1.) Windows 95 Registry [or how I changed out that Sound Card !]
Actually, changing out (upgrading the sound card was quite
easy compared to what might have gone wrong).
I upgraded from a SB16 to the SB32 PNP. I removed all the sound
drivers from the Setup / control panel / system / device manager
/ sound video & game controllers sub-menus. (whew). Then I shut
off the P.C. and removed the hardware SB16 board. I installed the
SB32 PNP board and turned on the P.C. The BIOS I have is not
PNP, in fact its an older vlb 486 motherboard with an AMD x5 133
CPU.
I run the vlb at 40mhz so the internal AMD clock is 160mhz. I'm
digressing. However; the Windows 95 system detected the SB 32
PNP board. Another actually here, Windows 95 detected a SB16,
SBIDE, SB32 PNP, and a SB32 AWE. So I fed this driver hungry
Windows 95 the CD that comes with the card. I don't think I should
of let windows 95 get off that easy. I think there is a definite set
of SB32 PNP drivers I should have installed. I still haven't
corrected the Windows 95 sound video & game controllers sub-
menus because the sound card worked just fine. Not much effort
taken on my part. I really don't think effort applies to the P.C.
rather, I should of used the word "action", as in action on my part !
Well I have been getting ready to try out the SB32 PNP. I had
some old (older) 30 pin 4 meg 70ns simms sitting here in this desk
drawer beneath this keyboard, so I plugged two of those in the
SB32 board. I've messed around a little with the AWE Control
panel.
But mostly I've been battling back from an itinerant OCX
control I downloaded !!
I thought I'd check out some of the Multimedia OCX controls
vendors have placed around the internet. Boy was that a mistake;
Don't get me wrong here. The OCX's as individually downloaded
and utilized are I'm sure just fine. I have medium security enabled
in my Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.01, so I am cognizant of
everything that passes and gets installed here on my P.C.
I think I was a victim of OCX glut ! Unfortunately; I can't pin point
just when my multimedia went south on me. I was using
ActiveMovie to control most everything, except I changed gifs,
jpgs, bmps, wavs, au, and aiff in Windows Explorer file types to
open with their specific software rather than Internet Explorer all
the time. Especially when I was not using Internet Explorer.
I had downloaded and installed Microsoft agent (5 megs), that
animated Genie with the voice recognition. Then of course
there was that one more ocx that promised the ultimate multimedia
experience ! I should of stopped downloading OCX's a while back.
Then I had occasion outside of the Internet world in plain ol'
Windows 95 to double-click on one of my 15 megs of wav files.
What should of resulted was the wav file being played in
sound'ole and then smartly closing, putting me back at the
desktop (ahh the PERKS of Beta testing). What happened was
an error message ! Device is being used by another device. You
can wait until the device is through or End the task.
Checking around the desktop, nothing else running, checking
<Ctrl><alt><del> nothing suspicious there.
Well checking setup / control panel / system / device manager /
sound video & game controllers sub-menus, indicated all devices
present and working.
QuickTime32 control panel indicated everything was okay.
Double-clicking on setup / control panel / Multimedia indicated
BONKERS ! The only thing inside that applet was the tab
ADVANCED and a blank window. Nothing Else. Boy! Was that
ever revealing ! Can't imagine just what that revealed, whatever;
Now it begins, Picking apart the Windows
95 registry ! I use Microsoft's CFGBACK.EXE to back up
the system files before I go off and try to edit the Registry.
More on this later......
Seems the more I edit/change the Registry the slower Windows 95 gets !
At least it hasn't totally crashed the system....yet...:-|
Tasked to travel to sunny Moss Point Mississippi for two weeks, back to
the registry when I return..
December 15th 1996:
Toshiba Satellite 205CDS
its time for sun shine here in Sunny Moss point Mississippi and working
in the field with laptops are always interesting. I received this laptop
to store my Kodak DC50 digital pictures while traveling - and Email back to
Seattle. I save them out as jpg, attach them to (Email Connection) email
set to the uuencode option (not mime) and they email perfectly. Mime works
elsewhere, but not here at Moss Point, using Compuserve's Gulfport local
phone number.
This is a 100mhz pentium; compared to the 386 laptop I used several weeks
ago while out here, its way faster. the differences between the GUI's
didn't seem all that faster.
The pentium had windows 95 and the 386 had Windows for Work groups 3.11.
Where the pentium processing power really paid off was the download time
of pictures from the DC50 to the laptops harddrive. 30 some pictures took
aprox 5 hours with the 386 and maybe 15 minutes with the pentium.
At home on my 486 running overclocked at 160 mhz, and at work on a desktop
Pentium 133mhz we're talking 5 to 10 minutes for the same download.
I was ready to try and multiboot with a OSR2 release of OEM Windows 95
and I thought this new laptop would have OEM Windows 95 installed.
I attempted to add DOS 6.22 to the Toshiba. First looking for any signs of
DOS in the sub directory. Nothing found. This was a fresh copy of Windows
from the format on. Copying IO.DOS and the rest of the files required for
multiboot, resulted in Nothing... The Laptop hung after `Starting MsDos...'
Of course this was after I had shifted the OS over to DOS 6.22 by typing
to-622. The Windows 95 OS had shifted the IO.SYS to winboot.sys
and the io.dos to IO.SYS so that seemed okay. I typed To-w95 and shifted
the laptop back to the Windows 95 boot. I then backed everything up off
the harddrive and installed what I know to be a OEM OSR2 release of
Windows 95. This contains the famous FAT32. This OSR2 requires a clean,
formatted disk with only the cdrom driver and mscdex loaded by autoexec.bat
and config.sys from a booted A:\ drive. (have to have that setup 3 1/2" disk!)
This setup disk provided by Toshiba has the Windows 95 DOS IO.SYS and disk
utilities. The OSR2 setup fdisks and reformats your disk for FAT32 ! If
this wasn't a case for 100% backups I don't know what would be !! I will
try to re-install the same OSR2 over itself at a later date to see if at
least it will accomplish that.. we're talking potential lost data here.
FAT32 makes NON-DOS partitions. I should think that at least the Windows
95 would copy onto itself without disturbing other software present. If
indeed it attempts to repartition and format the disk each and every time
instead of detecting the new FAT32... well that test is on my to-do list.
- Run fdisk and display your OSR2 partitions, not a pleasant thing to do !
Attempting once again to configure for multiboot resulted in arriving
at the same point, hung on `Starting MsDos...'.
Things are not looking to good here. Was it the laptop ? the method ?
or the FAT32 ? I'll try it on a couple of other brands of P.C.'s....
What really is impressive, is the Gateway setup disk that came with a
Gateway 2000 P200 that I set up in one of the Sunny Moss Point
Trailer/offices. The Gateway shipped to us had NT 4.0 and other bundled
software, however; no Dos, nothing else. Working with a lot of nothing this
travel period eh. The user's legacy software did not work correctly in NT,
and he knew it did function in Windows 95. So how did we get from NT that
didn't go to DOS ? Answer, the Gateway setup disk (3 1/2). It contains a file
(among others) that is called bootdisk.exe. Using this disk with windows 95 in
the CDROM it setup a dual boot NT / Windows 95 configuration without disturbing
the NT installation. I had been prepared to re-install NT after Windows 95
took over the boot block, however; this wasn't to be the case.
Several man-hours were saved by that Gateway setup disk.
The P.C. boots to the NT boot.ini; drilling down the NT menu to the
Windows 95 selection this leads you to the Windows 95 (msdos.sys) boot menu
or directly into Windows 95. I'd like to try to squeeze DOS in there also,
but that will be left to another time. Whats this thing with DOS ? Its seems
that sometime it sure would be easier to boot DOS to arrive at a solution to
the situation, just sometime, somewhere.. So I keep it in mind. I'm ending
my travel period out here and have yes ! Once again backed everything up off
this Toshiba and reformatted the harddrive. As I type this I rest assured that
this time I have a working multiboot Laptop. I drove up to Mobile and purchased
a copy of Dos 6.22. I used Fdisk to remove the NON-Dos partitions, and partitioned
with Fdisk, active DOS, entire disk. Formatted /s and Installed Dos 6.22 on the
Laptop with all the multiboot files, I then installed an older copy of Windows 95
(not OSR2 OEM). So that part of the multiboot information text works just
fine. unfortunately more and P.C.'s are going to be shipped without DOS.
Is it time to get all our Legacy apps recompiled to NT or 95 ? I don't
know, what I am going to do is call Gateway about their 3 1/2 Setup disk !!
Well on to Mobile and Memphis, then back to the Country... Arlington that is.
Please excuse the spelling, it seems I forgot my Winword and spell checker.
roughing it... out here.. :-)
Working on the St. Patrick's day time frame. 1997
I hacked on that registry until my overclocked 486 was running Windows 95 like
it was 16 mhz and 4 meg memory. I knew this install of Windows 95 was blown, so I
messed around in the registry for a while more trying things. Delete this.. change
that... When that thought wore off; I deleted the files out of the Windows and system
sub directories (booted from DOS) to insure that re-installing Windows 95 would be
considered a fresh new installation. I didn't want to just restore from cfgback
since I had read that re-installing Windows 95 will `clean up' all the extra trash
that has accumulated with software, demo, bogus, removals... all those items that
leave itinerant files residing on your disk.
Okay so I had a new Windows 95. Windows 95 had again detected a SB16,
SBIDE, SB32 PNP, and a SB32 AWE. So once again I fed this driver hungry Windows 95
the CD that comes with the card. I copied the (all) ocx's present anywhere on the
hdd off to the zip drive. As of today 15th February, I have accumulated well over
a hundred ocx's just running around the Internet maybe an hour each day since I've
returned from sunny Moss Point Mississippi. This installation of Windows 95 IS much
faster and the same/new and different ocx's still allow this OS to be rock stable.
Well I have noticed that when Explorer 3.01 starts to bog down, and even stall on
transferring html docs, I can return it to full speed by booting to safe mode DOS only
and deleting the Temporary Internet Files subdirectory and all four caches. The Tempor
and the caches are re-created by the OS or Internet Explorer (I guess I'll check to see
just when they are restored) whatever, Internet explorer runs full speed, and what
appeared to be a slow internet server wasn't/isn't. I'm gearing up to add a vrml facet
to this site so you can see the different vrml, 3D, svr I'm trying out. Will make the
move when vrml 2.0 is up and running. I think vrml 2.0 will be a combination of
Superscape and Direct3D® Holding off on the Microsoft agent
(even though its great stuff!)
but really who is going to hang around and wait for 5 megs worth of voice
recognition and controls to download and install itself (well I would,
but thats beside the point).
Anyway, when OS's have agent built in then I have a couple of pages ready to go.
Just being cautious. I had voice recognition clear back in oh two ! On my Radio Shack
Color Computer III ! You could teach the CCIII 64 words. Agent is a good thing.