aurgathor

This probably works, but it takes much more time and it's cumbersome. I need to be able to go from GUI -> DOS, and that would involve a restart with the MSDOS.SYS mod, and with scandisk thrown in.... you get the picture. Anyhow, I just bought a Promise Ultra100 TX2 fron eBay today, and I hope that will fix it. We shall see.

What is your connect rate?

That was a good suggestion and I just installed it, but unfortunately, it didn't help. Still blinking cursor when I try to restart in MS-DOS mode. Edit: but it did fix shutdown, that's no longer a dirty reboot. But for me, the restart in MS-DOS mode is the more serious issue since I use that rather frequently.

I decided to do a clean OS re-install and do a bit of HW upgrade on my spare PC (Dell Precision 410 with 2x450 MHz PIII and 1 Gig RAM) that's been in use since 2002 (W98/W2K) but exhibiting some weird issues lately. I installed a Sil0680 based ATA133 HA (SD-ATA133R from Syba) in said PC, and started setting up Win98 SE as the first part of a multiboot (98SE/2K/Linux) package. After installing the drivers for the ATA133 card, "Restart in MS-DOS mode" and "Shutdown" appears to be really screwed up. The first one is to 'hang the system', the other one is to 'corrupt the filesystem'. I made a ghost-ed image of the system drive just before installing the drivers for said HA, so it's beyond any doubt that the ATA drivers, or whatever else the installer may have changed is somehow connected to this shutdown problem. The only thing installed before the Sil0680 drivers were Win98SE with network support from a CD, and the driver for the video card. (FireGL 1000) The shutdown menu now works in this way: Standby => instant shutdown requiring powercycle to get out Shutdown => quick reboot and corrupt HD/filesystem (at least Win98 thinks that way) Restart => restart Restart in MS-DOS mode => hang with a blinking cursor in the top left corner (requires CtrlAltDel or Reset) To make it even worse, Scandisk will usually runs on boot, and with the following message: "One or more of your disk drives may have developed bad sectors. Press a key to run ScanDisk with surface analysis on these drives..." With a 16 Gig partition, that takes quite a while, so I usually just cancel the surface analysis part. Drive was checked with the factory tool and I let surface analysis to run couple of times to completion -- no problem found, so I'm 99.9% sure that there is nothing wrong with the drive. Any idea on how to fix this? (other than replacing the HA) Boot drive is only 80 Gig, with a 16G partition for Win98. I went thru Win98's built in help, Q232657, turned ACPI ON/OFF, installed a couple of shutdown related patches, but all to no avail. I know that 98SE is very finicky in this respect, but based on the evidence, it's clear that the HA and/or its driver somehow plays a significant role. TIA

Thanks, this is the best reply thus far, but still didn't answer my intended question. It may have been poorly worded, so I guess I need to re-phrase it. Based on the below techspot quote: my main question is: What is the maximum amount of VMM Vindows 98 or 98SE can actually use? (assuming 1G or 2G physical memory) I know I can restrict VCACHE (well publicized) but is there any way to set the size of VMM? It may not be possible, but if there is a way, I'd like to force it to be as large as possible. I suspect the limit on it is 512 meg, but I have no proof.

I don't have anything like EZ-BIOS on any of my HDs -- had it on one a long time ago, but I removed it since it was a constant source of irritation. Which ramdrive do you use?

I have used the freshdevice DL manager a while ago, but it was too buggy for my taste. They may have fixed it by now, I don't know. I don't remember the biggest file, but once I was online for over 8 days (!!) uninterrupted on a $10/month dialup line.

I'm setting up a PC, and decided that I'll try to turn some of the 1 Gig ram I have into a ramdrive that will be used as a swap space for Win98. Anyone tried this before? Which ramdrive program did you use, or which one would be the best from the below list: TIA

Hehehe, I read the replies, but I decided not to comment on them. At least the intent was there. Couldn't find a definitive answer, but it appears to me that memory over 512 meg can only be used for vcache, so I might be better off turning some of that into a swap space via a ramdrive.

I'm currently backing up one of my PC (2 x 450 MHz PIII w/1 Gig) RAM and once I finish (only 300 more gigs to go... ) I'll be installing 98SE one one HD, then W2K on another one. Question: how much memory can 98SE actually use? I know that it requires no trickery to get it working with 1 Gig (unlike my other PC w/2 Gig) but will it actually use the last 512 meg of memory? Would it be better if I were to create a 256 - 512 meg ramdrive, and use it as a dedicated swap space? TIA

I have a CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT that starts a freesco router after a short time. They're shown in this thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=73977 The problem is that occasionally the timed wait just doesn't work! It just sits there showing the menu, and never starts the default entry. (the router) This usually happens after the Linux based router was 'halt'-ed, and then rebooted with the <RESET> button. Any idea on what may be causing this, and how to fix it? TIA

They're good suggestions, but this is a lowly P75 that will be my main router (replacing a P66 ) and once the router portion is properly set up, the usage of DOS or Win98 will be practically non-existent. I use windows because I can easily DL SW, DOS is there because I can only to start te router from DOS, and so I had to disable Win98 GUI. The router is linux based, and it really doesn't matter what is loaded in DOS since it will replace everything that was loaded before.

Thanks for the tips. I guess what I really needed was just a menu in config.sys. I ended up with these: [MENU] MENUITEM=DOS, Start DOS MENUITEM=Win98, Start Windows 98SE MENUITEM=Router, Start Freesco router MENUDEFAULT=Router,10 [DOS] dos=high,umb device=C:\WINDOWS\himem.sys /testmem:off devicehigh=c:\DOS\oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd001 devicehigh=C:\Windows\ramdrive.sys /E 2048 lastdrive=z REM device=aspicd.sys /D:mscd001 [Win98] REM TBD [Router] REM nothing needed here and: if "%config%" == "Router" goto Start_Router if "%config%" == "DOS" goto Start_DOS if "%config%" == "Win98" goto Start_Win98 goto Command_Error :Start_Router router.bat :Start_Win98 win :Command_Error echo Command_Error :Start_DOS PROMPT $P$G SET PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\;C:\DOS\ rem - By Windows Setup - LH C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:mscd001 the important thing for me is that whenever the system reboots unattended (i.e. powerloss) it should always come up as a router.

Ok, I see. I actually wanted to change so I could call my own batch files, but modifying IO.SYS may be a bit tricky.

Is it possible to change the usual Win98SE boot menu (1. Normal; 2. Logged; 3. Safe mode; etc.) by editing some text file, or changing registry entry, or is this hardcoded somewhere in some system file? TIA

How about incorporating the registry fix to remedy the "Properties" slow down described in http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=67485 ? TIA

I have a 2 Gig PC that dual boots W98SE and W2K, and it took me quite a while to get W98SE to be stable. For starters, it would not install with more than 1 Gig in said PC. (had 768 meg in during install) Later, when I got it to boot, it wouldn't run programs, had weird errors about the graphics card, etc. In any case, for me, claims of Win98 running on more that 1 Gig of RAM is in the "even if it's true I don't beleive it" category. Having more that 1 Gig and restricting it with MaxPhysPage doesn't count, unless it's over 1 Gig, which I'm almost certain is not the case for a working system.

Thanks for the investigation, I guess I need to revisit my current solution. I'm not sure ifWin98 has it, but .sec also signed with digital certificates, especially since the extension is derived from 'secure'.

Thanks, I just removed PropertySheetHandler, and that fixed it.

I'm working on setting up a Win98SE box, and noticed that getting "Properties" on big files was really slow, i.e., it would take almost 3 (!!) minutes on a 100 meg file. After going back with ghost images and some selective installs, I determined that the slow down happens after installing "Main Updates (All Updates and Hotfixes)". Questions: does anyone know which particular update is causing this? Would it be possible to make that an optional install, or subsequently remove it? The computer is a 200 MHz Cyrix w/128 meg of SDRAM and 6.4 Gig Bigfoot drive (I know it's sloOow). Getting the "Properties" of the same file before installing main updates takes only a couple of seconds. That means that something is now scans the whole file!!