Dave-H

I have an issue with my Windows 98SE system which I'm hoping that one of the many Win98 experts on here may be able to shed some light on. It first came up when I tried to install Office XP on the system. The install went fine, but when I re-started, all I got was the dreaded "VFAT unable to load" BSOD. It would boot in safe mode, and by trial and error, I discovered that if I disabled my network adaptor in Device Manager, it would boot normally. I could then re-enable the adapter, and it worked fine, but the system wouldn't start normally with it enabled. I also started to get all sorts of error messages about the registry being corrupted if I tried to test its integrity with utilities like Norton Windoctor. Eventually I had to fix the problem by using scanreg to restore an earlier version of the registry, but this of course didn't contain the necessary keys for Office XP. To cut a very long and painful story short, I had to abandon Office XP (it is actually a dual boot system with Windows 2000, and I now use Office XP just on Windows 2000, with no problem.) Since then I have had this happen again a few times when I've installed new software, and it seems to happen if anything complex is installed which writes a lot of registry data. What appears to be happening is that the boot fails if the registry gets to above a certain size, and it seems to be specifically if the system.dat file gets to above about 12.5MB in size. I recently proved this (I think!) when it happened again when I tried to upgrade to WMP 9 from WMP 7.1. The VFAT error came back again on the first reboot after an apparently successful install. As an experiment I saved some of the Realplayer registry keys as exported files, and deleted the keys. (Realplayer installation writes huge amounts of data to the registry.) The system then booted fine. I merged the keys back in, and the system wouldn't boot again! The system is just on edge on this, as I have been able to cure the problem occasionally in the past by compacting the registry by using an optimisation program. However I have now uninstalled the Realplayer, which has reduced the registry size considerably, so that I'm not in imminent danger of this happening again if I install something! Realplayer was the obvious thing to remove as it does write a huge amount of stuff to the registry, and I didn't use it much anyway. I'll probably just install RealAlternative now instead. I should say that Realplayer always worked perfectly when it was installed. So, does anyone have any idea as to why this was happening? Everything I've read on this subject, and believe me, I've searched a lot, implies that the size of the Windows 98 regisrty is limited only by disk space and memory. I have a huge amount of both. The symptoms seem to indicate to me that something is happening when the registry files get to a certain size which is preventing them from loading into memory. I have 1GB of RAM, which Windows 98 seems to be recognising and using. My motherboard is a Supermicro dual Zeon server board (Intel chipset), which I gather hasn't been tested with Windows 98, but seems to work fine apart from this issue. Could it be a motherboard issue? Does the Windows 98 registry go into some special place in memory which isn't as big as it should be for some reason? Is disabling the network adaptor somehow releasing space which is allowing the registry to load? If anyone has any clues on this, I would be very grateful to know, because no-one I've asked so far has even ever heard of this happening before! Thanks, Dave.

Yes, Windows 9x does not function correctly with Universal Extractor. Beginning with v1.6, UniExtract will no longer work at all under 9x due to a combination of changes in AutoIt and the continued difficulties involved in trying to make it work under the older and unsupported OS. If you need to use it under 9x, please look through the last few pages of this thread. I exchanged posts with another 9x user, and he did some testing of various UniExtract versions to see which worked best. You may want to give that a try. I was that user! Rather belatedly, I can pass on that version 1.3.1 was the most successful under Windows 98SE on my system. I hope this helps. Cheers, Dave.

My "Add Network Place" wizard seems to have stopped working (Windows 2000 SP4). The wizard runs OK, and I can enter all the information, but when I click to add the network place, I always just get an error message which says "unable to connect, the parameter is incorrect". I already have several network places installed, all of which still work correctly. I dare not delete any of them in case I can't now put them back! They all point to FTP sites, as does the one I'm trying to add. I can browse this FTP site OK in Internet Explorer, so I know that the parameters I'm putting into the wizard are correct! Also, I have read that going to an FTP site in IE should auomatically add it to the "My Network Places" folder, but this isn't happening. Anyone any ideas on this? Thanks.

Hi again Nitro. Thanks for the download page of previous versions! I have tried almost all versions with my Windows 98SE setup, and reached the conclusion that 1.3.1 seems to work the best. I am using the installed version. Even that occasionally throws up an error message, and doesn't support as many file types as the later versions of course, but most of the time it does work under Windows 98. Maybe that's the latest version that you should recommend to Windows 98 users, as I had no luck at all with any of the versions of 1.4, or 1.5. I will install 1.5 on the Windows 2000 side of my machine. Looking forward to 1.6! Thanks again. Cheers, Dave.

Thanks again. I managed to find and download a copy of version 1.4.2, which produced exactly the same error message as 1.5! I tried the exe installer version and the rar archive version, with the same result. I can't find a copy of 1.3.1 anywhere to download. Could you point me to somewhere I can get it? What is the "other" version of 1.5? Do you mean the non exe installer version? Cheers, Dave.

Thanks for the reply nitro322. I thought that it looked like something pretty fundamental that was causing the error message! I understand the Windows 98 compatibility problem. The only thing I would ask is whether there is an earlier version of Universal Extractor that does work under Windows 98 still available anywhere? I could then install both versions on my dual boot machine. Cheers, Dave.

I've just installed version 1.5 of Universal Extractor on my dual boot Windows 2000 SP4 / Windows 98SE machine. Works OK on Windows 2000, but on Windows 98SE I'm getting an error and the program won't work. Searching this thread it looks as if some others have seen this too, on earlier versions going back a year! Is the there any fix as yet? The program is supposed to work under Windows 98...........

Thanks miko, Very interesting...........

One of the main reasons I wouldn't use XP over 98 or 2000! Thanks for the tip about avoiding the file locking, I will try that. I have a customised .htt with movie preview for the shared "My Documents" folder which is used on 98 and 2000 (dual boot). It does lock the files and prevent renaming etc. on 98, but not on 2000. Good to know that this is probably avoidable!

Be aware that if you do enable movie previews in Windows Explorer under Windows 98, you will have problems with files getting locked by the process. If you click on an avi file say, and the WMP preview pops up, you will not then be able to rename or delete that file, as the OS will report it as being in use. This limitation does not happen in Windows 2000 or XP.

IT'S "IT'S" gamehead! Sorry, I just couldn't resist..................

Hi everyone, My first post to this Office forum. I am using Office XP, with all available updates, under Windows 2000 SP4, with all patches and updates installed. Everything works fine, but there is one anomaly which is bugging me. If I use the help files in, say, Frontpage, everything works fine, but if I go to a help topic which involves getting information from the web, I immediately get a huge number of messages written to the Windows 2000 Application Event Log. There must be at least 30 identical messages every time! This does not happen with locally stored information, only web-based information. An example is - The description for Event ID ( 1904 ) in Source ( HHCTRL ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. The following information is part of the event: http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/assistan...0346741033.aspx, http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?LinkID=45840. This is just repeated over and over again a huge number of times. Functionality doesn't seem to be affected, everything works, and the help topic correctly displays. The messages are "information" messages rather than warnings or error messages. Even so, it's filling up my log and causing other messages that I might need to refer to to be pushed off the end of the log and lost. Has anyone iny idea why this is happening, and how I can stop it? As far as I am aware I have the latest HTML help system files installed. Thanks, Dave.

Thanks erpdude. I don't think I'm going to worry about it. Updating my ATI video driver I know will cause more problems than it solves! I'm using the latest version that I found which doesn't have the very annoying bug that the display crashes when switching between full screen DOS and Windows. When that happens I have no choice but to re-boot. Very annoying. I'll stop worrying about the missing 2MB, as the system seems to work perfectly well anyway. I only wondered if anyone knew a definite cause with an easy fix! Few computer problems come into that category I know! Cheers, Dave.

I haven't actually opened the box up to look, but there are no such jumpers or switches mentioned in the motherboard manual............

I have no such setting available in my BIOS.

It sounds as if MS deliberately remove the ability to display the processor information from version 4.10.2224, if the processor names were all removed. That can't have happened by accident! I wonder why they did that.......... Anyway, I'll carry on using the version of 4.10.2222 that I've now got, thanks to everyone here!

Thanks somewan. I did check bootlog.txt after the bad startup, and it was very short. In fact there were no entries after - [000DFD33] LoadSuccess = C:\WIN-98\IFSHLP.SYS I assume that is the point that the system crashed. The next few lines on a good startup are - [000DFD33] LoadSuccess = C:\WIN-98\IFSHLP.SYS [000DFD45] C:\WIN-98\COMMAND\MODE.COM[000DFD45] starting [000DFD45] C:\WIN-98\COMMAND\MODE.COM[000DFD46] starting [000DFD48] C:\WIN-98\COMMAND\KEYB.COM[000DFD49] starting [000DFD6D] Loading Vxd = C:\WIN-98\system\VMM32\VMM.VXD [000DFD6A] LoadSuccess = C:\WIN-98\system\VMM32\VMM.VXD [000DFD6A] Loading Vxd = C:\WIN-98\SMARTDRV.EXE [000DFD6A] LoadSuccess = C:\WIN-98\SMARTDRV.EXE [000DFD6A] Loading Vxd = vnetsup.vxd [000DFD6A] LoadSuccess = vnetsup.vxd [000DFD6A] Loading Vxd = ndis.vxd [000DFD6A] LoadSuccess = ndis.vxd [000DFD6B] Loading Vxd = ndis2sup.vxd [000DFD6A] LoadFailed = ndis2sup.vxd [000DFD6A] Loading Vxd = JAVASUP.VXD [000DFD6A] LoadSuccess = JAVASUP.VXD [000DFD6A] Loading Vxd = C:\WIN-98\system\VMM32\CONFIGMG.VXD [000DFD6A] LoadSuccess = C:\WIN-98\system\VMM32\CONFIGMG.VXD [000DFD6A] Loading Vxd = C:\WIN-98\system\VMM32\NTKERN.VXD [000DFD6A] LoadSuccess = C:\WIN-98\system\VMM32\NTKERN.VXD BTW as you will have gathered, my Windows 98 folder is C:\WIN-98, not C:\WINDOWS! Likewise my Windows 2000 folder is D:\WIN-NT....... So it does look as if the system was falling over at the point that the network drivers would have loaded. As you can see, it doesn't load ndis2sup.vxd, but that has always been the case, I assume because it's not needed on my system.

Thanks again erpdude! I do have a setting in my bios for "AGP Aperture Size". Apparently according to my motherboard manufacturer (Supermicro) it sets aside system memory for the graphics card to use for textures. I used to have it on maximum (256MB), but apparently you might as well leave it at the default (64MB) if your graphics card has 128MB or more of on-board memory, as setting it higher will make no difference to the graphics performance. As my card has 128MB I set it back to 64MB. I don't think this explains my missing 2MB, but I'm sure you're right that it is the graphics card stealing it, which is why it doesn't show as missing in Safe Mode when the drivers aren't loaded. Windows 2000 does show the correct amount, but that's completely different of course!

Thanks LLXX. I've got Norton Utilities and that has a very good registry optimiser which compacts the registry. I've already got the files down to a reasonable size which works. What I'd really like to know is why Windows 98 won't start normally if they are above a certain size, because that just shouldn't happen!

Indeed, and the version in the Service Pack is 2224. That's why I wondered what had happened to 2223! Thanks for the information. I only have 20GB of space left on my C: drive where the swapfile is set to be located, so am not troubled by the negative value bug if it's still there. I will stick with version 2222. Thanks all!

Dare I mention Norton WinDoctor? Part of Norton Utilities though....... Woks fine for me.

Has anyone else run up against this issue? I am running Windows 98SE SP2.1a on a dual boot machine with Windows 2000 SP4. I recently decided to install MS Office XP (2002) on the system. When I installed it on Windows 98, it appeared to install correctly, and worked fine, but when I restarted I got the dreaded BSOD "A device required for VFAT is missing or unavailable......system halted." I could boot into Safe Mode, but not into normal mode. I installed Office XP on Windows 2000, where needless to say it worked perfectly! To cut a very long and agonising story short, I discovered that I could boot Windows 98 into normal mode only if I disabled my ethernet adapter first. This is an Intel on-board device which had worked perfectly for 18 months. The same result could be achieved by not loading ndis.vxd on a step by step startup. The strange thing was that once the system had started normally, the adapter could then be re-enabled and worked perfectly! I had to remember to dis-enable it again before shutdown though......... I spent weeks trying to resolve this, unloading and reloading network drivers, researching on the web, to no avail. One thing I had noticed when I looked at backups was that my registry files had become much larger as a result of the Office XP install, and it was this that turned out to be the problem. If my system.dat file is bigger than about 12.5MB, I cannot boot into normal mode without the VFAT error, unless I disable the network adapter first! I had uninstalled Office XP (which was the first thing I tried of course) and this made no difference to the problem. It wasn't until I labouriously went through the registry manually deleting all the hundreds of entries that the Office XP uninstaller had left behind, that the size of the registry files went down enough to allow the system to boot normally. Talk about bloat, Ofice XP increased the size of the system.dat file by over 2MB! It was as if the registry files had become too big to fit in memory at start-up. I can only assume that disabling the ethernet adapter freed up enough extra memory for the system to start, and the adapter could then be re-enabled as it was then using a different bit of memory, ........or something like that! All my researches seemed to say that there is no practical limit to the size of the registry in Windows 98, as I believe there was in Windows 95, so I am very puzzled by this. I don't know if free conventional memory is an issue here. I have over 500K free, and 1GB of RAM, with all the necessary tweaks to allow for this, vcache size limit etc. I have a bare minimum of entries in config.sys and autoexec.bat. In fact bypassing these files and system.ini and win.ini on start-up made no difference to the problem. The only anomaly I've noticed is that my system reports only 1021MB of RAM present instead of 1023MB. In Safe Mode the full 1023MB is reported. I can find no reason for this despite researching the MS Knowledge Base and on the web generally. Has anyone any ideas on this, or has anyone had the same or similar problems? I obviously know what the problem is now, and how to avoid it (I certainly won't be putting Office XP back on Windows 98 for a start!) I'm just puzzled as to why it's happening.......... Happy New Year, Dave.

Thank you so much! That has restored by processor type display, but not my apparent missing 2MB of RAM! I'm amazed MS issued a version of the file with such an obvious bug in it.......... BTW, what happened to version 2223, and did it have the bug too? Cheers, Dave.

Thanks for the quick reply! That's interesting, I wasn't aware of a "negative value" bug. Was this in the amount of RAM display? My General tab, as well as missing the processor information, also shows only 1021MB of RAM, when I have 1023MB. It shows this correctly in Safe Mode. I cannot find any explanation for the missing 2MB, so maybe this is another issue caused by a problem in that file version. If you can find the corrected version so I can try it that would be excellent. Thanks again. Dave.

Gape, I've been using your Service Pack for 98SE for the last several versions, now 2.1a, and thank you so much for producing it! Just one minor query. I've noticed that since installing the Service Pack, the "General" tab on the "My Computer" properties no longer shows any detail about my machine's processor. Is this due to a problem in the replacement shell dlls? Thanks, and Happy New Year! Dave.