"KRNL386.exe cannot be found or loaded"

[teddy123]

when I install windows98se and it is about to start in windows mode

it stops with a message that it can't find/load KRNL386.EXE

("Det gick inte att hitta eller ladda den nödvändiga filen KRNL386.EXE

Åtkomst nekad. Tryck på valfri tangent för att fortsätta...")

First I thought it could be some irq-conflict or something with my SoundBlasterLive PCI-card so

I removed it, but I get the same error anyway :-(

what can be the problem/what shall I do?

I have an ASUS M2V motherboard

I have 2GB memory and did the system-ini changing for that during the install

(adding MaxPhysPage=3FE00 after [386Enh] and MinFileCache=100000

and MaxFileCache=100000 after [vcache] in system.ini as mentioned in http://www.msfn.org/board/computer_win98_t101341.html

I allso tried MaxPhysPage=3C000 instead)

I have ASUS Geforce7600GS/512MB

I have disabled the onboard Realtec HD Sound, Attansic Gbit network, and the Marwell SATA,

and allso disabled SATA in the main settings.

I am installing Windows98se on first partition on the second harddisk (I have winXP on the first disk, and ubuntu on partition5 on second disk, and grub as bootmenu and they work without problem)

when I had the SB Live! card in PCI slot 3, it got IRQ 10 according to the info bios shows at boot

(winXP says it have PCI IRQ 18)

Edited October 4, 2007 by teddy123

[dencorso]

Hi, teddy123!

I don't know for a fact that Win 98SE will work with 2GB. I'm sure it does work with 1GB, because that's what I use in my own system. The four more important mskb articles regarding Win 9x/ME with more than 512MB of memory are: kb181594, kb181862, kb184447 and kb304943, and in view of kb304943 I'd expect you to have problems with more than 1.5GB. Crucial Q3743 also affirms Win 98SE cannot work with more than 1GB.

So my suggestion to you is take out one of yours 1GB memory sticks and see whether the system boots or not. I know this is not a satisfactory solution, and I'm not proposing it as a solution, just as a test, to establish whether the problem is really "too much" memory or not. If it turns out to be the case, then I suggest you try using MaxPhysPage =38000 and MaxFileCache=30000 (thirty thousand, this is not a typo). Andrew Aronoff reports success with 2GB by using those settings, see this thread, especially post #5. MinFileCache=30000 or no MinFileCache at all should be fine also.

Those settings will leave 1152MB of memory unused, that you can transform in a huge RAMDRIVE, by using Frank Uberto's excellent XMSDSK.EXE, which you should load from CONFIG.SYS. And do *NOT* load EMM386.EXE before windows, because, with more than 512MB, it will only be a source of problems, and it's not needed nor wanted by Win 98SE.

Now, if you get your Win 98SE running, but it begins to crash randomly with "Windows Protection Error" messages, then you should consider removing ACPI and APM from your Win 98SE. For more about it see this thread. Of course, as yours is a multi-boot machine, you should leave ACPI enabled and APIC selected, in BIOS, for your other operational systems, in which ACPI works well.

I wish you the best luck setting up your system!

Edited May 29, 2009 by dencorso

[oscardog]

when I install windows98se and it is about to start in windows mode

it stops with a message that it can't find/load KRNL386.EXE

("Det gick inte att hitta eller ladda den nödvändiga filen KRNL386.EXE

Åtkomst nekad. Tryck på valfri tangent för att fortsätta...")

First I thought it could be some irq-conflict or something with my SoundBlasterLive PCI-card so

I removed it, but I get the same error anyway :-(

what can be the problem/what shall I do?

I have an ASUS M2V motherboard

I have 2GB memory and did the system-ini changing for that during the install

(adding MaxPhysPage=3FE00 after [386Enh] and MinFileCache=100000

and MaxFileCache=100000 after [vcache] in system.ini as mentioned in http://www.msfn.org/board/computer_win98_t101341.html

I allso tried MaxPhysPage=3C000 instead)

I have ASUS Geforce7600GS/512MB

I have disabled the onboard Realtec HD Sound, Attansic Gbit network, and the Marwell SATA,

and allso disabled SATA in the main settings.

I am installing Windows98se on first partition on the second harddisk (I have winXP on the first disk, and ubuntu on partition5 on second disk, and grub as bootmenu and they work without problem)

when I had the SB Live! card in PCI slot 3, it got IRQ 10 according to the info bios shows at boot

(winXP says it have PCI IRQ 18)

You could try http://members.aol.com/rloew1/Programs/Patchm.htm to identify if it is your 2gb ram that is the issue

[RJARRRPCGP]

when I install windows98se and it is about to start in windows mode

it stops with a message that it can't find/load KRNL386.EXE

("Det gick inte att hitta eller ladda den nödvändiga filen KRNL386.EXE

Åtkomst nekad. Tryck på valfri tangent för att fortsätta...")

First I thought it could be some irq-conflict or something with my SoundBlasterLive PCI-card so

I removed it, but I get the same error anyway :-(

what can be the problem/what shall I do?

I have an ASUS M2V motherboard

I have 2GB memory and did the system-ini changing for that during the install

(adding MaxPhysPage=3FE00 after [386Enh] and MinFileCache=100000

and MaxFileCache=100000 after [vcache] in system.ini as mentioned in http://www.msfn.org/board/computer_win98_t101341.html

I allso tried MaxPhysPage=3C000 instead)

I have ASUS Geforce7600GS/512MB

I have disabled the onboard Realtec HD Sound, Attansic Gbit network, and the Marwell SATA,

and allso disabled SATA in the main settings.

I am installing Windows98se on first partition on the second harddisk (I have winXP on the first disk, and ubuntu on partition5 on second disk, and grub as bootmenu and they work without problem)

when I had the SB Live! card in PCI slot 3, it got IRQ 10 according to the info bios shows at boot

(winXP says it have PCI IRQ 18)

You could try http://members.aol.com/rloew1/Programs/Patchm.htm to identify if it is your 2gb ram that is the issue

It may be bad hardware, especially the RAM or processor, but how do we know, unless you install Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista.

If you can complete the installation process of those, the hardware probably is fine.

Edited October 8, 2007 by RJARRRPCGP