All these things don't matter because when you boot Win9x installed on USB stick it doesn't use any of the BIOS options regarding hard drives and Win9x uses the 16-bit compatibility mode to access the USB drive. The problem is NOT with the medium or its settings, but with VCACHE.VXD being stuck on something, but we do not know what.

FlameOnion said it would not boot into safe mode with SATA so if USB boots into safe mode then it uses vcache. To tell this you can boot up with step-by-step confirmation with WinME and it will ask whether to load all Windows drivers. If selecting 'no' it will ask whether to override standard drivers and at the bottom of the list is vcache. Vcache cannot be avoided it seems and needs to load when starting in safe mode.

On 12/14/2021 at 12:25 AM, MrMateczko said:

An interesting experiment would be to remove VCACHE.VXD from VMM32.VXD and see what happens

You will have BSOD on VFAT.VXD initing. All reasonable checks WAS done already ;)

Installed softice(I don't know how to use it).Thought maybe it can give some hint or an idea. After I press C to continue, "Vcache protection error" appears

Edited January 10, 20224 yr by FlameOnion

On 12/13/2021 at 3:06 AM, FlameOnion said:

Booted from usb

It is a SATA interfacing problem then. What can be done is to buy a PCI-E Express X1 to Dual PCI Riser Extend Adapter Card and try a different hardware interface to drive your media. Here is the AU one from China https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/322957992584

I ran into this problem on my AMD Threadripper 3960x system, gave up after running into the VCACHE error despite rloew's patches.

It runs just fine on my AB350 2700x system with rloew's patches.

I also didn't encounter this error when I was using ASUS ROG STRIX B450-I GAMING with Ryzen 5 3600.

On 2/25/2022 at 3:56 AM, Damnation said:

Threadripper 3960x system, gave up after running into the VCACHE error despite rloew's patches

The patches would not have any effect until the driver is installed and without vcache there is no drivers.

 

4 hours ago, MrMateczko said:

I also didn't encounter this error when I was using ASUS ROG STRIX B450-I GAMING with Ryzen 5 3600.

I now have tried Ryzen MSI Gaming Plus B350 and it installs the system devices great but there is no Sata driver operating and is operating from the BIOS like it does in safe mode.

4 hours ago, Goodmaneuver said:

The patches would not have any effect until the driver is installed and without vcache there is no drivers.

I recall needing AHCILDR at least for the 1st part of setup, I also tried PATCHMEM to see if that would get past the error but it didn't help.

I believe this VCACHE problem it's related to BIOS implementation and it's not an actual hardware incompatibility... We just don't know yet what breaks the 9x compatibility in BIOS.

This is my conclusion after updating a perfectly compatible and stable 3.x/9x/NT 3.5/4  Ryzen 3900X system on a X470 motherboard with 2 classic PCI slots.

This X470 motherboard simply works perfectly with 2020 BIOS but not with the latest 2021 update which runs immediately into VCACHE error with the very same hardware...

I had for a week a Asus B460 motherboard which had some legacy settings related to RAM operation.  That board didn't gave VCACHE error.

This X470 board has about 200 individual settings in AMD CBS settings, maybe I'll find something useful which can be enabled/disabled.

 

2020.txt_20201.txt.zip

Who wants to sort and compare bios Setup changes from version 2020 to version 2021.Extracted from bios files.

https://github.com/serdeliuk/VirtualBiosMod
https://github.com/BoringBoredom/UEFI-Editor

I sadly confirm that on my new PC with Intel Core i3-12100F and MSI PRO H610M-B DDR4 motherboard with the latest UEFI version (1.70), I am experiencing the VCACHE Protection Error (needed to use HIMEMX to get to that stage). Unfortunately, unless there's a fix for it, this seems to be an end of an era of trying to run 98SE on latest hardware, most likely new AM5 motherboards will also experience this issue  

I could have tried older UEFI versions but do not want to risk my new motherboard just for this, I doubt that would help anyway...

@MrMateczko

you could try this - https://github.com/JHRobotics/patcher9x

This does not solve the VCACHE error

What are you planning to do by installing Windows 98 on a 2021 system? I hope you are not planning to actually use it, because for that using an era correct system would be more appropriate.