[PROBLEMCHYLD]

Can anyone update the files to read 3.1

This post has been edited by PROBLEMCHYLD: 04 May 2012 - 07:13 AM

[aurgathor]

PROBLEMCHYLD, on 25 April 2012 - 02:35 PM, said:

I will wait for people to test 3.0, that way I can fixed all the bugs at once in 3.1. Thanks.

Glad you mentioned that.

I have 3 issues:
1) at some point SP3 sets MaxPhysPage to 40000, and that's an instant protection error on my machine on the next boot. It's currently set to 10,000 since higher values are somewhat to very problematic.
2) upon completion, it leaves the system in a funny state -- desktop icons are gone, background is some ugly dark gray, 5 windows for "Start menu shortcuts", plus some task that needs some help to close
3) after reboot: fatal exception 0E at 0167:BFF81804 (100% of the time)

PC: K7VM2 mobo (VIA KM266 chipset) with 768 meg of memory, Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro AGP card
Installed:
1. Win98SE base install
2. All drivers, plus setting Maxphyspage to 10000
3. IE6 + MD IE6 SP1
4. .net 1.1, its SP1, and SP1's security update
5. DX9c and its sec. update, WMP9 and its sec. update
6. nusb35e
7. U98SE SP3

I already rolled back U98SE SP3 and will do some investigation if I can pinpoint the cause of 3) [system was reasonably stable before 7. ]

Edit:
Is there a specific order these components should be installed? I chose to leave SP3 to be the last (but before regular applications), but one may argue that it could be beneficial to install it earlier.

Attached File(s)

•  SP3-after.JPG (266.58K)
  Number of downloads: 21

This post has been edited by aurgathor: 25 April 2012 - 03:38 PM

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

aurgathor, on 25 April 2012 - 03:23 PM, said:

I have 3 issues:
1) at some point SP3 sets MaxPhysPage to 40000, and that's an instant protection error on my machine on the next boot. It's currently set to 10,000 since higher values are somewhat to very problematic.

Thats because I'm using Xeno86 patched VCACHE.VXD and MaxPhysPage 40000 was considered the best setting.
Are you using rloew Ram patch?

aurgathor, on 25 April 2012 - 03:23 PM, said:

2) upon completion, it leaves the system in a funny state -- desktop icons are gone, background is some ugly dark gray, 5 windows for "Start menu shortcuts", plus some task that needs some help to close
3) after reboot: fatal exception 0E at 0167:BFF81804 (100% of the time)

Never had these problems. Let wait and see if others are having the same problems.

aurgathor, on 25 April 2012 - 03:23 PM, said:

PC: K7VM2 mobo (VIA KM266 chipset) with 768 meg of memory, Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro AGP card
Installed:
6. nusb35e

Its already included. You don't need to install it again.

[aurgathor]

PROBLEMCHYLD, on 25 April 2012 - 04:20 PM, said:

Thats because I'm using Xeno86 patched VCACHE.VXD and MaxPhysPage 40000 was considered the best setting.
Are you using rloew Ram patch?

I haven't heard of Xeno86 patched VCACHE.VXD, so I'm obviously not using it. I'm also not using rloew's patch either.
In any case, SP3 shouldn't make assumption about what may be installed, and should just leave MaxPhysPage as-is.

Quote

Never had these problems. Let wait and see if others are having the same problems.

I just installed the RC (everything but 5.5 and 6.0 core files, Win95 shell swap, zip folder and xbox drivers) and never had any of these problems either.
So I'll roll it back yet again, and re-install the final version to see if the problems happen again. 98SE has a tendency to exhibit slightly undeterministic behavior, so it could've been just one of those random screw-ups out of the blue.

Quote

aurgathor, on 25 April 2012 - 03:23 PM, said:

PC: K7VM2 mobo (VIA KM266 chipset) with 768 meg of memory, Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro AGP card
Installed:
6. nusb35e

Its already included. You don't need to install it again.

OK, I will leave it out next time.

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

aurgathor, on 25 April 2012 - 04:58 PM, said:

I haven't heard of Xeno86 patched VCACHE.VXD, so I'm obviously not using it. I'm also not using rloew's patch either.
In any case, SP3 shouldn't make assumption about what may be installed, and should just leave MaxPhysPage as-is.

This is what VCACHE.VXD does and it is stable. It has been included in the Service Pack for a while now, before I started to update it.

This post has been edited by PROBLEMCHYLD: 25 April 2012 - 05:15 PM

[aurgathor]

PROBLEMCHYLD, on 25 April 2012 - 05:13 PM, said:

It has been included in the Service Pack for a while now, before I started to update it.

In that case I guess I've been using it; however, the MaxPhysPage setting still crashes the computer I'm current;y working on.

I redid the install with the final SP3, and this time it worked fine without a hitch. So I guess it was probably one of those random screw-ups. However, something is definitely fishy, possibly unrelated to SP3 since my next install, Symantec AV 9 bluescreened thrice while downloading virus definitions via their liveupdate service.

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

Symantec AV 9 is your problem. Disable it. I did some research on your error message, and its cause by any (AVG/ VIRUS SCANNER)! Glad you up and running.

This post has been edited by PROBLEMCHYLD: 25 April 2012 - 07:00 PM

[aurgathor]

Unless specifically mentioned, none of the issues can be related to SAV9 because the AV program is the very last thing I install.
But given the unusual amount of grief, SAV9 has been replaced by, guess what, Symantec AV 8.1.
That one installed w/o a single bluescreen, and it doesn't mess up suspend either, although the signature database is little more out of date. (10/18/2010 vs. 05/02/2011)

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

aurgathor, on 25 April 2012 - 09:39 PM, said:

Unless specifically mentioned, none of the issues can be related to SAV9 because the AV program is the very last thing I install.
But given the unusual amount of grief, SAV9 has been replaced by, guess what, Symantec AV 8.1.
That one installed w/o a single bluescreen, and it doesn't mess up suspend either, although the signature database is little more out of date. (10/18/2010 vs. 05/02/2011)

You should be Golden now

[billyb]

Now that I know what Pebcak means, maybe you can let me know about a small issue I'm having on the first machine I'm testing sp3 on. It's probably me-

I did a clean install of win98se and drivers on an old Compaq P4 with 512mb ram. After the win98se install, I added Rloew's ram program as a test, maxed the computer to 1gb, and rebooted. All drivers fine and computer works fine. Didn't try any usb devices at that point.

I just installed sp3, rebooted into safe mode, removed every reference to usb that I could find, rebooted, and sp3 went through several usb database building messages and then the computer came up.

Everything looks great so far. Here's where the small problem starts......

I plugged in a Lexar 16gb usb flash drive and immediately got a blue screen....fatal exception OE has occurred at 0028:C0031BF0. As a test, I shut down the computer. And then booted it up with the Lexar in the usb slot.

Doing it that way, the computer boots fine and then, successfully builds a driver base for the Lexar and then the flash drive is seen under sp3. All seems well.

I then shut down the computer, removed the Lexar, and then booted up. Once the computer came up, I plugged in the Lexar and immediately got the blue screen again.

Did the same routine with a Corsair 512mb usb flash drive and get the same results.

So far, everything is okay only as long as I boot up the computer with the either or both flash drives already connected. If I do it that way, everything is seen and works.

I also booted up with the Lexar connected, copied some data to and from it, clicked the little "safely remove hardware" icon, stopped the flash drive, and removed it. The moment I plug it back in though, the blue screen appears.

On a third boot up a minute ago with the Lexar in the slot, I notice that it appears twice as both an E and F drive The f: designation shows "removable". The E: just shows a drive icon. Data is accessible on either. So I don't know what I've got going here.

I'm going to restore the pre-sp3 ghost in a minute and try everything again, but figured I'd check here too. Any idea what the blue screen is all about? Do you suppose I didn't clear out everything during the safe mode boot?

This post has been edited by billyb: 25 April 2012 - 11:53 PM

[LoneCrusader]

aurgathor, on 25 April 2012 - 04:58 PM, said:

PROBLEMCHYLD, on 25 April 2012 - 04:20 PM, said:

Thats because I'm using Xeno86 patched VCACHE.VXD and MaxPhysPage 40000 was considered the best setting.
Are you using rloew Ram patch?

I haven't heard of Xeno86 patched VCACHE.VXD, so I'm obviously not using it. I'm also not using rloew's patch either.
In any case, SP3 shouldn't make assumption about what may be installed, and should just leave MaxPhysPage as-is.

aurgathor, on 25 April 2012 - 06:38 PM, said:

PROBLEMCHYLD, on 25 April 2012 - 05:13 PM, said:

It has been included in the Service Pack for a while now, before I started to update it.

In that case I guess I've been using it; however, the MaxPhysPage setting still crashes the computer I'm current;y working on.

Since this subject has come up, I feel that it is worth mentioning here that any fiddling with MaxPhysPage and such settings in regard to RAM ALWAYS produced unstable and unpredictable results on my systems. I tried several years back to change these settings in order to use 1.5GB of RAM. It never worked, period. I know some have had success in this area, but I believe it is very much a "YMMV" issue, and I agree that a Service Pack should not change these settings. This is one of the main things that makes me "not a fan" of unofficial Service Packs.

[dencorso]

Aurgathor's machine, however is *very peculiar*, because it's the only know case one has to limit the memory to 256 MiB (that's what MaxPhysPage=10000 means!) to be able to run (when the whole world and their cousins ran Win 98SE on bare 512 MiB with absolutely no tweaks, in the last years of the good ol' days when 9x/ME were near everybody's main OS).
Of course that is bound to be caused by his memory-hungry video card, and possibly also too big an AGP aperture. It should, by no means, be taken as a *typical* setup.


@billyb: Is your board VIA based? If so revert usbhub20.sys to the one in VIA's USB 2.0 pack. It may do the trick.

[Drugwash]

billyb, on 25 April 2012 - 11:32 PM, said:

I just installed sp3, rebooted into safe mode, removed every reference to usb that I could find, rebooted, and sp3 went through several usb database building messages and then the computer came up.

If I'm not mistaken, the documentation reads that at this point one should reboot again. This may be the tiny difference; otherwise please do try the VIA driver rollback suggested above, only in case your USB controller is VIA-based.

While I'm here, let me congratulate with PROBLEMCHYLD for his hard work. Hopefully I'll find some spare time & parts to build a test machine; preferrably in this life. Sorry for not being helpful enough, especially lately.

Good luck with SP 3.1!

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

Can a vb script be created to detect a chipset or will I need a 3rd party app. I will add the VIA chipset in the next version.

[Drugwash]

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with VB, not to that point; I can do small changes/fixes based on similarities with other languages or by trial & error, but that's about it.
These last few days I've been trying to build a small app that'd automatically remove all USB-related devices/controllers/etc from a system in Normal mode, in view of installing NUSB 3.5 (or later). However, so far I've failed, partly due to incomplete/erroneous documentation from M$ and partly due to uncooperative setupapi.dll/cfgmgr32.dll API under 9x. I'll keep trying though, maybe with alternative methods, if possible.

Thing is, if any kind of drivers have been installed by Windows upon normal installation, there's chance the USB chipset(s) can be read from the registry; VIA has Vendor ID 1106 and Device IDs are 3038 for USB 1.1 (PCI to USB UHCI) and 3104 for USB 2.0 (VT6202 EHCI). Please note there may be other Device IDs besides these - that's all I have on my main machine though (the VT6202 is actually a PCI to USB adapter card).

If Windows did not install any drivers for the USB chipset(s), then BIOS functions should be used; I don't know if there's any Windows API (or which ones they may be) that can read the devices detected by the BIOS. Of course, the Unknown Devices in Device Manager have their correspondence in registry but at this point I'm not sure where exactly and how are they located there - maybe under ENUM\PCI\Unknown device or something.

Please bear in mind that a machine may have more than one USB controller (as in my case) and they could be from different manufacturers.

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

I think what I'll do is, just add the VIA-Base driver.
That way, all that has to be done while already in safe mode is delete the obsolete driver.
I'll have to get the latest driver. If anybody have the lastest VIA driver, please send it to me or post it.
I been doing this for a while now so I thought I would post it. I have a NEC USB 2.0 PCMCIA adapter.
It requires the OrangeWare USB 2.0 drivers, but I don't need or have them installed.
The service pack took care of the issue by using NUSB which uses the file USBEHCI.SYS 5.0.2195.6882.
I will leave the MDAC option alone even though it works just to be safe.

This post has been edited by PROBLEMCHYLD: 26 April 2012 - 07:54 AM

[Drugwash]

According to the official VIA site, the latest available USB 2.0 driver for Win98/ME is 2.70p, which I do have. It's a 15MB package though (the multi-language version), so better grab it from the official site directly.
Here's the links: English only Multi-language

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

Thanks Drugwash

I think the only file I need is USBHUB20.SYS 4.90.3000.11. I will place it in the SP3.CAB as VSBHUB20.SYS.
If people are using VIA chipsets, then all they would have to do while already in safe mode
is delete USBHUB20.SYS 5.0.2195.6891
and rename VSBHUB20.SYS to USBHUB20.SYS. That should take care all of the USB issues. Can anyone confirm this?

This post has been edited by PROBLEMCHYLD: 26 April 2012 - 09:50 AM

[Drugwash]

Hmmm, don't be so hasty. I already warned about mixed controllers. What happens if one has a - say - Intel on-board USB 2.0 controller and a VIA-based PCI to USB adapter in a PCI slot? There's a reason people might want such configuration, mainly due to insufficient ports (some old boards only have 2 USB ports but even 4 may not be enough - that's up to each user's needs).
I think there has to be a configuration inf that assigns the correct driver to each controller and that inf has yet to be designed. Otherwise it'll be a mess. Any other opinions, anyone?

[billyb]

This Compaq 6350us has an Asus P4G533-LA motherboard 845GL chipset and a via usb. Sold in 2003 as an xp machine, but I have all the necessary win98 drivers for the intel chip, intel graphics chip, realtek etc .

I was gathering some extra Via drivers last week in case needed, I have usbhub20.sys 4.90.3000.2........... and I also have usbhub20.sys 4.90.3000.11 sitting around.

I've not done this part before. Do I simply copy one of those into the system32 area, renaming the old one there now? I didn't see an upgrade driver box in device manager that seems to work for these types of files.

Thanks guys.

This post has been edited by billyb: 26 April 2012 - 10:56 AM