[Multibooter]

Maybe Dave should, before he starts up Win98, edit under Win2k the file \Windows\Scanreg.ini and change the value of MaxBackupCopies. The default is MaxBackupCopies=5 [=make backups once a day, for a maximum of 5 days]. Maybe by setting "MaxBackupCopies=10" he won't loose his oldest backup when he starts up Win98. The maximum value of MaxBackupCopies is 99.

I would restore the 4 backup files not under DOS with ScanReg, but under WinXP with a simple extract, then file copy (about Win2k I am not sure, I don't know whether Dave can access ok the Win98 partition). But ScanReg under DOS is a little cleaner, file copying under WinXP changes access dates, which may not be good prior to making a partition image.

If Dave doesn't find an rb*.cab file dated prior to the installation of nusb, maybe he should, before any further fiddling, make an image of the Win98 partition, maybe an old rb*.cab file can be recovered lateron. A recovered rb*.cab file is most likely good if it tests and extracts ok under WinRAR (a "recovered" file is often different from the original file).

Given Dave's experience I have just set MaxBackupCopies=10 in my system. This will add about 10MB to my \WINDOWS\ directory (5x2MB), 5 backups look too little to me.

BTW, my oldest backup file is rb004.cab, the most recent backup file is rb005.cab. I have no idea why the naming of the backup files on my system is out of whack.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 24 October 2009 - 10:48 PM

[dencorso]

Multibooter, on Oct 25 2009, 02:13 AM, said:

(about Win2k I am not sure, I don't know whether Dave can access ok the Win98 partition).

Yes, he sure can.

Multibooter, on Oct 25 2009, 02:13 AM, said:

BTW, my oldest backup file is rb004.cab, the most recent backup file is rb005.cab. I have no idea why the naming of the backup files on my system is out of whack.

ScanReg cycles the names, so it's never obvious from the name which is the oldest (or the newest, for that matter) file in the set.
I agree with all your suggestions in the above post: its better to ascertain which is the oldest file under 2k, and extract it manually with WinRAR or 7-Zip and then install them manually, all this also under 2k. Then, reboot into 98, and see how it goes. Also edit scanreg.ini to 10 is a great idea. At the moment, I use 9 myself, in my system.

[Dave-H]

Hi guys!

Thanks so much for all this, and sticking with it.
Just to let you know where I am now.

I had already used scanreg to restore previous backups of the registry when I was experimenting with this much earlier on. It is an excellent facility which has saved my bacon several times over the years, and it's always puzzled me as to why NT based systems don't have it. Maybe the backup files would be too large or something.
I have a Windows 98 Resource Kit utility which allow parameters such as the number of backups and which files are backed up to be changed using a graphical interface.
I expect you're aware that no matter how high you set the number of backups to be, the DOS version of scanreg will still only display five of them. Very silly!

Anyway, I tried restoring the backups of system.dat and user.dat that Den had me make.
Unfortunately they wouldn't work, on boot up I got a screen saying that registry corruption had been detected and telling me to run scanreg. If I ignored that, after a series of BSODs the system loading never completed.
So, I did run scanreg as Bill told me to, and of course it just restored a backup, presumably the last one that started successfully.

Once the system was up and running again, I exported the Enum registry key to a backup, deleted it, and restarted.
I then went through all the automatic and manual device installation procedures, which took ages of course, but I've now got everything installed again apart from a few peripherals that I seldom use. I'll deal with them later!
The only thing still not working is the sound, so I've got to sort that, but it can wait too.

So, I put my pen drive in the slot (I'm using that for all the tests now as it's the simplest device, if that works I'm sure the card readers will too.)
I was very disappointed to find that nothing had changed!
It's doing exactly the same as it was before I reinstalled all the devices.

I put the drive in the USB slot, it says it's found a "Mass Storage Device".
That installs correctly, all well and good.
It then says it's found a "Removable USB Disk", then a "USB Disk".
It then does this again a second time, as my pen drive is partitioned into two drives.
Unfortunately, as soon as "USB Disk" comes up the second time, the system freezes.

No error messages or anything.
Sometimes the hourglass keeps going round and round, but the keyboard is immediately completely dead.
The mouse carries on working for a short while, although clicking on things does nothing, and eventually that freezes too. It's as if the whole operating system has just stopped running, and I have to do a hard reset.
After this, putting the pen drive in just freezes the system immediately.
If I try and boot with the pen drive in, the GUI never loads, it just hangs on a flashing cursor.

So, all that uninstalling and reinstalling seems to have done nothing.


The driver being used seems to be USBMPHLP.PDR, in the System\IOSubsys folder.
If I disable this by renaming the file (I usually disable files be replacing the middle character in the file extension with a tilda (~) BTW) the detection and loading procedure for the pen drive does complete.
I then have two USB Drives in Device Manager, as I would expect, but non functional with yellow marks on them of course as the driver file is missing.
If I reactivate USBMPHLP.PDR the system freezes agian as soon as I put the pen drive into the USB port.

So, it seems that the loading, or attempting to load, USBMPHLP.PDR is freezing the system.
Why? Well, over to you two again.

This post has been edited by Dave-H: 25 October 2009 - 07:31 AM

[dencorso]

Which version of USBMPHLP.PDR do you have on your machine?

Anyway, do a full backup of the Windows (and also Program Files if you have space to do it) directory and all it's subdirectories, like Multibooter told you to above.
Then install the genesys driver. Reboot. Then uninstall the genesys driver. Reboot. Then install NUSB 3.3. Reboot.
Tell us then how is it working at this point. But even if the machine becomes unbootable after this procedure, be sure to discuss it with us first, before reverting to the saved previous windows dir.

[Multibooter]

Dave-H, on Oct 25 2009, 06:28 AM, said:

I put my pen drive in the slot (I'm using that for all the tests now as it's the simplest device, if that works I'm sure the card readers will too.)...
I put the drive in the USB slot, it says it's found a "Mass Storage Device".
That installs correctly, all well and good.
It then says it's found a "Removable USB Disk", then a "USB Disk".
It then does this again a second time, as my pen drive is partitioned into two drives.
Unfortunately, as soon as "USB Disk" comes up the second time, the system freezes.

A USB stick with 2 partitions may not be that simple. What happens if you insert a USB stick which has only 1 partition, or another USB drive with only 1 partition? (external USB HDD, camera, etc?) I just want to make sure that the problem is not related to/caused by partitioning.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 25 October 2009 - 08:53 AM

[Dave-H]

Thanks for the quick response guys!

The USBMPHLP.PDR file version is 4.90.3000, which I think is correct for a Windows ME file.
It's paired in the driver list of the devices with IOS.VXD, whic id 4.10.2225, a Windows 98SE file.
Is that OK?

I will do a backup of Windows 98 as it now is.
As I have Windows 2000 on the machine as well, would it be adequate to just use Windows 2000 to copy the Windows and Program Files folders to another drive?
I have a drive E: archive drive where I store all my documents, with no system files on it, I could store the backups there.

I could re-partition my memory stick to a single partition using Windows 2000 too if you think that would eliminate one possible problem.

This post has been edited by Dave-H: 25 October 2009 - 09:55 AM

[Multibooter]

Dave-H, on Oct 25 2009, 08:54 AM, said:

I will do a backup of Windows 98 as it now is.
As I have Windows 2000 on the machine as well, would it be adequate to just use Windows 2000 to copy the Windows and Program Files folders to another drive?

Yes. I create with WinRAR a single rar file from these two Win98 folders, to make sure that no files inside \Windows\ and \Program Files\ were somehow changed since making the backup. This also maintains the original folder dates when I restore the backup. If you have enough space on your HDD, however, using just file copy to create a backup folder on a different partition is Ok.

Quote

I could re-partition my memory stick to a single partition using Windows 2000 too if you think that would eliminate one possible problem.

Yes. If your stick came with some reformatting software for Win2k, I would use that instead of Windows Format. SDHC cards (which differ from regular USB sticks), for example, are not properly formatted with Windows Format.

Quote

The USBMPHLP.PDR file version is 4.90.3000, which I think is correct for a Windows ME file. It's paired in the driver list of the devices with IOS.VXD, whic id 4.10.2225, a Windows 98SE file. Is that OK?

Yes. That's what I have on my system with nusb.

I have also used nusb without any problem with a patched version of \Windows\SYSTEM\VMM32\Ios.vxd. Installing the old Micro Solutions Backpack parallel-port floppy disk drive under Win98 requires patching ios.vxd with iosfix.exe plus manually adding a line in \Windows\ios.ini in section [SafeList], otherwise I would get at boot-time an error while initializing IOS: "Windows Protection Fault". nusb seems to be able to digest quite a few changes - provided you installed nusb properly.

I have my own little method of installing and using nusb, which has worked for me so far:
1) I first create a directory, e.g. \nusb33\ and put nusb33e.exe into it
2) I extract all files in nusb33e.exe into \nusb33\
3) I run (double-click) nusb33e.exe to install nusb
4) after nusb has been installed and when I connect a new USB device:
- when the Add New Hardware Wizard comes up and asks to Specify a Location:
- if it is a device for which I want to install nusb, I indicate the path to \nusb\
- if it is a device for which I want to install a manufacturer-provided driver, I indicate the path to that driver, not to \nusb\
Currently I am not using any manufacturer-provided USB mass storage drivers, only nusb, because nusb seems to be the best driver.

Here one example of the superiority of nusb: Recently I installed a Kingwin EZ-Dock EZD-2535 SATA HDD docking station under Win98, with a manufacturer-provided driver (I always test a new Win98 device with its manufacturer-provided driver first, before re-installing it, under nusb, after a system restore). With a new 2.5" 500GB Hitachi SATA HDD inside the docking station, Beyond Compare eventually froze when accessing the HDD in the docking station. ScanDisk with the Thorough (=surface test) option also froze after an hour or two, no msg, big puzzle.

When I eventually used the docking station under nusb, ScanDisk displayed: "Failed to read data from the disk, sector...." plus identified the bad sectors when it was done, without freezing. I immediatley returned the 500GB Hitachi HDD and got a working replacement, thanks to nusb. The manufacturer-provided driver of the EZ-Dock docking station was probably never tested by the manufacturer how it works with defective hardware.

When buying USB hardware, I try to get hardware with a manufacturer-provided Win98 driver, so that I actually have 2 different drivers, for testing in case of problems.

Here another example which shows that nusb is more resilient to error conditions than manufacturer-provided USB drivers: When you pull-out, without safely-remove, a USB mass storage device driven by nusb, then re-insert it, and then run ScanDisk or NDD, they are likely to work Ok; when you repeat the same under a manufacturer-provided driver, ScanDisk or NDD are likely to freeze.

Dave, I'm writing all this about nusb, to encourage you with nusb - when you get it to work, it's great!

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 25 October 2009 - 12:23 PM

[dencorso]

I couldn't be more glad to read you too think nusb rocks, Multibooter!
I know it gave you a hard time, in the begining.
But it sure is worth the effort.

[Dave-H]

I'm now trying to re-partition my memory stick as a single drive, but I'm running into a puzzling problem.

To cut a long story short, I deleted all the volumes on the drive, and it still shows as two drives in Windows 2000 Explorer, but with "no disk in them".
I eventually resorted to going into DOS (I can access USB drives in DOS) and using fdisk to delete all the partitions on the drive.
I then used fdisk again to create one primary DOS partition, and formatted it with the DOS format command.
It now appears in DOS as one single 2GB drive, which is what I want.
However, Windows 2000 still insists on seeing it as two separate drives, with no file system on them.
Do I need to install a third party drive partition utility to get this to work?
The "DISKPART" command in Windows 2000 Recovery Console doesn't see the drive at all.
I have tried it again in Windows 98 BTW, but with the same result, two drives detected followed by a system freeze.

This post has been edited by Dave-H: 25 October 2009 - 04:09 PM

[dencorso]

Go to Win 2k. Insert the pendrive. Then go to device manager and delete its entry under Disk Drives. Remove it without stopping. Reinsert it and, after it's detected anew, format it again from Win 2k. If that doesn't work, more labor-intensive procedures will be needed. But don't worry, it's not serious and we'll overcome this problem fast.

[Dave-H]

dencorso, on Oct 25 2009, 10:20 PM, said:

Go to Win 2k. Insert the pendrive. Then go to device manager and delete its entry under Disk Drives. Remove it without stopping. Reinsert it and, after it's detected anew, format it again from Win 2k. If that doesn't work, more labor-intensive procedures will be needed. But don't worry, it's not serious and we'll overcome this problem fast.

Done that.
When it's detected again, it still detects as two separate drives, which appear as I: and J: in "My Computer".
Neither can be formatted as "there is no disk in the drive"!

[dencorso]

I think I know what's happened... But it'd be a long-winded explanation, and I may be wrong.
So... let's skip it for now.
Download the Ranish Partition Manager (RPM) 2.40 from here.
Extract it to it's own private directory.
Boot to DOS with the pendrive inserted, run CWSDPMI then PART240 (or PART). In case RPM can see it do nothing and get back to me here, and I'll tell you how to partition and format it with RPM. Good luck!
N.B.: Take care, RPM is as dangerous as fdisk, if not more, because it's more user-friendly.

[Multibooter]

dencorso, on Oct 25 2009, 03:00 PM, said:

Download the Ranish Partition Manager (RPM) 2.40

HDD Low Level Format v2.36 may also be of use to wipe an unruly USB stick.

The following applies to HDDs, I mention it here just in case that a bit in the USB stick was set to make the USB stick appear fixed/non-removable. Acronis Disk Director Suite v10.0 build 2089 has helped me clean up corrupted HDDs (right-click on Disk 1 etc -> Clear Disk), with which Partition Table Doctor and other partitioning software had problems (e.g. HDD is simply displayed as "Bad disk"). PowerQuest PartitionMagic v8.05, for example, cannot clear HDDs. I have only used Acronis Disk Director for clearing a disk; Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 can -> Hard Disk -> "Update MBR" ("overwrites the current bootable code in the MBR by the standard bootstrap code", I am not sure how that differs from Clear Disk in Acronis Disk Director). The disadvantage of clearing the disk with Acronis Disk Director is that partitioning software will not show make, model, etc of the HDD afterwards, it's a tool of last resort. Disks which I cleared in this way (incl. 1TB) do function fine afterwards.

Maybe Dave should connect another single-partition USB device (camera, mp3 player), just to see whether nusb works.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 26 October 2009 - 07:48 AM

[Multibooter]

Dave-H, on Oct 25 2009, 02:08 PM, said:

I then used fdisk again to create one primary DOS partition, and formatted it with the DOS format command. It now appears in DOS as one single 2GB drive, which is what I want. However, Windows 2000 still insists on seeing it as two separate drives, with no file system on them.

I had encountered something similar during my experimenting with partitioned SDHC cards a year ago, with Windows seeing things which didn't exist, I was amazed at the time, but I don't remember the details anymore. I vaguely remember having deleted a partition on an SDHC card under one opsys (WinXP?), but it was still there under another opsys (Win98?, or vice versa?), but I couldn't access the files on the non-existing partition. The ghosts may have been gone after all physical devices and the SDHC card were unplugged from electricity for a few minutes, maybe it had something to do with a cold vs warm reboot, but I just don't remember anymore. I put the whole affair into the category of unsolvable multiple-drive-letter problems/phantom drives. My SDHC cards are fine now, and I probably used Panasonic SDFormatter to get a clean single-partition SDHC card.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 25 October 2009 - 11:58 PM

[Dave-H]

Thanks again guys.
I actually already had that version of Ranish Partition Manager on my system, which I had completely forgotten about as I haven't needed to use it for so long!
Anyway, the USB stick is seen by RPM, as a single 2GB partition, as I would expect.
So, what's the next step Den?

Going off topic, I'm now having the very devil of a job getting the sound to work again on Windows 98.
The driver for the sound hardware (on-board Realtek AC97) will not load.
Everything else seems to be back to normal.
I did try restoring the registry back to as it was before, but this didn't fix the problem.
I am also rather worried that four out of the five backups I had from scanreg don't work.
If I use scanreg/restore in DOS, I'm offered all five, but four of them just throw up a "system restore failed" message, no reason given.........

[jaclaz]

There may be something "sticky" in the Win2K Registry.

See here:
http://www.msfn.org/board/usb-device-not-r...63.html&hl=

Check also (Upper and Lower) Filter Drivers in your 2K (like virtual drives, some Acronis, and various software may install)


Instead of a full low-level format, 00'ing out the first few sectors makes sure the drive can be re-partitioned/formatted clean, but I doubt this is the case:
http://www.msfn.org/board/usb-booting-issu...63-page-13.html

jaclaz

[Dave-H]

jaclaz, on Oct 26 2009, 12:38 PM, said:

There may be something "sticky" in the Win2K Registry.
See here:
http://www.msfn.org/board/usb-device-not-r...63.html&hl=

Thanks jaclaz! The guy you tried to help on that thread wasn't too helpful himself was he!
I have just tried removing the registry entry for the USB stick under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USBSTOR
No joy there though, when I rebooted and put the stick back in, it just reinstalled as two "dead" drives again!

jaclaz, on Oct 26 2009, 12:38 PM, said:

Check also (Upper and Lower) Filter Drivers in your 2K (like virtual drives, some Acronis, and various software may install)
Instead of a full low-level format, 00'ing out the first few sectors makes sure the drive can be re-partitioned/formatted clean, but I doubt this is the case:
http://www.msfn.org/board/usb-booting-issu...63-page-13.html
jaclaz

I'm curious, what exactly are "Upper and Lower Filter Drivers"?
Not something I've come across before.

[jaclaz]

Well, as well , out of several suggested steps, you did just one....

And of course, and out of the blue, FIFTH step of THIRD suggested set.

First:

jaclaz, on Oct 5 2009, 07:10 PM, said:

First thing try same USB stick on ANOTHER computer and report what happens.

Second:

jaclaz, on Oct 5 2009, 11:35 PM, said:

See if the info here helps:
http://www.msfn.org/board/logical-disk-man...pid-873733.html

Third:
http://www.msfn.org/board/usb-device-not-r...-7.html&hl=

Dave-H, on Oct 26 2009, 02:06 PM, said:

I'm curious, what exactly are "Upper and Lower Filter Drivers"?
Not something I've come across before.

Roughly it is a mechanism that allows to "override" some behaviour or "add features" to certain devices/drivers.
http://en.wikipedia....i/Filter_driver

Examples:
http://www.911cd.net...showtopic=18379
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/driverssuppo...owerfilters.htm
http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=9105


Probably completely unrelated but I remember a similar behaviour to what you report in good ol' DOS with SUBST drives.

jaclaz

This post has been edited by jaclaz: 26 October 2009 - 08:35 AM

[Multibooter]

Dave-H, on Oct 26 2009, 04:17 AM, said:

four out of the five backups I had from scanreg don't work.
If I use scanreg/restore in DOS, I'm offered all five, but four of them just throw up a "system restore failed" message, no reason given

I thought that Win98 creates only a new backup rb0##.cab after scanregw considered the registry Ok. Did you recently create any manual backups by running scanreg /backup ? My own \Windows\SYSBCKUP\ folder contains an old file rbbad.cab with a set of bad registry files, my rb00x.cab files however should be Ok. Maybe the files restored from your rb0##.cab don't work with other .ini files, which were not backed up??? Interesting to hear that Win98 can create registry backups which don't work

I am using plain-vanilla Win98SE, you installed SP2.1, I dont know what impact that may have.

I also keep all my complete backups of \Windows\ and \Program Files\, maybe a 100, since I initially installed Win98. I also have a file with a shortcut on my desktop named "Win98 Install Log.txt" (and "WinXP Install Log.txt"), which contains a chronological log/diary of all my installations, system changes and backups since November 2003.

This backup procedure has allowed me to identify the best old backup version from which to install nusb. I restored Win98 as it was about 17 months earlier (backup file W98_049.rar of 3-Mar-2007), did a lot of cleanups, and then installed nusb. 17 months of software and hardware installations had to be redone, which was feasible because I am keeping a very detailed installation log.

[dencorso]

@jaclaz: Welcome to this thread! Your arrival here is very good news, because Dave's problems at this point are somewhat hairy... Now, on to the most pressing issue: Dave's pendrive was originally divided in two partitions. While 9x will accept this gladly, XP will treat such a pendrive as removable and refuse to show more than one partition, as you know full well. I've got very little experience with 2k, but I suppose it'd behave like XP. If so, Dave is bound to have a filter driver installed, since he was able to access and use both partitions under both 2k and 98. So I think you've hit jackpot, there. FYI, Dave has a working 2k installation and a working DOS 7.1 installation, but his alternate 98 system is the source of the original problems, after a messed-up driver installation.

@Dave: jaclaz's other suggestion is in line with what I thought should be the next step: to wipe (write 00s) at least the first 512 sectors of the pendrive, beacause it will clean whatever mess may have been left there. But I'd use the HDD Low Level Format v2.36 and fully wipe it, instead of using dsfok (as jaclaz suggested) to do it. Both methods work, jaclaz's method is faster, while Multibooter's is more user-friendly, albeit slower. And then, repartition and reformat with RPM, as needed. But even before doing all this, follow jaclaz's instructions in hunting for a filter driver, because your pendrive may be OK already and all that remains is a 2k registry problem to be solved, for it to work equally OK across 2k and DOS. Then, with this solved, we get back to troubleshooting your 98 installation.