Problem with Win98 VPC Additions in VPC 2004

I've got a Win98 VPC image that I was using in VPC 5.2 with the additions
installed. I've upgraded it to the VPC 2004 and it will boot fine until I
install the additions and reboot. The problem is with the hostmaus.drv (I
think that's the name). This appears to be the VPC mouse driver that gets
installed.

The machine will boot, almost get into Windows 98, error on the driver, and
then shutdown.

As soon as I uninstall the VPC additions and reboot the machine is fine.

Anyone else experienced this issue? Any solutions / recommendations?

Thanks,

Robert

 

Well I got it fixed ... What a mess!!!

To fix this you need to reboot in safe mode and edit the System.ini and the
Registry. I saved the System.ini and the Registry keys in question prior to
any editing. I recommend that you do the same.

After installing the VPC 2004 Additions and rebooting twice (not after the
first reboot) the System.ini [boot] section looked like this



[boot]

mouse.drv=hostmaus.drv

host.mouse.drv=×Æká
ºiá£iáÿôÐSÂ@<@uÓþÀªS&Ó°:«<÷&¡)çÍ!rÅÃRºi"-Ægá
è =Zìè *DisplayFallback=0



Fairly obvious that it's corrupted somehow. I didn't know what it was
supposed to look like but I Googled and found something. I modified the
System.ini to look like this

[boot]

mouse.drv=HOSTMAUS.DRV

HOST.MOUSE.DRV=mouse.DRV

*DisplayFallback=0

That fixed the boot problem with the error when trying to load the
hostmaus.drv.

The next problem had to do with Video drivers. Win98 has the S3Trio32/64 PCI
(732/764) drivers loaded and would not pick up the VPCS3.drv, VPCS3.dll, and
VPCS3.vxd files even if I uninstalled the video card and rebooted. I was
unable to change the resolution or color depth at all with the S3Trio
driver. I believe that the problem here is that there is no INF file for
Win98, therefore no way for Win98 to know what drivers to use and no way for
you to point it to another driver.

At this point I've hacked the registry to make the existing installed video
card point to the VPCS3 drivers.

I saved off the following registry keys

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\InstalledFiles

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display\0002\DEFA
ULT



Changed the

S3.dll

S3.drv

S3.vxd

Entries in the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\InstalledFiles registry
key to read

VPCS3.dll

VPCS3.drv

VPCS3.vxd



Changed the

S3.drv

S3.vxd

Entries in the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display\0002\DEFA
ULT registry key to read

VPCS3.drv

VPCS3.vxd

Rebooted, changed the resolution and all was well.

Although this is quite the hack, everything is now working (system boots and
I can change the video resolution to something besides 640 x 480 / 256
colors).

I hope the upgrades of any WinXP, Win2k, Win2003 systems go more smoothly
than this!!!

HTH,

Robert

 

Well I spoke too soon. The system seems to be unstable at this time.

I believe that the editing of the SYSTEM.INI file is fine. I'm thinking the
culprit is the modification of the Video drivers in the registry. The
problem that I'm running into is that when I launch IE the system locks up.

Anyone else out there have any solutions?

TIA,

Robert

 

Anyone else out there have any solutions?

I have the same problem with the video drivers in a Win98 VM created in
VPC5.2 and now running in VPC2004.

The Win98 additions seem to be broken with no way to fudge it.

- Bob Comer

 

Cool ... sort of. At least I'm not alone. I'll post to this group if I find
a way to fix it.

Robert

 

I have yet to get any of the additions to work yet unfortunately, but I've
only tried with NT4 and Win98.

- Bob Comer

 

I take that back, I have got the NT4 additions to work, the problem with it
was related to loadwc mucking thins up. NT4 is a bit slow though, even with
the additions working.

Still no luck on the additions for Win98. The properties/Advanced show that
the optimizations are there, but they obviously aren't all there ...

WinXPPro, P4/1.8, 640M RAM.

- Bob Comer

 

What version of Virtual PC were you using prior to the upgrade?

--
Cheers,
Benjamin Armstrong
======================
Virtual PC Program Manager

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
You assume all risk for your use.

 

What version of Virtual PC were you using prior to the upgrade?

5.2, build 418. (The first one posted on MSDN.)

- Bob Comer

 

Version 5.2 = don't know the exact build - I believe that it was the last
one available for MSDN download.

Robert

 

VPC2004 does even worse on my Athlon -- it locks up the machine solid, only
a hardware reset does anything. There is no messages in the event log.
This machine has been extremely stable with everything else I've run.
(including VPC5.2)

I do have vmware installed, but I did a quick install of WinXPP on another
partition and it acted the same way.

WinXP Pro
Athlon 1800+ (1.53Ghz)
512M Ram, 120G disk, Abit KR7-RAID motherboard. (promise controller)
ATi 7500 All in Wonder video.

- Bob Comer