Re: Can someone else help? Was changing partition size.

Dennis wrote:


Now I have two computers with dual boot and can not use Windows
98SE on either one. One won't boot to 98 because I added a gig of
memory. The other won't because of the above problem.
I tried the supposed fix to make Windows 98SE boot up with more
than a gig of memory but that has not worked either.

Dennis Q.

This is the supposed fix to make Windows 98SE boot up with more than
1GB of memory. I have a relatively clean copy running in Virtual PC
right now, so at least I can verify there is a system.ini file.
The [vcache] and [386enh] headers already exist in my file, so
there should only be two lines to add. There will already
be a number of lines in the [386enh] section.

*******

C:\Windows\system.ini

[vcache]
MaxFileCache=524288 (or a lesser number if you want)

[386enh]
MaxPhysPage=40000 (limits physical RAM reported to Win98 to 1GB)

*******

The MaxFileCache is decimal kilobytes, and the number shown equates to 512MB.
Using that limitation, helps prevent an address space limitation from
throwing error messages. Any value from 65536 to 524288 should work,
and not materially affect the speed of vcache.

MaxFileCache is needed, when more than 512MB of memory is present.

MaxPhysPage uses hexadecimal. The value 40000 throws away any memory
above 1GB, which helps to keep Win98SE stable. You can use values
less than that, if you're still having problems. MaxPhysPage makes
sense, if you're in a dual boot environment.

MaxPhysPage is needed, when more than 1GB of memory is present.

System.ini is a hidden file, and you want to keep file extensions visible
when looking in the C:\Windows directory. If you're not careful, using
a text editor, you could end up with something like System.ini.txt, which
you don't want. So no matter which technique you use (msconfig or notepad),
you want to verify all is correct, before doing a reboot.

The last time I did that set of changes, it was done by using a Linux LiveCD
boot disc. I used Knoppix Linux to allow me to edit that. Several months ago,
I installed Win98SE on my Core2 Duo computer. The computer has 2GB of
memory installed (which means I need both changes above). The trick there is...

1) Start the Win98 install
2) When the computer goes to do its first reboot, insert the Linux
disc and boot from that instead. Make the edits to system.ini , then
save and exit. Shut down Linux and reboot. On this boot, allow the
Win98 hard drive to boot, and finish the Win98 install. Since the
system.ini has been modified, Windows won't crash on that first
reboot. (I got this right on the first try, which is a record for me...)

So I have had Win98 (original and SE, since I bought the upgrade),
running on a modern computer. Only one core of my dual core processor
works, but the OS is still pretty fast. I did this test install, just
to prove it could be done. Not all modern motherboards still allow
this, since hardware architectures have moved on, and it is ten years
later.

It is possible you could boot an MSDOS floppy, and edit the system.ini
that way. Whether that is worth contemplating, depends on how much
you know about MSDOS, versus how much you know about Linux.

http://www.vfrazee.com/ms-dos/6.22/help/

Sorry I cannot help with the mess on your other disk. People have
been recommending Easeus, mainly because it is free. I cannot say
how well reviewed or tested it is. Any time you do a major change like that,
you need to have backups.

*******
I can illustrate that with another one of my experiments. I wanted
a "better defrag" (not that I really care, but I needed a project
to work on). I tried the built-in defrag, but it wasn't perfect.

I decided to try robocopy_XP026 version. It can copy files from
one partition to another. But, I wasn't sure this would work, and
there was a risk I could mess up my install. The first step then,
is to back up my C: drive. To do that, I copied every sector from
the drive, into a file. In Linux, I used the "dd" command, to
make one large 76GB file.

sudo dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/media/sda1/mydrive.dd

Since that file system happens to be NTFS, it can handle a 76GB file.
The mydrive.dd contains every sector of my C: drive.

Next, I booted Win2K, and used robocopy, to copy every file from
the WinXP C: drive, to another NTFS partition on my spare drive.
Since WinXP wasn't running, none of the files are "busy".

I cleaned off the C: drive, then robocopied the files back.

In this case, if the WinXP drive was screwed up, I could use
the dd command in Linux again, to put all the sectors back.

That is an example, of being careful while doing an experiment.
Any time the results are uncertain, or the recipe is complicated,
it helps to have a "plan b". As long as I have the "mydrive.dd"
file, I have some hope of backing out.

HTH,
Paul
.