Dave-H

Thanks all, especially to eidenk and dencorso for all their contributions to this thread. As the thread starter, I'm sorry I haven't contributed to it recently, but I wasn't getting any e-mail notification of replies for some reason. One development, that I have now noticed on my system, is that the boot problem actually seems to appear in two stages. I was always getting the VFAT error BSOD on startup if system.dat got too big, and I've been trying to prune it down as much as possible, both by using automatic compacting programs, and by careful manual editing. If the system.dat file size is below around 12.5MB the system boots fine. If it gets above that, but still below about 12.7MB, the system doesn't blue screen on startup, but just stops on a flashing DOS cursor after the splash screen, and never goes any further. Above about 12.7MB system.dat size, the VFAT error BSOD appears. I don't know if this gives anyone any further clue as to what's actually happening here. I'm still looking at removing all software that writes a lot of registry data, and which I don't use much, to work around the problem, and get the registry size down to a level where I don't have to keep worrying about the system failing to boot all the time! I read that the .NET framework is a big registry data writer, and I have both v1.1 and v2 installed. I still need 1.1 as I know that I have software which I don't want to uninstall which uses it. I am thinking of removing v2 though, as I suspect that alone has written a lot of registry keys. Does anyone know what sort of applications might need .NET v2 as opposed to v1.1? Thanks everyone. Dave.

Thanks dencorso, that's really interesting, and sorry that I've only just seen it! I'm particularly interested in the bit about ".......the SYSTEM hive and the Windows kernel files must fit below 16 MB when Windows starts." That or something similar could well be the case in Windows 98 as well, and could well explain my problem! If this is a fundamental limitation on registry size in Win98, I'm very surprised that it doesn't seem to be more generally known about..............

Thanks for the replies guys! All my ftp sites are listed in the registry under - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Ftp\Accounts This includes an entry for the site I'm trying to add, which seems to have all the correct information! It just doesn't have an icon in "My Network Places", which is what I'm trying to add. Permissions seem to be OK for this key, with full access for all except restricted users (I'm an Administrator). The ftp site I'm trying to add works fine if I use a shortcut in my Internet Explorer Favorites. It isn't a problem with that specific site, I get the same error message if I try to add any site to "My Network Places" using the "Add Network Place" wizard. It just won't complete the operation, saying "the parameter is incorrect". A typically unhelpful M$ error message. How much more useful would it be if it actually told you which parameter was incorrect?!

Sorry to just bump this, bad I know, but has no-one any ideas on this? I have managed to find one other reference to the same problem, on another forum, but again no answer offered. I just don't understand why my "Add Network Places" wizard, which has always worked for me in the past, should suddenly be refusing to let me add any new entries.........

Already checked that page long ago, several times! Everything stated there as a possible cause of the VFAT loading error has always been correct on my system, but when the error appears I still get that error message BSOD and the system hangs. I do remember doing a logged boot several times when I first had the error, before I isolated it down to being related to the registry size, and I think the boot actually croaked on loading the ndis driver. If I did a step by step boot, and skipped that driver, the boot completed successfully. This is of course the same as disabling the network adapter.................!

Thanks everyone. I'd be interested to see the translated pages too please eidenk. [EDIT] Oh, you've posted tham! BTW, I eventually opened your .7z file with WinRAR. As you say, it's strange that WinZip won't cope with it, but I have found a few other compreesed archive formats which only open with WinZip and not WinRAR, and vice versa...... In reply to Sfor, I don't think that having 1GB of memory is causing the problem. There has been much debate on here and elsewhere as to whether Windows 98 can run happily with that amount of RAM fitted, and whether it can actually use it if it is happy! I think the concensus is that there should be no problem with 1GB of RAM, as long as a few tweaks are done, all of which I have done. I've been running like that for quite a few years now, and everything has been very stable on Windows 98 and runs very well. I don't ever need to have a swap file, it all runs in memory. What I am intrigued with is the possibility that scanreg is the source of the problem. If it really can't cope with optimising a registry larger than 8MB, and it's set to check and compact the registry on bootup, it is very possible that it's actually falling over when the registry gets very much bigger than 8MB. This could well prvent the boot from continuing, although it still doesn't explain why the boot will complete if the network adaptor is disabled! This does seem to be a bit of a major design flaw in scanreg, as the registry on a system with many large pieces of software installed is inevitably going to end up considerably larger than 8MB in size! I have disabled start-up optimisation as suggested, and I'll see how it goes. I can always manually optimise the registry with the Norton Optimisation Wizard, or any of the other programs I've kindly been pointed to. Thanks again, Dave.

Thank you so much for that eidenk, that's really helpful. I will certainly look at all those references closely. I downloaded the file from Rapidshare, but what do I open .7Z files with? I assume it's some sort of compressed archive, but WinZip doesn't want to know it! It does look at first glance as if the Japanese guy's method of compacting the registry relies on exporting the sections as text files and then merging them back in again. The Windows Optimisation Wizard in Norton Utilities works pretty much the same way I think, to remove empty space in the registry files, and that is what I've been using to keep my registry size down to a minimum. You can in fact backup the entire registry as a text file and re-import it, which will do pretty much the same thing I think. I am still very puzzled as to why this is happening on my system though. I really can't believe that Windows 98 has a limitation that will prevent it from starting just because the registry has got too big! There was a key data size limit I believe on Windows 95, which was removed in Windows 98, and I know you can set a maximum registry size on NT based systems, but everything I've read says that there is no limitation on registry size in Windows 98. As I said before, I can only assume that it is a problem with the registry not loading properly into memory on start-up. Does anyone know exactly where in memory the registry loads? Is it always loaded into a specific address range? If so, it is possible that on my system the amount of memory available for the registry isn't as big as it should be for some reason, maybe because something on the motherboard is taking some of it up. Perhaps the network adaptor resources, which would explain why it will boot if I disable it. Any more ideas anyone? Thanks, Dave.

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!