[emarkay]

OK, I have been a computer user since the AppleII (Rember CAT instead of DIR?), and a DOS lover even when most programs migrated to the WFW 3.1 interface. I still know and love the 'tools behind the window', and keep my primary computer Win 98SE. It has been working for years, is maintained like my classic car, and is treated with the respect it deserves - I know Windows is an upside down pyramid to begin with - as unstable as possible, once you start adding things on to it...

I recently found this "unofficial 98SE Service Pack" site, and downloaded the previous version (win98se_sp202en.exe) a few months ago. While I didn't notice much improvement, I figured it was prob something Microsoft would have done before abandoning Win98, and was a good idea.

OK, now for the problem...A week ago I upgraded to a 160GB HDU, and a HP all-in-one printer, and did a complete reformat, a clean Win98SE install and everything else, and it all went OK. Well, the last thing I had to do was to install the "unofficial 98SE Service Pack", and so I checked the website and got the latest version: "sesp21a-en_98SESP2.exe"

It crashed this PC. I got a registry error, then and endless loop of the DOS Microsoft Registry Checker. I pulled out one, then 2 older PC's and started Googling... While trying everything I could thing of, remember and read to try to get this machine to boot - luckily I could OCCASIONALLY get into safe mode...

Reading the post:
http://www.msfn.org/...showtopic=65516
made me wonder about the logic of disabling the very thing I was checking for seemed counterintuative, but finally I relented and did just that. I spent 3 hours getting to this point! I have 2 other computers up (an XP and another 98SE) and have just about exhausted my mind, fingers, and patience...

There are a few other comments on this, and a few outside comments on these unofficial updates. See for a sample:
http://www.msfn.org/...showtopic=65458
http://www.msfn.org/...showtopic=61749
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?act=ST&f=91&t=52491

What this "solution" does, is to DISABLE REGISTRY CHECKING of profiles! "SystemReg=0 - disables scanning the registry for hardware profiles. Note: can cause some systems to hang."

These folks don't think too highly of this:
http://computing.net...rum/158505.html
and neither do I!

If it worked before, what was changed to make it suck so bad now? What changed so that I have to add "SystemReg=0" now?

AND I CAN'T undo this install, can I???

I have 2 OTHER Win98SE computers with the old version that works fine, and, of course, I am NOT going to place this version on them!

So, can SOMEONE help me figure out WHY this version causes the registry checker to go into endless loops if this version is installed without any file modifications?

I have attached info on this PC in question. It is a Dell Optiplex GX110, with 256MB, Phoenix 01/22/03 BIOS, and Intel 6 Model 8 732 MHz PIII.

I just want to know why I have to disable reg checking, and if I can uninstall this, and either go back to the previous version (win98se_sp202en.exe), or just back to good old MS Win98SE?

If you want to answer privately, email me at "emarkay_at_email_dot_com"

THANK YOU!

Attached File(s)

•  screencap.png (14.63K)
  Number of downloads: 267

[emarkay]

OK, 30 reads and no comment...

http://www.msfn.org/...showtopic=65735

I should give it a day, but, well,now my ENTIRE main PC is now trashed.

One moment it was fine, then I got the BSOD, and then ASCII characters where my autoexec.bat was. DOS booting Scandisk found all sorts of FAT errors, and fixed them, and then I found (after much time) that my SCANREG.INI is also full of ASCII gibberish. So no way to even get a backup registry...

So now, I am totally AFU on my primary PC.

And who is the complete id*** that said to not backup registries with the SystemReg command?


See: http://support.micro...b/183603/EN-US/

"A value of 1 (default) causes a backup copy of your registry to be made the first time you start your computer on any given day (determined by the system clock).

A value of 0 disables registry backup.

NOTE: Disabling registry backup is not recommended. "

DID YOU READ THAT TOO???

I am just stunned - both at myself for not doing more research before hand, and,well, all of this. What can be done is that hopefully I get a logical and rational explanation on all of this, and that some effort is made here to prevent such problems from happening again, for not all of us can take the time to reload an OS and all the related programs on a moment's notice.

[takes deep breath, shakes head, shuts it all down,and crawls under the covers...]

[Gape]

emarkay, on Jan 20 2006, 05:46 AM, said:

And who is the complete id*** that said to not backup registries with the SystemReg command?

See: http://support.micro...b/183603/EN-US/

DID YOU READ THAT TOO???

I recommended to add "SystemReg=0", *not* to add "Backup=0"...

This registry problem rarely occurs on the some systems because of the new IO.SYS file (WINBOOT.SYS / Q311561). This update has a problem which is not fixed by Microsoft. A workaround is to add "SystemReg=0" into the MSDOS.SYS.

[Petr]

emarkay, on Jan 20 2006, 12:16 AM, said:

and so I checked the website and got the latest version: "sesp21a-en_98SESP2.exe"

Hello emarkey, may I know where you found the file named "sesp21a-en_98SESP2.exe"? I've never seen this name. Have you downloaded really the genuine file? Does it have 17.430.016 bytes and md5: 10cde8dc76f00e78e874094580b70d2d, as written at http://www.msfn.org/...showtopic=61749 ? I have also never seen file named win98se_sp202en.exe.

I know about hundreds of SESP installations and never any problem with registry.

I remember I had the same registry problem long time ago with Soyo 6VBA133 with VIA Apollo PRO133 chipset, just at certain stage of installation I've got registry error and endless loops of rebooting and restoring the registry. I never found how to resolve this problem. It was without any unofficial service pack.

There may be a problem with your 160 GB disk. I'm not sure but your disk controller is probably Intel ICH - 82801AA and this controller uses ESDI_506.PDR by default. ESDI_506.PDR does not support disks bigger that 137 GB and if you will write beyond this boundary, you will overwrite the data at the beginning of the disk. Then nothing than reinstall can help.
Of course, you may use Intel Application Accelerator (IAA) 2.3 and then there should be no problem.
You may also try to download the package with demo of 137GB patch from R. Loew - it contains some tools for determining if your computer really supports disks bigger than 137GB.

This was just an idea.

Nobody knows what may happen and that's why there is written on top of the page "ALWAYS BACKUP FIRST!"

Petr

This post has been edited by Petr: 20 January 2006 - 02:05 AM

[Petr]

emarkay, on Jan 20 2006, 03:46 AM, said:

One moment it was fine, then I got the BSOD, and then ASCII characters where my autoexec.bat was. DOS booting Scandisk found all sorts of FAT errors, and fixed them, and then I found (after much time) that my SCANREG.INI is also full of ASCII gibberish. So no way to even get a backup registry...

This really looks like 137GB+ disk problem.

Petr

[azagahl]

> This really looks like 137GB+ disk problem.

Yep, it really does sound like your FAT is messed up because you wrote past 137 GB barrier. This bug exists in a lot of OS's like XP pre-SP1.

I recommend booting from a different drive and using Drive Rescue to search for and salvage as many files as you can:

http://www.woundedmo...erescue19d.html

You have to have a special program like Intel application accelerator or VIA IDE Miniport driver installed in Windows 98 SE to avoid the 137 GB bug. Or use DOS only. Or delete the evil ESDI506.PDR hard disk controller driver. Or get a smaller disk.

[ColdFusion200]

or use ntfs

Microsoft Filesystem Overview

This post has been edited by ColdFusion200: 20 January 2006 - 01:59 PM

[emarkay]

My typo - it's: sesp21a-en_98.exe", and I got it from here:
http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html

As for old file, see: It's from the same site as above!!!
"August 1, 2005 - Unofficial Windows 98 SE Service Pack 2.0.2 is released."

That's what I have and it was 16,022 KB in size.

THIS IS the "official" forum for these products, isn't it???

It is an Intel 810 chipset, but I have partitioned the drive to a 60, a 60 and a 40 GB volume so the 137 GB limitation is not a factor, correct?

And as for backups see previous post

MRK

[emarkay]

Gape, on Jan 20 2006, 02:32 AM, said:

emarkay, on Jan 20 2006, 05:46 AM, said:

And who is the complete id*** that said to not backup registries with the SystemReg command?

See: http://support.micro...b/183603/EN-US/

DID YOU READ THAT TOO???

I recommended to add "SystemReg=0", *not* to add "Backup=0"...

This registry problem rarely occurs on the some systems because of the new IO.SYS file (WINBOOT.SYS / Q311561). This update has a problem which is not fixed by Microsoft. A workaround is to add "SystemReg=0" into the MSDOS.SYS.

OK another typo - still,

"=SystemReg=
Scan System Registry modules upon startup -
Enabled:Scan Registry = 1
Disabled:Do NOT scan Registry = 0

NOTE: "SystemReg=" are UNDOCUMENTED!"

http://www2.acc.chul...tree/msdos.html
http://www.computerh...om/msdossys.htm

Why would you NOT want to confirm registry is good by scanning it before each run???

ColdFusion200, on Jan 20 2006, 02:58 PM, said:

or use ntfs

Microsoft Filesystem Overview

Can't be used with WIN98SE - and then if so this whole point is moot - this topic is about the unofficial WIN98SE SP....

Petr, on Jan 20 2006, 05:47 AM, said:

emarkay, on Jan 20 2006, 03:46 AM, said:

One moment it was fine, then I got the BSOD, and then ASCII characters where my autoexec.bat was. DOS booting Scandisk found all sorts of FAT errors, and fixed them, and then I found (after much time) that my SCANREG.INI is also full of ASCII gibberish. So no way to even get a backup registry...

This really looks like 137GB+ disk problem.

Petr

No, have the 160GB partitioned to 60GB, 60GB, and 40GB....

azagahl, on Jan 20 2006, 02:31 PM, said:

> This really looks like 137GB+ disk problem.

Yep, it really does sound like your FAT is messed up because you wrote past 137 GB barrier. This bug exists in a lot of OS's like XP pre-SP1.

I recommend booting from a different drive and using Drive Rescue to search for and salvage as many files as you can:

http://www.woundedmo...erescue19d.html

You have to have a special program like Intel application accelerator or VIA IDE Miniport driver installed in Windows 98 SE to avoid the 137 GB bug. Or use DOS only. Or delete the evil ESDI506.PDR hard disk controller driver. Or get a smaller disk.

Well it's moot for a few reasons - I have reinstalled Win98SE, WILL NOT use this SP ever again, and well, it's been a long 2 days.

Wish this thing was as good as it used to be...
If the author (Mr. C.) wants to discuss this - (I am still intrigued by developing 98SE and keeping it as a prime OS beyond April 2006 when MS support stops) I may be willing to beta test, BUT NOT ON MY PRIMARY PC!

[RJARRRPCGP]

emarkay, on Jan 19 2006, 09:46 PM, said:

OK, 30 reads and no comment...

http://www.msfn.org/...showtopic=65735

I should give it a day, but, well,now my ENTIRE main PC is now trashed.

One moment it was fine, then I got the BSOD, and then ASCII characters where my autoexec.bat was. DOS booting Scandisk found all sorts of FAT errors, and fixed them, and then I found (after much time) that my SCANREG.INI is also full of ASCII gibberish. So no way to even get a backup registry...

So now, I am totally AFU on my primary PC.

And who is the complete id*** that said to not backup registries with the SystemReg command?


See: http://support.micro...b/183603/EN-US/

"A value of 1 (default) causes a backup copy of your registry to be made the first time you start your computer on any given day (determined by the system clock).

A value of 0 disables registry backup.

NOTE: Disabling registry backup is not recommended. "

DID YOU READ THAT TOO???

I am just stunned - both at myself for not doing more research before hand, and,well, all of this. What can be done is that hopefully I get a logical and rational explanation on all of this, and that some effort is made here to prevent such problems from happening again, for not all of us can take the time to reload an OS and all the related programs on a moment's notice.

[takes deep breath, shakes head, shuts it all down,and crawls under the covers...]

The problem may be caused by a bad IDE cable or a RAM problem.

This post has been edited by RJARRRPCGP: 20 January 2006 - 07:10 PM

[LLXX]

emarkay, on Jan 20 2006, 06:15 PM, said:

It is an Intel 810 chipset, but I have partitioned the drive to a 60, a 60 and a 40 GB volume so the 137 GB limitation is not a factor, correct?

That might just be the problem. Without an HDD driver that supports 48bit LBA, accessing the space on the drive beyond 128Gb will lead to wraparound. In this case, filling beyond 8Gb of the 40Gb partition would cause that (if they were in that order you specified).

[LLXX]

emarkay, on Jan 20 2006, 06:43 PM, said:

ColdFusion200, on Jan 20 2006, 02:58 PM, said:

or use ntfs

Microsoft Filesystem Overview

Can't be used with WIN98SE - and then if so this whole point is moot - this topic is about the unofficial WIN98SE SP....

It can, with the appropriate filesystem driver. However, the filesystem driver operates above the level of the hardware driver and so is subject to its 128Gb limitation.

Quote

No, have the 160GB partitioned to 60GB, 60GB, and 40GB....

Individual partitions don't matter. The point is that wraparound will occur at the physical 128th GB irregardless of partition size.

[Petr]

emarkay, on Jan 21 2006, 01:15 AM, said:

My typo - it's: sesp21a-en_98.exe", and I got it from here:
http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html

As for old file, see: It's from the same site as above!!!
"August 1, 2005 - Unofficial Windows 98 SE Service Pack 2.0.2 is released."

That's what I have and it was 16,022 KB in size.

THIS IS the "official" forum for these products, isn't it???

Maybe I'm blind but I don't see any file named "sesp21a-en_98.exe" on the above mentioned URL.

The files available for downoload are (and were):

sesp21a-en.exe
sesp21en.exe
sesp202en.exe
sesp201en.exe
etc.

I've never seen any file named "sesp21a-en_98SESP2.exe", "win98se_sp202en.exe" or "sesp21a-en_98.exe" and that was why I asked you where you got them - to be sure that you really have the official files.

Petr

[Petr]

emarkay, on Jan 21 2006, 01:15 AM, said:

It is an Intel 810 chipset, but I have partitioned the drive to a 60, a 60 and a 40 GB volume so the 137 GB limitation is not a factor, correct?

No, this is not correct.

The 137GB limit relates tho the physical disk size, not to partition size.

The problem is with physical disk addressing, the ESDI_506.PDR uses 28-bit addressing of sectors (512 bytes each), so the maximum addressable sector number is 2^28-1 = 268435455 . If you try to address sector number 268435456, you will read or write sector 0 instead.

Maximum partition size in Windows 98 SE is 2048GiB (2,2TB), just Windows Scandisk and Defrag will not work with partition size bigger than 137 GB because of the memory allocation problem.

Petr

[GeminiAlpha]

Hi, could this have to do with it? Check the 'ASPI Layer'.
Rudolf

GeminiAlpha, on Jan 23 2006, 11:56 AM, said:

Hi Gape,

When my HD got broke, I bought myself a new big one (200G) and decided to implement the win98 SE SP. Install win98se from my original CD cd first and the SP afterwards.
I followed your implementation plan and got in trouble very soon. Long before the steps 7 and 8 on your list (installation order) every time the new HD was full of corrupted files in all 3 partitions. I didn't get a well working 'basic' installation. During file copying every time I ruined lots of files and I can't tell you how many times I have seen MS Scandisk processing.
My search on internet to the cause of this took very much time. Searching Maxtor's KB, I found 2 items to check in relation to 'big' HD's: 1) ver. of Fdisk (MS KB263044) and 2) ver. of Esdi_506.PDR (MS KB243450). These were ok, probably because of the 'slipstreaming' trick? I digged some more in Maxtor's KB and found a hint that the ASPI layer should not be older than ver. 4.60 (1021). There could be conflicts between the Aspi driver(s) and the IDE driver(s). This link brings you to the KB article at the Maxtor site: KB article Maxtor
After installing a new Aspi Layer (from Adaptic's site) my trouble finally ended after 10 days and now I can get on with the next step(s) of the implementation.
I propose to implement a fresh ASPI Layer in your Win98 SE SP or (at least) indicate to fresh up the ASPI Layer yourself. The one on the win98se CD is way too old.
I hope this contribution, in some way, may benefit you all.
Bye, have a nice day.

Rudolf.

[erpdude8]

GeminiAlpha, on Jan 23 2006, 04:10 AM, said:

Hi, could this have to do with it? Check the 'ASPI Layer'.
Rudolf

GeminiAlpha, on Jan 23 2006, 11:56 AM, said:

Hi Gape,

When my HD got broke, I bought myself a new big one (200G) and decided to implement the win98 SE SP. Install win98se from my original CD cd first and the SP afterwards.
I followed your implementation plan and got in trouble very soon. Long before the steps 7 and 8 on your list (installation order) every time the new HD was full of corrupted files in all 3 partitions. I didn't get a well working 'basic' installation. During file copying every time I ruined lots of files and I can't tell you how many times I have seen MS Scandisk processing.
My search on internet to the cause of this took very much time. Searching Maxtor's KB, I found 2 items to check in relation to 'big' HD's: 1) ver. of Fdisk (MS KB263044) and 2) ver. of Esdi_506.PDR (MS KB243450). These were ok, probably because of the 'slipstreaming' trick? I digged some more in Maxtor's KB and found a hint that the ASPI layer should not be older than ver. 4.60 (1021). There could be conflicts between the Aspi driver(s) and the IDE driver(s). This link brings you to the KB article at the Maxtor site: KB article Maxtor
After installing a new Aspi Layer (from Adaptic's site) my trouble finally ended after 10 days and now I can get on with the next step(s) of the implementation.
I propose to implement a fresh ASPI Layer in your Win98 SE SP or (at least) indicate to fresh up the ASPI Layer yourself. The one on the win98se CD is way too old.
I hope this contribution, in some way, may benefit you all.
Bye, have a nice day.

Rudolf.

maybe not.

Petr, on Jan 21 2006, 03:09 AM, said:

emarkay, on Jan 21 2006, 01:15 AM, said:

It is an Intel 810 chipset, but I have partitioned the drive to a 60, a 60 and a 40 GB volume so the 137 GB limitation is not a factor, correct?

No, this is not correct.

The 137GB limit relates tho the physical disk size, not to partition size.

The problem is with physical disk addressing, the ESDI_506.PDR uses 28-bit addressing of sectors (512 bytes each), so the maximum addressable sector number is 2^28-1 = 268435455 . If you try to address sector number 268435456, you will read or write sector 0 instead.

Maximum partition size in Windows 98 SE is 2048GiB (2,2TB), just Windows Scandisk and Defrag will not work with partition size bigger than 137 GB because of the memory allocation problem.

Petr

since your system uses intel 810 chipsets, emarkay, try installing the Intel Application Accelerator v2.3 [IAA] driver from Intel download site:

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df...18&submit=Go%21

The IAA driver can read 137 Gb and bigger hard drives under Win98se/ME and is compatible with intel 810 chipsets.

[MDGx]

emarkay, on Jan 20 2006, 05:43 PM, said:

http://www2.acc.chul...tree/msdos.html

Please note that this URL:
http://www2.acc.chul...tree/msdos.html
is only an older copy of my MSDOS.SYS Guide:
http://www.mdgx.com/msdos.htm
which used to be located here [my old web site on AOL has been disabled for over 3 years]:
http://members.aol.c...el216/msdos.htm
This page on AOL only redirects to my current one:
http://www.mdgx.com/msdos.htm

Hope this helps.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Gape, on Jan 20 2006, 02:32 AM, said:

emarkay, on Jan 20 2006, 05:46 AM, said:

And who is the complete id*** that said to not backup registries with the SystemReg command?

See: http://support.micro...b/183603/EN-US/

DID YOU READ THAT TOO???

I recommended to add "SystemReg=0", *not* to add "Backup=0"...

This registry problem rarely occurs on the some systems because of the new IO.SYS file (WINBOOT.SYS / Q311561). This update has a problem which is not fixed by Microsoft. A workaround is to add "SystemReg=0" into the MSDOS.SYS.

Are you sure that's the right entry? Because that one may be telling it to not load the registry at all, which means you're stuck at the command prompt!!

[LLXX]

That option disables registry scanning on startup...

http://www.mdgx.com/msdos.htm
http://www.computerh...om/msdossys.htm

[MDGx]

Backup= does not exist as MSDOS.SYS setting.
You can add/modify it/whatever, but it won't do anything.

SystemReg= only *scans* for certain errors the registry files upon every Windows startup, does not tell Windows to not load the registry.
Therefore it is perfectly safe to use.
I use SystemReg= in my MSDOS.SYS [and WINBOOT.INI] for over 8 years, without any problems, with Win95, 98 and ME [all editions].

Hope this helps.