patch9x issues, patchmem, etc on win9x

[cov3rt]

I am testing patch9x (jhrobotics) on a windows 95 osr 2.5 system with intel ich7-m chipset (dell latitude d820) with 4 GB ram. i was under the impression the patch9x would be roughly equivalent or better than patchmem from rloew, but unfortunately, it seems to be regressing in some areas. i specifically downloaded "patcher9x-0.9.91-boot.ima", used winimage to extract the contents, and only integrated the "patch9x.exe" + "CWSDPMI.exe" files in my custom 98SE boot disk iso burned to a cd, (patch9x needs to run from "a:" directory).

The author of patch9x mentioned that fixes from patchmem were largely integrated with patch9x ( not fully ) but most stuff implemented and to work on w95 as well, at least in the most recent release 0.9.91, which is the one i am using, however, i cannot set maxphyspage at 40000 or higher, where as in the past with patchmem, i was able to get up to at least 48000 without problem. "maxphyspage=39999" or lower does work ( roughly 922 MB ram ). minfilecache and maxfilecache were set to 52224 throughout testing with "maxphyspage=30000" to at least up to "maxphyspage=48000".

Additionally, i cannot run patchmem if patch9x already gets installed from beforehand which i do for install media ("c:\win95") in this case before running setup. i was thinking that maybe i could get the best of both worlds for combining the patches, but this doesn't appear to be possible. running "patchmem /m" says something about vmm32.vxd already being patched and vmm.vxd not found. i searched vmm.vxd in both my install media and c: drive and could not locate such file, only vmm32.vxd is present. 

 

Edited Tuesday at 05:53 AM by cov3rt

[SweetLow]

> maxphyspage=39999
JFYI, MaxPhysPage measured in hehadecimal numbers. So 40000h - 39999h is 26215h, not 1.

> patch9x would be roughly equivalent
> i cannot run patchmem if patch9x already gets installed
> i was thinking that maybe i could get the best of both worlds for combining the patches
You have to think twice. patch9x just includes patchmem, what else you are waiting?

>windows 95 osr 2.5
>i searched vmm.vxd
1. It's time to read patchmem manual. There is described which files installer tries to patch.
2. If I remember correctly USB supplement should install newer version of VMM.VXD to %windir\system\vmm32\ if you wish to see this working.

[cov3rt]

ok so i was able to get patchmem /m to work in a late update phase, because the vmm.vxd file became present. it mentioned something about skipping vmm32.vxd due to no backup?, but i was able to patch vmm.vxd at least. 

while i was able to now set maxphyspage higher to as much as 44796, i could not get vbemp driver to load unless using like 30000 ( with 44796, it just went to a black screen ), and even then, when i did reboot, upon reaching desktop, windows complained on not having enough memory, and to quit one or more programs, which i found very odd, because i dont remember if i ever encountered this problem in perhaps a decade of testing win9x stuff. i tried vbemp as low as 10000, min/maxfilecache to 52224, no change for the ms dos problem, but was fixed by changing back to the standard vga display adapter driver. 

also for example using the following in my config.sys ( tested at least with maxphyspage=30000 ) prevented booting to windows, mentioning that initializing error relating to memory, needing to quit one or more programs. "DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS /NUMHANDLES=62 /TESTMEM:OFF
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS", though the config.sys stuff i just referenced are more optional, i dont absolutely need them, it's more of a tweak. 

all in all, it seems to point to patch9x as the problem, and i haven't even tested patch9x on windows 98SE yet with or without patchmem, which i'd be doing soon. outside these things, other programs / functions were mostly ok, i was able to run for example hwinfo32 6.42, TaskInfo2002 v. 4.0.0.51, process explorer 8.52.

[jumper]

 

> 40000h - 39999h is 26215h

40000h - 39999h is 6667h (or 26215 decimal).

So try up to MaxPhysPage=3FFFF if 40000 isn't working.

 

[cov3rt]

Thanks jumper, but im already past that point, your method could be a potential workaround for specific cases. I'm at a point where the system.ini settings probably aren't as relevant as so much trying to figure out what could be the culprit to the misc. problems i was having, like ms dos prompt in windows not being able to launch with vbemp driver, etc.

It could be that patch9x + fix95cpu v.3.0 + patchmem just dont do well together. i think i can uninstall patchmem to see if that might help with specific problems, but honestly, at this point, im really just trying to get specific programs to work, for example, irfanview 4.38 / 4.44 both have major problems and i cant get keyman6-2-183-0 to launch it's keyman application, mentioning kernel32.dll missing export to isdebuggerpresent, ( keyman32.dll and keyman.exe were culprits as viewed by dependency walker ).

also the same missing export kernel32.dll isdebuggerpresent was mentioned by irfanview 4.44 when trying to select the installed plugins menu, and it happens when using the full plugins for 4.38 as well. both irfanview versions fail for loading any jpg file / about page, giving precisely the same error. i really wanted to get at least 4.32 or newer to work of irfanview, because of the webp plugin for example. bmp files work without problem, i tested both without any plugins, but they still fail with jpg files, even using the thumbnail mode to browse a directory with jpg files crashes the system. here is the error specifically from irfanview 4.38:

I_VIEW32 executed an invalid instruction in
module I_VIEW32.EXE at 0157:004dceb0.
Registers:
EAX=00010001 CS=0157 EIP=004dceb0 EFLGS=00210202
EBX=007fd538 SS=015f ESP=007dbd78 EBP=007dbe40
ECX=00800930 DS=015f ESI=00800930 FS=3017
EDX=007fd190 ES=015f EDI=00000000 GS=2b7e
Bytes at CS:EIP:
66 0f 6f 06 66 0f 6f 4e 20 66 0f d5 02 66 0f d5 
Stack dump:
00000000 007fc990 007f4320 007dc0f0 007f4962 000013f6 00000000 0000000e 00000011 007f4320 bff713ee 00000157 bff78913 00000801 007dbdf0 000ee524 

 

Edited 3 hours ago by cov3rt

[jumper]

• MaxPhysPage takes a hexadecimal parameter as multiplier to 4KB page size.
• MaxFileCache takes a decimal parameter that is multiplied by 1KB.

 

• Many Irfanview plugins are no longer W9x-compatible.
• Your CPU lacks the needed instructions:

"Your instruction MOVDQA (66 0F 6F /r) belongs to SSE2."