Win 95 OSR2 setup problem (Dual PCI-IDE controller)

Hi,

i'm trying to install OSR2 on an old machine Mitac PH4500AM using a 486/DX4 CPU with an 528 MB Maxtor disk and use it a a small printserver for my home network. Bios = Award 4.50G.

Setup works fine until the reboot. It gives then the well known screen explaining the detection process for all hardware and PnP devices. It then crashes with the following fatal error: 0E occured at 0028:C025D67E in VxD VMM(06) + 0000267E.

After this i can reboot into safe mode. The device manager shows me multiple instances of the PCI IDE controller and/or multiple instances of the VIA Tech Dual PCI IDE Controller (the PCI IDE controller is VT83C561 which is a difficult one). On top i see multiple Primary and Secondary IDE Controllers (single FiFo) which are marked in the registry as MF\BADPRIMARY and MF\BADSECONDARY.

I traced down the problem to this controller : it seems that there is an enumeration problem for this PCI-IDE controller (see also multiple articles in the MS KB; it this really a bug in OSR2 ?). Microsoft advices to upgrade to Win98 but this occupies much more disk space which i don't have on this machine (and i want to keep it so for a simple print spooler). I installed already the ViA Tech (4in1 package in many versions) device drivers but it seems that the device i have is not supported in it.

Are there any hints for solving this one ? I tried also to install a Windows3.1 fast disk driver in order to bypass the Win95 driver detection for this device but this did not work: Win95 still tries to enumerate the PCI-IDE controller. Any ideas on how to bypass this or to solve ?

Any help will be much appreciated.

with best regards,

 

A solution for this one....

Hi,

i'll answer my question myself after quite some
experimenting . It was really fun to play around with the
system and i learned a lot . Here a small report for what
it is worth. Maybe someone can use it as a guideline for
similar problems.
__________________________________________________
Problem description.
Installing Win95 B (OSR2) on a Mitac PC 486DX4; PH4500AM
using a dual PCI-IDE controller
VIA Tech 83C516 for the PCI - IDE bridge has the following
problems:
-) copying files is OK but at reboot for further setup the
computer crashes after a while with an error Fatal
exception 0E in a module Vmm (06). One error was "Fatal
error 0E has occured at 0028:C025D67E in VxD VMM(06) +
0000267E ". Another one i got was "Fatal error 0E has
occured at 0028:C022134D in VxD VMM(06) + 0000134D ".
The Microsoft KB indicates that this has to do with an
registry problem: see Q145836.

-) after starting the computer in Safe mode (which works)
multiple instances for the hard disk controller (Named PCI
IDE Controller or VIA Tech Dual IDE Controller or Standard
Dual IDE Controller) are found in the device manager.
Also multiple 'Other Devices' (mostly PCI IDE
Contoller) are found.

-) the setuplog.txt file in the c: directory indicates
that some devices were not enumerated correctly (device
VEN_1106\DEV_0561). This is precisely the PCI to IDE
bridge. Check also the detlog.txt (hardware detection)
and bootlog.txt files: they contain valuable
information on where and how things go wrong.

-) Installing the 4in1 package from Via tech makes things
only worse: then multiple bad primary and secundary child
devices are found in the registry.

This problem is OSR2 related ! See Q187767, 136060,
164873 on problems with OSR2 and multifunction PCI
devices. Also see Q159492, 159543, 163938, 164222,
164873, 170324, 173677, 182591 and 192067 on OSR2
enumeration problems with Dual PCI IDE controllers.
The main problem is that OSR2 at every boot tries to
enumerate the devices again i.e. there is no way to tell
that it should stop doing that for the Dual IDE
controller. Hence at every startup Win95 detects the same
devices again and starts adding instances of the
controller until it generates a fatal error due to memory
limits or problems writing the registry to the disk.

There are OSR2 updates claiming at resolving this PCI
enumeration problem (specifically for PC Cards added to a
system). See pciupd.exe for OSR2 (which uses pci.vxd
version 4.0.0.1122) - i found this one on a Toshiba site.
However they do not work i.e. the enumeration problem is
still there ! Also installing older or adapted drivers
for the PCI to IDE controller (4in1 packages from Via
Tech) do not solve this problem.

The Solution: pciide.vxd from Win95 Original version
-) get the file pciide.vxd from an original Win95 Original
Retail CD. The file is located in
\drivers\system\pci\pciide.vxd. The associated Readme file
explains how to use it and when the driver should be used
and why.
-) apply the Readme instructions: replace the pci.vxd in
the Windows\System directory by this file pciide.vxd
(rename this file into pci.vxd)
-) reboot the PC
-) Installation works fine without any problem. Maybe one
disadvantage: you are using an old driver version in a
more recent Win95 release. Nevertheless things run
smoothly with this method.

Some other tests i did
The above result inspired me to do some other playing with
the pci.vxd file. Find hereunder the results.
-) Win95 OSR2 with pci.vxd from OSR2 : not OK.
-) Win95 OSR2 with pci.vxd from Win95 Original version
(Win95A): OK
-) Win95 OSR2 with pciide.vxd from Win95 Original version
(Win95A): OK (In use today !!)
-) Win95 OSR2 with pci.vxd V11.16 : not OK
-) Win95 OSR2 with pci.vxd V11.17 : not OK
-) Win95 OSR2 with pccard + pci update (pci.vxd
+pciimp.pci V11.22) : not OK
-) Win95 OSR2 with pci.vxd V4.10.2223 (from Win98SE) and
pciimp.pci V11.22) :
*) enumeration is now OK i.e. it passes the
enumeration
*) PCI to IDE controller not configured correctly
(exclamation mark in device manager)
*) hard disk is using MSDOS compatibility mode (16
bit access) i.e. system is not
configured for optimal performance.
*) the compatibility mode problem can be resolved by
using a 32Bit Disk Access driver
(Fastdisk). See below on how to do it.
Note: there are multiple fastdisk drivers around:
-) Maxtor based on Microhouse - win32bit.exe
-) Maxtor based on Ontrack - fast_103.exe
-) Seagate - seg32176.exe
-) Ontrack - ontrk386.exe
-) Western Digital - wdcdrv.zip
In this experiment i used the Ontrack -
ontrk386.exe driver.
*) using the Ontrack Fastdisk driver you get 32 Bit
mode i.e. system is configured for
optimal performance (as shown in the device
manager).
*) Hence this solution works ! However be carefull
with the pci.vxd driver: the only
other pci card in the system was a graphics card
(old) which worked OK. i don't know if other pci cards
would work without problems. In my case this was not a
concern as i want to use the system as a simple
gateway.

Installing a FastDisk driver
-) This should only be done on systems that do not have 32
bit disk access due to malfunctioning hard disk drivers or
PCI-IDE controllers. See also the interesting document
from Microsoft "Microsoft Windows Operating System 3.1 and
Improved Hard Disk Access; An Overview of SMARTDrive 4.0
Disk Cache and 32-Bit Disk Access "

-) Obtain the appropriate Win3.1 or Win3.11 32 Bit
protected mode fast disk driver for your harddisk. Fast
Disk packages are around for Maxtor (one on Ontrack
another on Microhouse technology), Western Digital,
Seagate disks. A generic driver is available : ontrack.386
-) Load the driver in the system.ini file (use Start -
Run - Sysedit) and add the 32BitDiskAccess code (see
Q136060)

[386Enh]
.....
32BitDiskAccess = ON
....
....
device=c:\drivers\ontrack.386 (or wdcdrv.386 for WD)

-) reboot : the system should now have diskaccess in 32
protected mode. Check in the device manager. Note that the Ios.log file in the c:\windows directory can be helpful
to examine in case of further problems: this file
shows which 16bit drivers are being loaded at startup: one of these might prevent loading the 32 bit drivers.