Saturday, June 16, 2001
Observations by readers and myself on Windows 98. The picture above is Chaos Manor Associate Eric Pobirs, who has been testing Windows 98 from earliest beta. His observations are given below.
Installation
My Observations
We have had off and on problems with installations. One comparatively late beta installation was so awful that we had to reset the BIOS on one Pentium Pro system; W 98 was rewriting the BIOS cache and messed things up so badly that the machine would not even boot from a DOS disk. We had finally to remove the battery. On another we could use BIOS setup software to reset everything to defaults. Microsoft was very interested in that report, and that problem is, they say, fixed, and I believe them. Certainly I have been unable to duplicate the problem. Lately I have been seeing Explorer crash for no reason, but I blush to say that while I have what I think was the release copy of W 98, I have not installed the shrink-wrapped copy they sent.
Friday, November 13: I have done the shrink-wrap install. This is descrived in View, and went well, The machine is an AMD k2 with 3dNow! running at 66 motherboard speed and 300 chip speed. It's fast, crisp, and works well; installation was simple, although because we have an upgrade edition of Windows 98 we installed it over Windows 95b (OSR2) which was only only there long enough to do FAT 32 formatting and the Windows 98 installations.
The Windows 98 system works fine with an STB Velocity 128 video board and Diamond Monster Sound Card. It has a 100 base T Ethernet (Fry's el cheap special, $29.00 on sale with 25' of level 5 blue wire) and found the network instantly. No driver problems, no network problems. My biggest difficulty has been that some STB graphics boards do not like the Aladdin chip set in the MSI motherboard. That is probably drivers also and will be fixed at another time.
I have not done extensive tests on Windows 98, but I have used it enough to be able to say it is as stable as 95b (for me) and I will in fact make this new machine my "main" Windows 9x machine for most of my work, retiring the CYRIX machine I have been using to another work station. As of Friday, 13 November, I've no quarrel with Windows 98.
Reader Reports
From: Mike Lucas [mikelu@skylink.net]
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 1998 1:38 PM
jerryp@jerrypournelle.comTo:
ChaosManorMail - Win 98 installsSubject:
What are you hearing about Win 98 installs?
I have had the following experience doing my own, the office and friends systems.
AMD K-233 - no problems
Gateway P133 - no problems
Gateway 9100 solo - on reboot got invalid media type. Tried resetting bios, and fdisk /mbr (to rewrite master boot record). Tried Microsoft and Gateway tech support. Above suggestions, then fdisk, format and install from scratch. By the way, found out that if you use a diskette version of Win 95 to verify an upgrade on a clean disk (as forced here), you will have to insert about 8 of the 13 disks and wait while the install program verifies them. Use a cd-rom if possible.
Gateway P166 - copied all of the programs, rebooted to hardware detect, kept getting GPFs as soon as plug and play detect started. As this is my main work computer, I uninstalled (which went very smoothly - definitely use the option to save system files) and have not retried to install. I think that the problem may have been caused by Novell's client32. I had v2.2 which, in the fine print of network.txt, is not supported. I have since upgraded this machine and the p-133 above (which went with no problems) to v2.5. Hopefully, that will fix this problem as well.
Gateway Destination - no problems
So my score, 3 no problems, 1 big problem (reformat) and 1 undecided.
Be interested in others experiences.
I would be interested also. Thanks.
==
From: john biel [mailto:jpbiel@linamar.ca]
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 1998 3:42 PM
To: jerryp@jerrypournelle.com
Subject: CHAOSMANORMAIL -WIN98 installs
Jerry,
I installed Win98 upgrades to two computers yesterday and today.The first computer was a Pentium 120 with a Voodoo grapics card and a Win95b O/S. It installed reasonably well, with the exception that for some reason Internet Explorer (or its integrated part I guess) wouldn't work. This machine had Netscape on it as well as IE 3.01. Finally had to reinstall Win98 again and then all was well.
The 2nd turned into a major disaster. It was a PII 266 with an ATI Xpert@play AGP card, a ViewSonic G790 monitor, a Creative PC-DVD Dxr2 DVD-Rom drive, a Microtek Color PageWiz Scanner (Parallel version) and a USR 56K Data Fax Modem. It had Win95 OSR3 (and the usb support was working)
I ran the install and all appeared to be well until it said it was setting up Plug&;Play devices, It just rebooted without warning, it restarted and seemed ok, claimed it found everything and finally started up with Win98 in 640x480 16 color. Every time I tried to increase resolution it would lock up. Also couldn't get the Internet stuff running. Tried reinstalling 2 more times. More bios problems now sometimes not recognizing the HD. Decided to add in another pci video card since it seemed the graphics card was the problem. Had an old s3 card around. Booted up found the card tried to add in the drivers but it couldn't find the DVD. Gave up took out the DVD put in another CD-Rom I had around . It put in the graphics card , finally I could do something. Checked the system device manager and found several occasions of the ati card, removed all of them and rebooted. System booted ok and except in the device manager it claimed that emm386 was using the video space and I should take it out of the config.sys, of course I didn't have it in the config.sys but finally figured out from the display.txt file in c:\windows that I had to add Emmexclude=C000-CFFF to the system.ini in order for the card to work. Rebooted, it found the card, found the second monitor. But as soon as I changed the resolution from 640x480 on the ATI ...crash
Gave up took out the ATI , rebooted , all ok. Tried to get on the Internet.
And dialup networking says I need to re-install the files. Well there is no way to reinstall those files on their own except to uncheck dialup networking. Reboot. Recheck dialup networking in the windows add/remove files and no luck, still asks to have the files reinstalled. So Reinstall Win98. Still doesn't work.
Reformat the HD since it's evident that something in the original Win95 registry must be messing it up. Reinstall, and voila a semi-working computer.
Everything works sort of, except of course I started out with a DVD and now only am using a CD, started out with a fast ATI AGP card and now have an old slow S3 PCI card and worst of all about 1 in every 3 bootups my HD can't be found.
The only reason I upgraded was because of supposed native support for AGP, DVD and USB. (foolish of me since with the drivers for Win95 and OSR3 support for USB everything worked fine before I started.) But I learned that I won't be buying Win98 at work, I simply don't have the time to support it. (I am a Netadmin in a manufacturing facility)
We used to joke that Win95 had to be reinstalled 50 times to work and if you changed anything you had to reinstall it another 50 times, but in over 130 different machine installs, some older 486's, most newer pentiums I have never had the amount of trouble I had with this one.
Wow. I am just about to get into doing W 98 here. Looks like I have a fun time coming... Thanks, and stay well, Jerry (but in fact we did not have such problems at all.)
==
From: Keith Irwin [kirwin@iglobal.net] Sent: Saturday, June 27, 1998 9:14 PM To: Jerry Pournelle Subject: CHAOSMANORMAIL / Win98
OS Installation Stories:
I re-installed OSR2 once, after reformatting my drive, and it messed things up, plug 'n' play wise. I tried deleting drivers and re-installing and things were a mess. The solution was to boot to "safe mode," delete drivers, and then everything installed correctly.
I upgraded to Win98, and everything went fine there, too, until I started messing around with my sound card, an SC128-3D. This device insists on installing three devices: a PCI Audio device, a Gameport device, and a "Legacy Relocator for PCI Audio Device." Each one of these takes an IRQ, and with all three of them active, I've no room for my tape back up, which conflicts with the "Legacy Relocator." Since I don't play any games that need that thing, I thought to delete the thing. WRONG! When I reboot, Win98 tries to re-install, and I get lots of errors and a "cannot write to drive c:" error. Here's how I fixed it:
1) pulled out my sound card and deleted the drivers (and everything worked). 2) put in my sound card (nothing worked, except safe mode, or if I refused to allow Win98 to install sound drivers).
3) pulled out my tape drive, allowed Win98 to install the drivers for the sound card, then went into the Device Manager, and "disabled" the Legacy driver from the hardware profile, and rebooted. This freed up IRQ 5 for my tape drive.
MORAL OF THIS STORY: Win98 messed with my previous hardware profile such that "disabled" devices conflicted. The fault is with the Aztech driver installation for never asking me if I wanted the Legacy driver installed. Grr! All in all, though Win98 works.
And the title bars are pretty! And you can stick icons anywhere on the desktop with Active Desktop. Other than this, and other than learning a lot about how I need to install OS's on this particular machine (and I'm a home user veteran of OS/2 on my ole 486).
Question: What the heck is "IRQ Holder for PCI Steering" which "conflicts/shares" with my sound card, net card, and "USB to Universal Host Controller?" Does everyone have this?
Question: I have only one IDE drive, but two controllers (for a possible total of four drives, two master/slave pairs). Can I disable the second one safely so as to free up an IRQ? Is this a BIOS setting? Motherboard jumper? Software setting?
Keith Irwin
Interesting: Our experience has been that OSR2 and W98 solve a lot of plug and play problems that earlier W 95 versions couldn't handle. Eric has been a W98 enthusiast, and since I have W98, I'll certainly install it on the new Socket 7 system I'm building. As to the IRQ Holder, I don't know: our machines have all the IRQ's used up, one reason we very much look forward to USB and Firewire. You can disable the secondary IDE, but whether that will free the IRQ is not clear. How you do it is specific to the motherboard and BIOS you have, and there's no general answer I know. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's a mess.
I wish IBM had continued OS/2 but they didn't.
==
From: Russell Kay [russellk@bix.com]
Sent:
Monday, June 29, 1998 9:19 AMTo: jerryp@jerrypournelle.com
Subject: CHAOSMANORMAIL
RE: Windows 98
I've used a couple of beta versions, and most recently installed the one that Microsoft sent me (it arrived on Byte's last day of existence), which is a full version. I installed that one on a virgin disk, an IBM 14-GB deskstar, and everything went well.
I've had one problem only, using SciTech's Display Doctor universal video drivers, and that wasn't really SciTech's fault, it was caused by their following Microsoft's directions about uninstalls. Turns out that you can delete the driver from the disk and current settings, but Win98 doesn't update the registry and so it starts looking for a video driver that no longer exists. Makes it impossible to reboot, so after several attempts I tried reinstalling Win98. Even that hung twice, but finally succeeded after I manually deleted the old registry files. SciTech has fixed the problem in their latest release, but it was a real headscratcher for a while. (SciTech says I could have booted into safe mode and changed the video driver there and it would have worked.)
Anyway, that aside, I've had no other problems with Win98 that I didn't have with 95, and it seems like it crashes or hangs less often. My system is a Pentium-233MMX, 64MB RAM, Number Nine Revolution 3D graphics card with 8MB, and it's got all kinds of stuff hanging off it (every bracket slot is filled!): 4 serial ports, 2 USB ports; 2 parallel ports supporting a Lexmark 7200 printer, Storm TotalScan flat-bed scanner, and ZipPlus; a SCSI Jaz external drive, AWE64 sound card, USR 33.6 modem, CD-ROm and CD-R drives, the aforementioned 14-GB drive and from time to time another hard drive (as I try to consolidate things from past computers-that 14GB is great, just copy everything onto it and it doesn't burp).
I'm using a FAT-32 (or is it FAT-32X?) file system, and some apps don't seem to know how big the disk really is; they seem to think it's only 8 GB, but it only affects their space-remaining display.
So far, I'm happy.
-- Russ Kay
Thanks, Russ. I'm just getting around to building my Win 98 system: with things the way they are, I don't want to change any system vital to operations here. Fortunately I have all the parts for building up a good Socket 7 system that I can put 98 on for extensive tests, and I'll get to that sometime this week. With luck I'll be able to put my scanners and a new Microsoft proportional force joystick on it too...
ERIC'S EXPERIENCES
Tuesday, June 30, 1998
Still playing with the layout. Looking better I hope. The following was an internal memo Eric sent that I thought ought to be up here.
From: Eric Pobirs [nbrazil@ix.netcom.com]
:
With the release of Windows 98 the USB revolution is upon us. Kind of. Keyboards, mice, adapters for legacy parallel and RS232 devices are available but that is only half the story. What use is migrating our devices if the system insists on continuing to reserve resources for those old ports? It should be possible to disable these items but on most systems they simply won’t go away no how much one messes with the BIOS and/or Device Manager.
Until this problem is overcome there will be little advantage to USB. We will still have to carefully weigh the value of every internal addition to our systems. I really enjoy my Creative Labs Encore DVD drive and decoder but it will have to go if I’m going to install a SCSI host to handle the drives I want to add. Reviewing any IRQ using product means temporarily removing something else.
What about the folks out there in the real world? Have any of you been successful in creating a USB oriented system with lots of IRQ freedom? Eliminating the keyboard, mouse, parallel, and two serials of a typical system should free up four IRQs assuming the fifth is used by the USB host. Move the PCI sound cards down to IRQ 5 to simplify legacy support without additional resource and a wealth of expansion space is freed up.
What I really want for purity’s sake is an otherwise top of the line motherboard that lacks legacy ports and has a BIOS that defaults to USB input devices. Any candidates?
Eric
Eric points up a real problem. USB and Firewire are supposed to save us from IRQ depletion, but unless the mother board people allow us to disable some of the devices we no longer need and thus free up the IRQ, it hardly matters.
Thursday, July 2, 1998
Another report from Eric:
From: Eric Pobirs [nbrazil@ix.netcom.com]
Sent:
Thursday, July 02, 1998 6:13 AMTo: Jerry Pournelle
Subject: About installing Win98
Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way:
1. I’ll do a full review soon (depending on how this diverticulitus progresses) but to put it shortly, get Power Quest’s Drive Image! The 2.0 release is a major improvement. Take advantage of the incredibly cheap cost per gigabyte we now enjoy and grant yourself the power to screw up without consequence.
2. Don’t panic if you get a crash during installation. If you reboot there is a good chance the install will pick up where it left off. Other times you need to start install again but in this instance there is a good chance that it will succeed the second time around. Who knows, perhaps it’s something akin to a reverse immune response. Numerous items that have been on the market only a few months will try to install obsolete DLLs as part of their drivers. My recommendation is to keep the newer versions since Win98 seems to need them more than the drivers. This seems to be a major cause of crashes that don’t reoccur after restarting.
3. You may have to remove devices to simplify the system. Get rid of the most extraneous items first i.e. DVD decoder boards. (For the record, the Creative Labs Encore DVD package works fine under Win98) The two items that must be in place to get started are the drive you’re installing to (It would be a real short show otherwise, wouldn’t it?) and the video board. Most video cards now require an IRQ and will not permit the system to boot in other than safe mode if that need is not met. Since you cannot manually assign IRQs in safe mode it’s a much easier route to remove a few nonessentials to get initial installation done and then make a backup with the aforementioned Drive Image. If the remaining device need special coddling it will be much simpler to work out the details if it only takes ten minutes to start over Vs. doing the whole install again.
4. If at possible start clean. If the system you’re installing on has been running any version of Win95 for long, chances are it’s a mess. You can use the various commercial uninstall and cleanup utilities, you can run RegClean until every byte has been scrutinized more than the Zapruder film but nothing beats a clean drive for, well, cleanliness. This would also be an excellent time to make sure you have the latest version of every driver that might be requested. Evil old drivers can bring everything to a screeching halt so it’s best if the new OS never sees them to begin with.
Thanks. This will probably get moved up to the Install section reasonably soon. My first priority is to get rid of Front Page 98 before it drives me to total insanity. Actually my first priority is to print BURNING CITY and get it off to my agent.
Then I'll build up the Chaos Manor W 98 machine.
Friday, July 3, 1998
From: Eric Pobirs [nbrazil@ix.netcom.com]
Sent:
Friday, July 03, 1998 1:40 AMTo: Discontinuity Group
Subject: More Win98 grist for the mill
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,23837,00.html?st.ne.fd.gif.d
It appears that prospective upgraders should really follow my suggestion about scoping out new drivers before starting the job.
This also seems in keeping with the advantage of a clean install since that eliminates the chance of outdated drivers causing havoc.
I'm still trying to keep up with the rest of the world, so I haven't had a chance to get at the new W 98 machine, but it looks like I'll profit from other's experiences. The thing about a monthly is that you never know when I got something done. I can with a burst of speed catch up and incorporate all the other inputs into a column, trim it for excessive words, and look like a genius. This way you see the process. Bismark said that the public should not see how legislation or sausages were made lest they become disgusted. Hmm.
