Auto-Patcher For Windows 98se (English)

[Eck]

Um,er, I'm using XP. My 98SE in this setup has been in a VMWare virtual machine. That's about to change in the next day or so as my hard drive will be blanked before installing BootIT NG, 98SE, XP, and OpenSUSE 10.2.

But yeah, sorry, but I've been conducting most of my recent business from XP.

I just don't have the money for Vista now. I've got a second hard drive in here just waiting for it (used it for the pre-releases), but it'll stay blank for now.

Hmm, I hadn't had those MSVCR80.dll winoldap errors. I used to get winoldap errors a lot when I was running MS-DOS games within Windows but now use either Dosbox or run them from a reboot to dos mode shortcut (or from MS-DOS Mode directly). It might just be that I haven't been running the dos windows while an application was using MSVCR80.dll so that's why I haven't seen the errors. I don't use dos much except for the old games.

I hope you didn't mean that the errors where happening while running auto-patcher. That would be a bad bug.

Nice that Softpedia has it! Too bad about the lack of community support. This project should be a sticky and really should become the preferred method to update a fresh Windows install, or even an older Windows install since it only updates what isn't already there. That would be an easy way to get the current updates added on without figuring out where or how ourselves.

It may be dos based, but it's run in Windows. So what if it doesn't look pretty.

Hmm again, on a real hard drive install I'll probably want my motherboard and videocard drivers installed before auto-patcher. So I'll likely be installing Internet Explorer 6 SP1, DotNET 1.1, SP1, and 2.0, and Direct X 9.0c beforehand.

However, maybe that's the nice part about not having a Windows GUI. Perhaps I'll just adjust the large memory stuff in 386 Enhanced of system.ini (so the thing will run on my 1 Gig of memory) and then just run auto-patcher. I could do all the motherboard driver stuff afterwards I suppose. Not sure though. But having it be a dos window type of program negates the need for the videocard drivers that offer nice resolutions being necessary. It might possibly even help to have Windows updated before installing any drivers Windows didn't come with. As I advised someone who was having problems, sometimes doing the driver installs afterwards ensures that the newest files are installed by the driver and that older files these drivers would use are replaced correctly as they aren't in use while the updates are running (not having been installed yet.)

Yeah, I'll try that and see what happens. Install Windows, make the memory adjustments, run auto-patcher. Whenever I finally get back on the net I'll let you know. After all, I'll be installing 3 operating systems so this will be a while!

[DeadDude]

Well, either way... I got it through BitTorrent and I am currently seeding at 156k/sec to 5 different people....

Like I said, if anyone needs something shared, I'll contribute where needed...

I will be taking this offline periodically, but whenever this pc is on the files will be shared...

I know this is a 98 area... but like others, my primary internet machine is XP.... and I figured those sharing may benefit from that info...

See ya

**Sticky this thread please...**

[glocK_94]

Version 1.8!!! Didn't even have time to try 1.7! Ok, will download ASAP. : (nice avatar by the way soporific).

[soporific]

Version 1.8!!! Didn't even have time to try 1.7! Ok, will download ASAP. : (nice avatar by the way soporific).

Che Lives !!!

OK, let me state that my enthusiasm for this project has been recently greatly renewed ... yay!! ... i dunno, but seeing your project appear on a major download site for all the world to check out, rate, review, etc ... well, it sorta gives you a reason to actually make it as good as you possibly can (not that I wasn't trying to anyway) because so many people will now be checking it out ... its only been up for a day or so and already hundreds have downloaded it, and the page has been viewed by nearly a thousand, so a big thank you to Randy Rivers for uploading the program to SoftPedia (it was you wasn't it?) and it's also listed in the 'Week's best' column to the right of the Windows apps section.

Anyway, I now promise to keep developing the program even though I was going to hang up my computer hat, and put on my music hat for most of this year. Looks like I'll be doing both. For those interested to hear what my music sounds like, I've already got 3 finished tunes that i'll find a home for within the week. I'll add the URL to my profile, stay tuned ...

So, yeah, i'll be needing lots of feedback .... so i'll add my voice to the call for this project to be stickified ... sticky please?

Edited January 30, 2007 by soporific

[Randy_Rivers]

np its a good program it need national attention and softpedia is a pretty major outlet and in turn will eventually be picked up by others etc.much like gapes sp 2.1 so run with it.All these projects in the 98se forum or any for that matter eg.nlite are here to help out people who otherwise would be unaware eg. people bash 98se for its bsod after gapes sp hit the market that shifted to hey lets take a second look at 98se etc.It all comes down to you guys programmers making these unoffical apps that drive the msfn community or any other opensource outlet.Sure some may say that its only 98se why the effort ,i say why not ill tell ya i install 98se on alot of pc for friends and family due to finical or lowend pcs and this saves alot of time burn ie6 dx9 etc on a mutitude of cd ,this is perfect a one stop cd thats good 2 go .So all you programmers who toil over inf exe.batch files dll. i salute you because you help out so many people who otherwise would struggle with a corrupt or shakey os . Edited January 30, 2007 by Randy_Rivers

[Drugwash]

I hope you didn't mean that the errors were happening while running auto-patcher. That would be a bad bug.

Unfortunately. Otherwise, why would I be mentioning that in this topic? They happened during the scanning of the system for the report creation.

Of course, while running auto-patcher with the purpose of actually installing it, all other applications should be closed, however there may still be the chance of having one background app still running - such as a firewall or something - and if that one is linked to VS2005 libraries, it will spoil the party.

If anybody else would be able to test this situation, please do. I'd be happy to know that it's only my setup that behaves while everyone else is fine, however if not, there may be the need to dig into this issue and find a quick and reliable fix.

Softpedia will give this project the boost it deserves. Keep up the good work, soporific - you're in the light now!

[iWindoze]

Okay, I finally bit the bullet, backed up my WinXP nLite install and decided to give installing Win98SE on my Dell Inspiron 5100 another whirl...

First I killed the WinXP partition and formatted myself a FAT16 partition with second partition for Applications and Temp folders, which I intend to do later after I figure out a few more things. I had already copied over the Win98 setup folder and extracted the files from the SP2.cab from GAPE's Unofficial service pack to the install folder. Once I had everything the way I wanted I used my BartPE cd to copy things to the new partition and started things from the MAD boot disk (on the Ultimate DOS boot cd) and let Windows 98 install. Things went well at that point only giving me some headaches when I came to the PCMCIA section of the driver detection. Whatever...

Then once I managed to boot into Windows--the lovely blue screen complained to me about drivers, so I restarted into safe mode and installed the chipset drivers from Dell and the Omega Radeon Drivers for Win9x. It was around that point I realized I had no cdrom. ARGHH!!!

I went ahead and installed the Autopatcher v1.8 BETA from my E: drive, which is where I keep my 'My Documents' pointed at in all my Windows installs. The thing took only half the promised millennium to install to the default installation path, but made up for everything when the program itself ran, so I don't feel too gypped.

Things went rather smoothly (AFAIK) from that point on, there only being a few complaints about newer files already having been installed (from using the SP2 Windows 98SE slipstream install method) and I had to ask it to retry installing the FTP update twice before it managed to install properly (again, AFAIK).. Over all I thought it went pretty good. I'll be tinkering around with the Windows98SE install later on and seeing if I can get some of the supposedly WinNT5.x drivers to install any way, I'm back in Windows XP for now... Thanks for the work you've done putting this thing together!

My install log is attached to this post! I hope it helps!

--iWindoze

PS: I almost forgot, when ever I wanted to select more options the code always made me re-toggle the selection, is this a feature or a bug?

I_Result.log.txt

[soporific]

My install log is attached to this post! I hope it helps!

The log files and report files are the best "easy" thing to do to provide feedback. SO thanks heaps.

PS: I almost forgot, when ever I wanted to select more options the code always made me re-toggle the selection, is this a feature or a bug?

A feature. When it was still a fairly new feature there wasn't too many modules with options so when someone had finished with the options, I thought they'd prefer to have the toggle reset. Now that there are lots of modules you can set options for, its not so obvious which behaviour to go for. Unless people have huge objections I'm going to leave it as it is.

EDIT: OK, I think i've found the first bug in v1.8 --- iWindowze's log file confirmed it for me, and I have already reported it on MDGX's latest updates thread so go there for more info. It is the kb905495 package --- it wont install normally but if you unzip it and manually run the command, it installs fine. The code doesn't catch these types of errors unfortunately (or maybe i can set a errorlevel check, does anyone know?) and so the program will keep trying to install it, no matter how many times you run Auto-Patcher. I have already made my own installer for it so it will be fixed in the next version.

EDIT 2: I just finished reviewing the log file I was given by iWindoze and it all looks good. The only other thing of interest was:

18:16:10 -- superceeded title -- OLEDBUP - OLE DB Provider for Internet Publishing Update

I don't get a superceeded message on my test systems -- Do us a favour can you? Can you check for the file version of this file and path -- C:\Program Files\Common Files\system\ole db\msdaipp.dll -- my code says it should be 8.102.4004.0 and if yours is later, is it 8.103.4004.0 and if its not, any idea where it came from? Cheers, man. If only everyone would at least do a report on their system, this project would be a millions times more accurate....

EDIT 3: a new feature was just added: when you get reports of superceeded hotfixes, the log file now tells you:

* the path & filename of the file being checked for its file version

* the file version number

* and also the file version that Auto-Patcher wanted to install.

This should make reporting back on questions like above much easier... hopefully all people will need to do is post their log file or report file.

Here's a sample:

--------------------------------------------------------------------
 15:18:02 ++ the System Stability Hotfixes module was started
 --------------------------------------------------------------------
 -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  - 
 15:18:08 -- superceeded title -- q260067 - Mapped Drives Update
 C:\WINDOWS\system\user32.dll has file version: 4.90.0.3001 
 The file version Auto-Patcher wanted to install was: 4.10.0.2227
 -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  - 
 15:18:16 ++ No titles need to be installed.
 Environment space now used: 765 (this is usually between 500 and 1000)
 --------------------------------------------------------------------

If anyone thinks of other useful features, you know what to do... things I was thinking of adding:

* a report function that tells you what you HAVE installed (not just what is missing)

* the log file to record the number of installations carried out during a particular patching session. Its annoying having to scroll through the entire amount of logfile text looking to see if anything was installed. The only problem with this is it adds more complexity to the install process, and may slow it down a little. Still, I think this would be a great addition ...

* automatic access to this project's homepage from the main menu (already added)

* a pretty full on feature would be to choose not to install any of the unofficial updates. I can think of a few good reasons why some people might want this. I'll have to work out how to integrate it into the program options so its not something I can just whack in ...

* the program does all your housework including mowing the lawn and making cocktails --- now I'm just getting silly, its obvious Auto-Patcher will be better suited to pouring beer and rolling spliffs...

Edited January 31, 2007 by soporific

[Drugwash]

Regarding superceded reports (and not only, I may add), maybe it'd be best to keep the verbosity low, thinking from the log's length point of view. I've been thinking of something like:

15:18:08 superceded: q260067 (Mapped Drives Update)

C:\WINDOWS\system\user32.dll

Current: 4.90.0.3001

Attempted: 4.10.0.2227

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\Updates contains information about currently installed updates. Could be used to check for succesful/broken updates.

A tad below Setup is the Uninstall key, containing keys with the paths to the uninstallers for each application that has one. Those paths can be used to track down currently installed software, such as 7-Zip, DUN 1.4 or DS Client for Windows98, that I currently have installed but are not detected by auto-patcher's report routine.

About the other suggested features, I think I'd agree with pouring beer, for now.

[Eck]

He, he! I made it back to the web.

I changed the install folder to c:\autopach so I could keep it around when I delete everything it the Temp folder.

Yep, the 905495 loops. I guess I'll install it manually as you said that's the way to do it.

The process went fine with no more errors about environments and stuff. The usual assortment of Windows Updates that it says I need is there. I won't bother with them. Most are superseded by unofficial updates the auto-patcher takes care of.

My problem remains my personal bootup error of "Error loading device IOS, real mode memory allocation failed." My temporary work around was to cut and paste smartdrv.exe from the Windows folder to the Windows\Command folder so I can still have use of it for MS-DOS Mode. I'll need it to exist somewhere and I figured that the Command folder was a nice choice as it get put into the path.

I tried all sorts of ways to solve it like changing to the version that comes with 98SE instead of the WinMe version that comes with 98SE2ME, replacing RMM.PDR with the one on the 98SE cd (although I think it's the same one), etc, etc. Nothing allows bootup unless smartdrv.exe does not exist in the Windows folder.

See, everything is fine until any particular software is installed, doesn't matter what and that software does nothing that relates to smartdrv, and then the bootup error occurs. Then I need to go into safe mode and get smartdrv permanently out of the Windows folder. And I never know what install will trigger this. It has been with completely random software installations.

The work around would be fine, except that the last time I had 98SE on a real hard drive (as opposed to VMWare where this never occurs) the error happened again when I rebooted from installing something after I had already done the work around. So I had no clue at that point which file was causing it and therefore had no way to fix it! That stank!

I think this has some relation to video drivers as once when I was originally troubleshooting this before I learned about smartdrv, a return to the Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA) enabled me to get back into normal mode. But even redoing the Via AGP and the ATI or NVidia drivers brought back the bootup error. Obviously I liked the smartdrv work around better! No way I'm operating without video drivers.

Of course, nothing is calling for smartdrv.exe to be loaded so I'm at a complete loss to understand why it has anything to do with a Windows bootup problem. I've checked msdos.sys and all the files in sysedit, msconfig, etc, and absolutely no reference to starting smartdrv is in anything I can see.

DRAT, DRAT, DRAT! What the heck is this thing really caused by? If anyone ever comes up with a permanent fix for this I'd pay! Since it happens on some other unknown file even after the smartdrv work around I suspect it really doesn't have anything to do with smartdrv itself, but something that triggers IOS.VXD to not like any particular file existing in the Windows folder. And it is always triggered by a restart after a software installation.

[Eck]

Oh, and that SHELL98 must not be the cause of the weird Explorer windows problem as I activated that in auto-patcher and suffered no problems. I've also installed 98SE2ME and 98MP10 afterwards with no problems either.

Hmm, wonder what caused that? Well, it's just nice it isn't happening anymore.

[iWindoze]

I just finished reviewing the log file I was given by iWindoze and it all looks good. The only other thing of interest was:

18:16:10 -- superceeded title -- OLEDBUP - OLE DB Provider for Internet Publishing Update

I don't get a superceeded message on my test systems -- Do us a favour can you? Can you check for the file version of this file and path -- C:\Program Files\Common Files\system\ole db\msdaipp.dll -- my code says it should be 8.102.4004.0 and if yours is later, is it 8.103.4004.0 and if its not, any idea where it came from? Cheers, man. If only everyone would at least do a report on their system, this project would be a millions times more accurate....

I'll throw my image of the 98SE autopatcher install back on the drive later tonight and check. I'd do it now but I'd prefer to maximize my online time over swapping the OS, checking one file and then swapping back to XP.... That said, I think chances are this was caused by me using the GAPE SP2.1a "slipstream" install of 98SE before running your autopatcher. Of course, its also possible the file may have been changed via a driver installed before the autopatcher?

I'm off to hunt down some drivers for the laptop again... I can't really get anything but 2000\XP drivers for this thing from Dell's site so I must hunt down by manufacturer... Can you say "FU--!" err..I mean Fu...n?

--iWindoze

[iWindoze]

I'll throw my image of the 98SE autopatcher install back on the drive later tonight and check.

Well I lied...

No actually what happened is I found some of the drivers I've been looking for and thought I'd give installing them a quick spin to see if they'd fix some of the problems I've been having... no dice. I did a screen grab before I tossed my XP back on though, so here's your answer in the image I attached. And no, before you ask I have no idea how I managed to get such a high version number installed!

--iWindoze

[soporific]

Regarding superceded reports (and not only, I may add), maybe it'd be best to keep the verbosity low

Thanks for the tip, I've used nearly the exact formatting you posted. If you have any other ideas about keeping verbosity down while not losing any info, please post ... thanks again.

Oh, and that SHELL98 must not be the cause of the weird Explorer windows problem as I activated that in auto-patcher and suffered no problems. I've also installed 98SE2ME and 98MP10 afterwards with no problems either.

Didn't we pin this down to an earlier version of 98SE2ME? I haven't seen the problem for weeks now... ie I don't have any test systems with that install on it anymore. Shouldn't be a worry anymore ... if you forget about it, so will the rest of us!

And no, before you ask I have no idea how I managed to get such a high version number installed!

D'OH !! If you have any idea down the track, I'll be interested to hear ... but it doesn't really matter does it ... Auto-Patcher handles superceeded files elegantly i reckon ...

NEW FEATURE: I have added a modules menu option to force the re-installation of all files in the selected modules. Instead of reporting a file is already installed, it skips showing the message and tries again. But this means you won't know which installs are looping if that's what they're doing. So you should really only use this option if you have already run Auto-Patcher once, but it shouldn't matter either way. Adding this feature was mainly for my benefit as it helps troubleshoot problematic installs, but I'm sure there's another good reason to include it just dont' ask me what that reason is -- if anyone thinks of a good one, please post... !

[celtish]

AutoPatcher! Wow, what an enterprise!

Took me AGES to download, even with Flashget using ten jets, it started fine but the server was getting really slow and exhausted towards the end! When I came to install it I thought I'd be sitting at the machine all night, all that rebooting and updating! It got really scary at times!!

But a really excellent thing you've done