Re: Win-98 and large hard drives, custom cluster size (new information)

[Guest teebo]

> I have just installed win-98se on my Asrock test platform, on a new

> 500 gb hard drive. I used the switch that prevents ACPI installation,

> and after all is said and done I have no yellow (!) showing up in

> device manager. On-board lan and USB are functional. I haven't tried

 

sounds wonderful :-)

> the on-board sound device yet, so I don't know if I'll get it to work

> (I have it disabled in the bios). Windows hung during the first

> startup attempt - bootlog.txt showed the problem was hsfloppy.pdr. I

 

strange that you needed the motherboard drivers to preventing

the windows floppy support to hang the system

>

> Under System Properties, Performance tab, it says:

> "Performance may be improved by enabling virtual memory"

> In the Performance status list, virtual memory is indeed disabled.

>

> In the Virtual Memory window, the button "Let windows manage my

> virtual settings" radio button is selected.

 

if you set the settings yourself, making a permanent swapfile

do it still say that virtual memory is disabled?

 

someone had some similar problem after installing the servicepack

and fixed it by edited both Min/MaxFileCache [vcache] in system.ini

he did set them to 2048 (but that is only 2Mb but you could try

fiddle with it, there is some size recomendations at

http://www.thpc.info/ram/vcache98.html )

 

the error could allso be given if win386.swp is readonly

> Neither windows scandisk and defrag run. They both complain about not

 

do scandisk/defrag even run on a LBA48 drive?

(I thought they killed any data after 137 GB, but I might be wrong)

There must be something better that one can replace them with

> versions. Only issue so far is that the system doesn't shut down

> properly (it goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor in the

> upper left corner).

 

Hmm... have you tried a older version of the nvidia drivers

to se if it shut down corectly then?

> The WD software requires me to select with OS I will be using. Even

> when I tell it I want to create a FAT-32 partition, it still wants me

> to specify the OS, and it lists Win-98 along with ME as different

 

aha.. western digital send a partitioning program with its disk...

And I guess they think the program is more "userfriendly" that way :-)

(and maybe it is for people that never heard of partitions

and formatting and different formats - and don't want to know)

otherwise you could use freedos fdisk I think

> When booting into dos, it takes a few minutes to perform the first DIR

> command (this was expected based on previous tests with 160 gb

 

why? or are there something I missunderstood here...

> This is a great motherboard, either for exclusive win-98 use, or for

> dual boot use. My test board is an older version of this motherboard

> (only supports dual-core CPU's according to the box) but I have

> several others (new-in-box) that are 4-core versions (quad-core

 

you have several motherboards just lying around there?

I'm a bit jealous ....

> In theory I could perform a file-creation test and load this drive

> with millions of files to see how 98 handles it.

 

just download lots of random songs and movies with dc++ or

something and make copys (and copys of the copys recursively

in a nice directory hierachy till the disk is 90% full ;-)