Dave-H

Thank you both so much! I will investigate those possibilities and report back. I should add that I am very anxious to be able to do this without reinstalling the operating system from scratch! Cheers, Dave.

I would agree that it needs a new thread.

Hi all! This is really a sort of continuation of this thread, but as this is yet another machine, I thought a new thread would be appropriate. I got very tired with my previous Asus X102BA netbook being so slow and unresponsive, and I stupidly managed to crack its screen! I therefore started looking around for a better same-sized replacement. I have ended up with a Lenovo Ideapad Flex 10, which although it's missing a few hardware facilities like an Ethernet port and a card reader, is generally a much better machine. I did what I did the first two times when I updated my netbook, I just swapped the drive across from the previous machine. It is dual boot Windows 10 32 bit and Windows XP 32 bit, although like it's Asus predecessor it's a 64 bit machine. It was originally designed for Windows 8/8.1 64 bit, but when I got it, it had been updated to Windows 10 64 bit. My 32 bit Windows 10 is fine of course, after a bit of tinkering and reconfiguration. I had to disable UFEI of course, which threw me for a short while. I didn't actually realise that it fundamentally only works with 64 bit operating systems! After that Windows 10 seemed fine, but trying to boot into Windows XP produced a rather unexpected BSOD which I'd never seen before saying that the BIOS wasn't ACPI compatible. To cut a long and at the moment irrelevant story short (there will be another thread about this in due course!) I managed to get Windows XP configured as a "standard PC" to work around that problem, but the next BSOD was the dreaded "Inaccessible Boot Device". So I'm now back with the good old issue of how to get it to boot XP in AHCI mode. Where I am now is this. With the BIOS set to AHCI, Windows 10 boots fine, but XP just blue screens. If I set the BIOS to compatible mode, Windows 10 blue screens, but after failing a couple of times and going into the repair routine, I am offered the choice of booting into another OS, and if I select XP it then boots OK. Hardly a permanent option of course! The previous second Asus machine was AMD based, and we found a fix for that by installing an AMD driver. The current machine is Intel based, as the first machine was, and on that machine I simply installed the Intel Application Accelerator and that fixed the boot problem, and I thought that would work on this machine too. Unfortunately not of course! When I try to install it I just get a message that the hardware isn't compatible. I also have an Intel Rapid Storage AHCI driver which also won't install on this machine. There are people who say they have produced universal AHCI drivers for XP, but I've had no luck with any of them either, if I force install them XP won't boot in AHCI or compatible mode, and the only way back in is to use Windows 10 to restore the registry! The machine uses the Bay Trail chipset, with a Celeron N2840 CPU. Anyone any ideas? Thanks, Dave.

My goodness, I thought I was probably the only one left with Norton Utilities 2002 still installed! I've got it installed on Windows 98 and Windows XP, and the Norton System Doctor has never given any problems for me on either system. I haven't got it set to run when Windows starts though.

Presumably you've tried disabling all the startup programs using msconfig? That's what I've always done to eliminate programs causing a problem on startup. Once you've identified which program it is, then the fun starts!

That isn't an option I'm afraid, the computers are just too different. I'm not really that worried about this, although it's been very interesting to find out why it's probably happening. I noticed it years ago, but just assumed that was the way it was by design for some reason. I still can't think of a reason for it, other than an obscure bug in XP which was probably never ever identified, letalone fixed.

Something else I've now noticed while playing. The "More Advanced Options" options' settings don't seem to be saved either for me. They revert on restart to everything checked except "Search tape backup". Are they saved for others? If they are, presumably it's another symptom of the same problem as with the columns.

Well that's even stranger, as effectively I am logged on as "THE Administrator", and my settings aren't being saved! Perhaps it just doesn't like the fact that I've renamed the built-in Administrator account. I'm not going to worry too much about it, but it is puzzling.

Well I haven't actually "fixed" it, just confirmed why it's happening (I think!) Disabling automatic logon makes no difference, so I can only now assume it's happening because I'm logging on with the built-in Administrator account, albeit renamed, and not a normal user account. Why this should be I have no idea. Does saving the columns work for you if you log in using the Administrator account? Sounds like a bug to me, I can't think of any logical reason why it would have been designed that way.

I've now finally looked at my other XP installation on another machine, where I am just a normal user with administer rights, and the default Administrator user is still intact, and the Search columns' settings are being saved on that machine. So it's definitely a by product of the way I have the first machine configured.

Strangely Malwarebytes didn't flag it when the file was first installed. The warning only came up when MB did its weekly scan. I've added the file to the "allowed" list now.

Yes, that's exactly what I did. Why it doesn't save my Search results columns' settings in that configuration is a mystery. Surely it can't be the fact that I have auto logon enabled? It's still using the password, it's just doing it automatically.

Is it C000 or C0000? I'm assuming the latter, I guess C000 was the typo? Anyway, I'm using MaxPhysPage=C0000 now, and all seems to be fine. I'll let you know if I have any further issues, thanks very much for all your help with this as always. Cheers, Dave.

.Net Framework Enumerator.exe is being flagged by Malwarebytes. Detected as MachineLearning/Anomalous.100% Is that anything to worry about, and should I just tell Malwarebytes to ignore it?

OK, a bit more mystery! I took the MaxPhysPage entry right up to 11000, which was still fine and gave me 3070MB declared in System Properties. I then went up to 12000, which was still OK and still gave 3070MB. So, I guess that's as high as it can go! Why it is still working now at that level I have no idea, I can only suggest that the problem was actually having no MaxPhysPage entry at all in system.ini, not the level of it. Anyway, it's working now with my full previous RAM allocation apparently back, so as long as it's stable I don't see that there's anything else to do.

Ah right, thanks. So SystemReg=0 simply stops the registry being scanned on boot. I thought it might stop it being backed up. I'll have to think about adding that to my MSDOS.SYS as that seems to be recommended. I will carry on increasing the MaxPhysPage setting to see when it fails. I'll let you know how high I can go!

What does SystemReg=0 in MSDOS.SYS do? I hadn't noticed that the new entries in HDACFG.INI had been reverted to as they were before! That may well be because I booted the system with HDATSR.EXE still active by accident the first time after I changed them. Should I try again with your new settings making sure that HDATSR.EXE doesn't run this time? I have experimented going up to MaxPhysPage=80000, which gives me 2GB of RAM, and still works as it is.

I have only ever used the DOS version of SCANREG for recovery purposes. SCANREGW only does manual backups as far as I can see, and just out of habit I tend to access it through the Tools menu on the System Information program. Do use ERUNT if you can, it's saved my bacon on many occasions when I've messed up editing the registry! I have it set to replicate what SCANREG does on Windows 98, that is to say back up the registry on the first boot of every day, and keep a maximum of five backups. Anyway, I have confirmed that HDATSR is necessary on my system as it is presently configured. Not loading it results in the registry access error. I've attached my HDACFG.INI file. I simply commented out the original values in the [BUSMASTER] section, and added your new ones. Thanks for all your help yet again! Cheers, Dave. HDAcfg.ini

Thanks. I actually use ERUNT on Windows XP and Windows 10, and have done for years, but I've always relied on Windows 98's own registry backup system. Anyway, I followed your suggestions, added a MaxPhysPage entry to system.ini to limit the RAM, removed HDATSR.EXE from autoexec.bat, and changed the entries in the [BUSMASTER] section in HDACFG.INI to the ones you specified. Unfortunately I got the registry access error again. I reinstated HDATSR.EXE in autoexec.bat, and the system now boots properly, and the sound works! So, it looks as if HDATSR.EXE is necessary. I'm very happy with that, but it would be nice to have my 3GB of RAM back again if it's possible! Cheers, Dave.

Link for convenience to the discussions about maintaining browsers on Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows 2000. Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes

Link for convenience to the discussions about maintaining browsers on Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows 2000. Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes

Have you considered the unofficial Service Pack 4? That apparently contains all the updates until EOS, but not the POSReady updates.

No problem! I read what you posted previously, and all I can say is that my "Dave" account is the default Administrator account, and always has been. It's always apparently worked perfectly like that.

This is what I've got in those settings.

Thanks for the quick response @deomsh! Yes, I'm sure it's a memory problem, but it certainly isn't RAM, with RLoew's patches I have over 3GB available! I tried commenting HDATSR.EXE out of autoexec.bat, and reinstated hda2.dll in system.ini. Bad move! The system didn't freeze this time, it booted up but said it couldn't read the registry and produced the most dreadful mess where a lot of Windows 98 seemed to have reverted to "out of the box" condition, accompanied by a huge number of error popups from some of the installed programs! Fortunately I managed to restore another backed up version of the system files using SCANREG so things are back to as they were before. So, it looks as if with hda2.dll and HDATSR.EXE loading, the system just freezes on the desktop, if I take HDATSR.EXE out of the equation, it looks as if hda2.dll possibly leaves no memory space left to load the registry! Any suggestions gratefully received!