Very Good Win9x boot Speedup!

[Tihiy]

Atleast load udma driver before install. Because Win9x setup is completly DOS-based, it will copy files much faster.

[CLASYS]

I see a lot of misinformation, disinformation, and lots of ignorance in this thread, as well as an indication that SOME people actually know something! [Gee, sounds like a public forum....]

There are all sorts of reasons people use any and all O/S'es for various reasons. DOS is never dead, since there are vital applications that have to run from DOS. Simply put, Windows is NEVER a "panacea" O/S, simply because it's not organized around an in-memory model of itself capable of totally unrestricted file replacement guaranteed because said model would have to be totally unrestricted in design. [Note: DOS is NOT the only system capable of doing this trick written by Microsoft; the other system is OS/2 which can be brought up from the BIOS level by 1-3 diskettes to a non-GUI but totally functional system capable of minimal task switching and 100% memory-resident operation. Once IBM asserted its ownership of the code they paid for, Microsoft embarked on a bashing campaign because the "Chicago" project was 4 years late, not yet done, and IBM was getting some rave reviews from the technical press. Gates ordered the project to get a product out, which became the wretched subset Windows 95 rev 0 released in Aug 1995, soon patched to be known as Win95a, which didn't support hard disks bigger than 32 GB nor FAT32 despite elaborate claims that it would have these frills. Win98SE is merely the fulfillment of that project released April 23, 1999 after Win98FE was released in November, 1997 following two other re-releases of Win95 in 1996 and 1997 that did add FAT32 support, but never larger disk support. MS's bashing proved fatal to IBM's product, but not for technical reasons; totally hypocritical to bash your own product merely because it changed hands after you rave about it while you do own it, etc.]

Once you have a memory-resident system, there are lotsa good things you can do with it. One area still being developed constantly is embedded-DOS systems that appear in all sorts of places you never would imagine such as set-top TV boxes by the multi-millions. No hard disk needed, just a ROM big enough to hold the relatively small amount of code of a DOS kernel.

Closer to home, I and hoards of others use programs such as Norton Ghost and PowerQuest Drive Image Professional to backup disks/partitions. These programs run in DOS to take advantage of this model. The UDMA interface sounds like a way to get enormous improvement in backup times with Ghost; will try it and see...

Shane Brooks, the 98lite guy, also runs a business that sells embedded 9x. He can get it down to as little as 5-6 MB stripped of all frills. This is useful for some who need a GUI system, but it's still about 8-10 times as big as DOS in the same arena and beyond the reach of elegant ROM-based solutions. [On modern motherboards we do see 4 MBIT ROM's, but that's .5 MBYTES uncompressed. Big enough for DOS in one chip, but need 8 chips to hold stripped-down embedded 9x.)

Back to Win95 itself: After 95 came out there was an expose book from an ex-employee complete with code examples and provable/reproducible evidence showing that 60% of the code in Win95 was BINARY IDENTICAL to Windows for Workgroups 3.11 [the end-of-the-line product for Windows 3.x] Part of the reasons are for DOS compatibility. Much of this is also true in 98 and 98SE. The part that has to talk with DOS cannot change, etc. But the fact that so little else was different only underscored the fact that MS was farting around with the project for so long accomplishing so little; realistically it took them 8 years past WFW311 to get to 98SE, not to mention years more of so many dozens of patches that are the essence of why we are here for the SP.

cjl (read .sig below)

ps: Isn't it interesting that there are two O/S's identified as "98" when in fact NEITHER of them was released in 1998! Some of us want to call 98SE Windows '99.

[yusmol]

This does help, it reduce 3 sec from my boot and make norton ghost 2003 2.5X faster.

[horsecharles]

no sata-- not trying to flame, btw. They've done wonderful work-- they've even worked up usb2 Dos drivers, etc.

[shaddam]

no sata-- not trying to flame, btw. They've done wonderful work-- they've even worked up usb2 Dos drivers, etc.

someone tried this "strange" fix to get usb mouse support?

http://www.freedos.org/freedos/news/technote/179.html

[horsecharles]

Sorry-- don't like hooking up keyboard & mouse to usb(in windows) so always use the usb to xx adapter...

Have you tried these btw? http://www.stefan2000.com/darkehorse/PC/DOS/Drivers/USB/

and this bootdisk allows a usb2 mouse to be used in dos.... http://www.datoptic.com/Drivers/DAT.exe

it uses duse4.4: http://www.pocketech.net/downloads/duse_4_4.zip this link also available at that stefan page.

Note: duse 4.4 supports himem, 4.9-- if you get that somewhere, no.

[yusmol]

Got few question.

1. Could it be use in windows 2003?

2. Could it be use in bootdisk?

Cuz i run a restore program using bootdisk, so need to load the driver before load the restore program.

[jaclaz]

1. Could it be use in windows 2003?

NO.

2. Could it be use in bootdisk?

Yes, in a DOS bootdisk.

jaclaz

[jasinwa]

for msdos.sys under options:

LoadTop=1

BootWarn=0

BootDelay=0

BootMulti=0

DblSpace=0

DisableLog=1

DrvSpace=0

what's the best way to edit msdos.sys? I know it's not a standard text type file....any trick or editor better to use?

edit: never mind...I will search for it on the web...tried to be lazy!!

[jaclaz]

Actually there are two different "kinds" of MSDOS.SYS:

1) The MSDOS.SYS present in DOS up to 6.22 is a BINARY file

You CANNOT/SHOULD NOT edit this "kind" of MSDOS.SYS

2) The MSDOS.SYS present in DOS 7.0 upwards (i.e. Win 95/98/ME) is just a text file, with a structure IDENTICAL to an .ini file, it can be edited with ANY text editor, the only thing to do is that you have to modify the attributes (Read-only and Hidden) of the file.

You can even use utilities written to modify (for example from batch) INI files.

jaclaz

[MDGx]

Everything about 95/98/ME MSDOS.SYS:

http://www.mdgx.com/msdos.htm