem to say that there would be any intrinsic problem with that, only that you might have to use the Windows 2000 Repair Console after installing Windows 98 to repair the Master Boot Record, as it would have been over-written by Windows 98 Setup.

OK, I finally "bit the bullet" and tried changing my disk partitions. I used the Ranish partition editor, which I was very impressed with, thanks Ninho! Well, after lots of agonising and head scratching, I'm now back as I was before! It soon came back to me exactly why I had the drives partitioned as they were. I converted the D: partition to a primary partition with no problem. Unfortunately, when I rebooted I discovered that it was no longer drive D:! It had become drive F:, and the old E: had become D:, and the old F: had become E:. This is no good, because although I can redefine the drive letters using Windows 2000's disk manager, this does not change what DOS and Windows 98 sees. The whole Windows 2000 system configuration depends on Windows 2000 being on the D: drive, and I certainly don't want the drive letters being different on the two operating systems! No matter what I did, I couldn't resolve this. If I disconnected the other two drives, the Windows 2000 partition became D: again. However as soon as I reconnected the other SCSI (E:) drive, it became D: and shunted the Windows 2000 drive down to E:. Even deleting the partition and reformatting the other SCSI drive didn't make any difference, it always became drive D:, whether it was a primary partition or a logical drive within an extended partition. (Many hours I spent verifying and formatting drives yesterday!) To add insult to injury, this didn't even do what it was supposed to do! I had the system with just one physical disk connected, partitioned into C: and D: drives, both primary DOS partitions. Windows 98 on C: and Windows 2000 on D:. All worked fine, even though I couldn't leave it like that as I obviously need the other drives. I then put the Windows 2003 NTLDR file into C:\ and rebooted to Windows 2000. Exactly the same result as before - "\WIN-NT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM is missing or corrupt". So the whole exercise was a complete waste of time! The 2003 NTLDR still doesn't work on my system even if Windows 2000 is on a primary partition. In fact the only way I could get the drive letters to be what I wanted again was to reformat D: as a logical drive within an extended partition, as it was before. Then adding the other drives (also logical drives within extended partitions) didn't change the drive letters. So, a large number of hours spent, terrified of losing my data, all for nothing! Anyway, I am now back to normal, and haven't lost anything, apart from a day of my life......... What I'm now considering is whether to try changing over the two OSs, and having Windows 2000 on C: and Windows 98 on D:. That would put Windows 2000 on the active primary first partition on the drive, which would more closely match the configuration of a single boot system. Anyone thinks that's worth a try (it won't be easy, as I don't want to reinstall both OSs from scratch)?

I was a bit frightened by this at first too, but I've had a lot of success with it. Here's my guide to how at least the system file substitution bit works (I think!) The main system file substitution program is KDLLINST.EXE. When you unzipped the program to its folder, it should have determined the paths to your system files in the system32 folder, and the backups in the DLLCache folder. These paths should be displayed at the top of the program GUI. It appears to display a Japanese character in place of the "\" character, but this does not seem to matter. The "Wrapper" path is the path to the replacement modified files which will be used. The "EzInstall" path will be the path to the executable which is to be patched to work in EzInstall mode. This does not actually replace the system files in the system32 folder, but instead puts them in the folder with the program that you're trying to get to work under Windows 2000, using a more traditional "wrapper" system. To use the program in "full" mode, where it will actually change your system files for the modified versions, you need to click on the box beside each file that you want to change. The versions of the original and substitute will be displayed if "Version Disp" is checked. "EZ KD Registry" must be checked, as that puts the necessary entry in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\ExcludeFromKnownDlls key. If the system files concerned are not listed there, the "EzInstall" method will not work, as the system will always use the files in the system32 folder, and ignore any others. In fact I found that tampering with that key caused my system to refuse to start even using full mode, so always keep it checked! When you've selected the files that you want to change, hitting the "Start Setup" button should bring up a screen telling you what substitutions the program is going to make, and prompting a reboot. You can do as many or as few files at a time as you wish, but I found that some actually needed several attempts before they "stuck". When the file has been substituted correctly, it will say "same version" beside it. I found that three files, Shlwapi, Esent, and SHFOLDER were being apparently substituted with versions with lower version numbers, and in fact this caused Windows Auto Update to cry that I had lost an Internet Explorer cumulative security update, and wanted to install it again. For that reason I have left those files as they were. The first four files listed are the important ones for getting most XP programs to run I suspect. If you want to undo this, just check "Uninstall Mode" and click next to the files you want to restore to their original versions. That has worked fine for me several times while I've been experimenting. To use "EzInstall" mode, do the same thing but browse ("Refer") for the folder where the program you want to patch is so the path is in the "EzInstall" field. Select the files you need as before, but this time hit the "Ez Install" button. I managed to get Quicktime 7.5 and WMP10 to work using this. In fact I found that using them didn't actually give me any real advantages over the versions I already had, so I went back to them, but the fact that the newer versions could be made to work at all amazed me. Win2000 is a genius! I hope this is useful. If so I'll write something similar about the "other bit" the FCWIN2K.EXE program.

Hear, hear!

Ah right, that explains why I dont have the Ntbootdd.sys file. My motherboard is a server board (Supermicro X5DAE if anyone's interested!) It has no on-board SCSI controllers, but uses an Adaptec PCI card which is actually a legacy from my previous system. I posted my boot.ini file contents earlier in the thread.

Hmmm... those 2 are used for SCSI disks I believe. Definately not used for booting from IDE ! -- Ninho arcsetup.exe and arcldr.exe do appear to be required. I would attach the archive with all ntldr, NTDETECT.COM, arcsetup.exe, and arcldr.exe; but MSFN.org forums seems to limit attachment size to 200K (attachment would be like 303 KB).I think arcsetup.exe and arcldr.exe have something to do with ARC paths. For SCSI, Ntbootdd.sys is used. By default, Ntbootdd.sys is not installed when not necessary. Curiouser and curiouser! Both my C:/D: drive and my E: drive are SCSI drives. Not only does arcsetup.exe and arcldr.exe only exist on my system in the ServicePackFiles folder, Ntbootdd.sys does not appear to be present on my system at all! So what does that mean? I have looked at PartitionMagic BTW, and it looks very good. Unfortunately it's not free! I'll have another look at the Ranish program, and at GParted too. Thanks all.

Sorry for the delay in replying everyone, I've been away. Interesting the two files that James_A mentions. Neither of those two files are on my system except in the WIN-NT\ServicePackFiles\i386 folder. I tried copying them to C:\ to see if that was in fact the cause of my problem, but it made no difference. It would have been great if it had been that simple! I will have to bite the bullet and experiment with disk partition managers, to see if I can convert that D: drive to a primary partition, preferably without losing everything. I will be doing backups first of course!

Unfortunately it looks as if you're going to have to do this the hard way! You need to remove all the evidence of the previous installations so the WMP9 installer can't see them. Cut and paste the Windows Media Player folder somewhere else away from within the Program Files folder. Also remove all the files beginning with "wmp" from your system32 folder, and back them up somewhere. Then open regedit, and find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MediaPlayer. Right click and save this key to a backup file. Then delete the original key. I would strongly advise this backing up process of the registry key and the WMP files, in case it all goes wrong and you have to restore the system back to as it was before. Just deleting them is a bit risky! Then reboot, and try the WMP9 installer again. With a bit of luck it will now work, and you'll have WMP9 back again. Then you can delete your backups! Good luck. Dave.

This is fascinating stuff, and it looks from Meados' findings that it's well worth doing. I still can't resolve the problem with my system though. JacobMax suggested earlier that it may be because my Windows 2000 drive is not on a primary disk partition. I have only ever used fdisk to partition my drives, which will not allow more than one primary partition on a physical drive. I realise that there are many other partition management programs out there, so could someone recommend one (ideally free!) that will allow me to make my D: drive into a primary partition, instead of a logical volume within a secondary partition as it is now. At least then I can eliminate that as being the possible problem why the Windows XP and 2003 boot files won't work on my system. I can boot into Windows 98 and backup my Windows 2000 (D:\WIN-NT) system files folder onto another drive, so if the original gets lost by changing the status of the D: partition it won't matter. The critical thing is that the new second primary partition must still be drive D:, and even more vital, the operation must on no account jeopardise the data which is on drive C:, or I will be deep in the brown stuff! Any suggestions gratefully received. Dave.

Hi Meados, My Windows 2000 files are now uploaded where you found the Windows 2003 ones! Let us know how fast the boot is with them. Dave.

The standalone installer for WMP9 is here - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;DisplayLang=en Give that a try if you haven't already.

Try this, as suggested on Win2000's blog. Run Win2000's WMP10 installer again. When the dialogue box "Detect Media Player 10, Delete it and continue?", comes up, hit OK. Let it finish, and then just cancel the install when the WMP10 installer splash screen come up. Worked for me, and I'm now back to WMP9 as before.

Meados I've sent you a PM with links to my Windows 2003 startup files. I just wish they worked for me! Jacobmax, thanks for the feedback. Are you saying that the entries in my boot.ini file do match my drive configuration? If so, we still don't know why these newer startup files won't work on my system. Ninho?

Thanks again Ninho! This is what my disk management looks like. Does it seem OK? I'm not sure how you determine whether a partition is "number 2" or not. The D: drive is certainly listed after the C: drive on disk 0, but does that make it number 2 or number 1 (C: being 0)? Thanks again for all your help. Dave.

Sorry for the delay in responding ninho. I have now checked the partitions on my system disk, which contains drives C: and D:. D: is the Windows 2000 partition. C: is an active primary DOS partition. D: is a logical DOS drive within an extended DOS partition on the same disk. So D: not a primary partition. I believe IIRC that you can only have one primary partition on a disk. Is that the problem?