Hoo, boy! IOS Errors.

[Eck]

My goodness. I went through 4 full 98SE installations and fully updating them and each time eventually encountered the old Windows 95 error:

While initializing device IOS:

ERROR: Real Mode System memory allocation failed.

Yeesh!

I had never seen this thing before. But I have now read just about every link about it on the net and even bought RegRepair 2000! Besides renaming smartdrv (can't see how that works on a 98SE that doesn't call Smartdrive) or renaming RMM.PDR, this program seems to be the only one that might fix this error if I get it again.

The 3 things in common on all these installations that I haven't used in years are the SBLive card using the last Liveware 3.0 and the VXD drivers with IRQ 5 reserved in the BIOS, PaintShopPro 4.15 that I got free with my old Zoom Modem, and the Communicate software from the same modem cd. Both those programs are very old.

The stuff that triggerred the startup error was installing MSN Messenger 7.0 for 98SE, or installing the latest Internet Explorer update KB908519. Doing either of these 2 things left me with only Safe Mode to boot to, and get this. When in Safe Mode Windows was using the secondary monitor of my ATI x850PRO on one computer, or my 9600XT on my other computer. (I went through 2 installs on both.)

I missed having ANY computer working so I reinstalled XP on the A7V880 just to get back working.

I've since used VMWare 5.5.1 for a 98SE guest installation and have gone through just about the whole updating process now and did not encounter the error.

Smarty that I am, I HAVE NOT INSTALLED those 2 old programs. (Or the SBLive, though I doubt that was the problem.) Even to test. I DON"T WANT TO SEE THAT IOS thing ever again. Gosh. To sit for days updating 4 times through only to get that IOS error was the most annoying thing.

Hee, hee. I spent 30 bucks on that RegRepair 2000 thing. I only hope I never need to use it.

What the devil is installed by old stuff made for 95 that newer updates can't overwrite properly?

[LLXX]

If the virgin install works fine, don't update just for the sake of updating. My system has *never* given me any problems, and I've never updated since installing it, besides upgrading to IE 6.0.

Use MSN messenger lower version or an alternative would be better.

[Eck]

Thanks.

Wow, I haven't used a virgin install since 1999. Don't think a few minutes went by before I applied some update.

Nowadays I either individually apply hundreds of updates (not too fun, but interesting to see what fixed what) or run the service packs (98SE Service Pack and 98SE2ME) and several others manually until I've got'em all.

Do ya go on the net with that thing? I'd be afraid to. Internet Explorer 6 SP1 and Windows itself is not secure without several updates.

Sorry, I like new features and stuff that fixes old buggy software. Heh. The only thing I used PaintShopPro for was changing jpeg wallpapers to bitmaps to keep Active Desktop off. I do the same thing with the fixed Paint.

MSN Messenger 6.2 did not trigger that IOS thing, but since the IE updates did anyway, well that one blew up too.

Anyway, I'm doing fine. But I was amazed at seeing that old Windows 95 error on a fully updated system like that. The old software likely stashed some ancient calls in the Windows ini files that shouldn't be on a modern system. Just guessing, but I suppose they were calling for things at startup that don't exist or replaced what should have been there. Perhaps they installed a ton of old fonts that wouldn't register properly and Windows eventually gave up the ship. I know I saw a ton of font errors in the bootlog, and some double fonts in the font folder.

I'll be setting up the older box again shortly, and I'll see if avoiding those old programs will keep things normal.

[Eck]

Nope, not using those old programs made no difference. I had thought it might be that I was using 2 sticks of 512MB RAM (with the memory optimizations to make 98SE use it properly), but just using 512MB didn't make a difference. It was a 120GB harddrive with all the Windows fixes, so it wasn't a big harddrive problem.

I think the problem is something in Liveware 3.0. In any event I just swaped motherboards back and I'm back up on XPSP2 with 98SE available (in a limited extent) on VMWare. Nice that I used a different harddrive so I could just turn this thing on again and I'm back in business.

This time the IOS Real Mode error thing happened immediately after rebooting from installing WorksSuite 2001. I had figured that since all my previous failures had occured with WorksSuite 2005 installed I would try the older version, but it made no difference.

This time I also tried renaming RMM.PRN (or, whatever the extension was), but that just made the system completely unbootable, even to safe mode.

I tried running Norton Utilities 2002's Disc Scanner through its cd's emergency boot, but that found nothing wrong. Too bad I couldn't run WinDoctor, but I'd need to boot to Windows for that. No, I hadn't installed Norton Utilities or that Registry Fixer for IOS error thing so even when Safe Mode was available (before renaming the RMM file) I was limited in ways to figure out what might really be causing this.

I've never experienced this IOS thing before, but I hadn't used the SBLive and its Liveware in a long time. Even when I was still using the Live regularly, I had been using the WDM 252 driver/software setup. The modern stuff. Apparently even the last released Liveware 3.0 does enough to the files and/or registry to eventually bite your system. This was the Liveware from the SBLive 5.1 Platinum cd.

I'm fairly certain that only installing the basics would work out fine, but I wanted to play with all the fluff again!

I'm also fairly certain that ANY of the modern soundcard solutions I use (currently the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro) sound way better than the Live could ever sound, even with KxProject drivers, so I'm not too upset. But it was a failed experiment (I wanted to use the old SBLive and the Liveware), and that's always dissapointing. The dos emulation within Windows was even working as designed, as I had reserved IRQ 5 for it. The Abit KW7 does this correctly, but my A7V880 (back in action now) puts an ACPI Holder for IRQ Steering there even after reserving it so I need to use LPT sharing on this board for it. (Which I won't be bothering with, since I know what happens eventually!)

No matter, I guess. There's really no problem with things as they are. I just wish I could have overcome the IOS error thing.