vnetbios.vxd 1

[goBoating]

Set out to make a DELL Win98 dual boot with LINUX. I defrag'd and used a commercial package, Partition Commander, to resize partition 0 and created parition 1. Win98 worked fine at that point. I tried to configure LILO, the LINUX supplied boot manager and I lost the ability to boot Win98. So, I removed the new partition, now one primary partition, formatted the drive and reinstalled Win98 from the ground up. What a pain.

Finally, the problem......
Win98 boots now, but complains that it can't find a file, vnetbios.vxd, and my network stuff will not run. I can't get my dial out to work. I found a reference to that file on

http://www.microsoft.com

as being in Net10.cab on the CD. How do I get the file out of the *.cab format? Or, do I try reinstalling from scratch again.

Could there still be a problem with my MBR (master boot record)? Does not seem so, since the machine finds partition 0 and boots from it.....ponder....ponder


Any ideas or wisdom would be appreciated. I am sliding toward trashing M$ and just loading RED HAT, if the M$ OS does not begin to cooperate soon. Maybe that is the best way to cut my losses.

Thanks in advance.




keep the rudder amid ship and beware the odd typo

 

[disconockerated]

Some help from micro$oft here.......

http://support.microsoft.com/support/windows/InProductHelp98/si_win_dsktrb_sfc.asp?

 

[goBoating]

THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I'll see if I can patch the holes before I back up and start over.




keep the rudder amid ship and beware the odd typo

 

[goBoating]

Thought, I would say how it turned out..... how I resolved the situation....

What a pain....!!! Several tries to patch the holes just lead to new holes. So, the fix was to start with a clean sheet. In anticipation of trying another LINUX install on a second partition, I fdisk'd the 10G drive into a primary DOS part of 6 GIGS, fdisk /MBR, and formatted it. Then, started a plain vanilla Win98 install which, during installation, with it's several required reboots, began to complain again about not being able to find files. I wanted to get the email running, new I could with Win98 (LINUX might take a little longer) so I continued with the installation ignoring the complaints. Got finished. Still had the can't find vnetbios.vxd complaint on boot. So, I tried a re-install over the existing Win98 install and that worked. Boots fine, dial out works, printer works, sound card is confused, but that can be reinstalled also. Why a re-install worked, I have no idea, but it seems to have.

end of describing the solution and starting to rant....


Plans for th future are to install a Windows side boot manager, and not depend on LILO. I'm sure LILO will work, I just am not sure what I did wrong to screw it up. So, I'll try something that says it is easier than LILO. Then, build LINUX on the second partition. If things go reasonably well with LINUX, and they did the first time, I am going to try to duplicate the services on the LINUX side that the family is used to using on the Win98(email, word processor, spreadsheet, games...). Once done, I'm nuking the Win OS.

<rant>
I may be blaspheming in this forum, but, I was more that a little upset when, while trying to use FIPS, a tool supplied with my LINUX distribution, to create a second partition, it resized the primary DOS partition down to the correct size and then blew up before completing the work on the second partition. The machine still booted to Win98 just fine and the first partition had been shrunk, but the second partition was not usable. I used commercial software, Partition Commander, to do it again, and Part Commander, raised a warning that I had a virus in upper memory and gave the option to view it, which I did. It was notification that Windows had halted the machine because a non-M$ process was trying to play with the partition table. I don't remember the exact verbage, but that is the short of it. M$ had stopped FIPS!!!! I had booted from the FIPS floopy disk, Win98 was not even running!!!! That was just about enough to make me pull Windows off of the machine completely. Is this the kind of stuff one OS manufacturer should be doing?... Preventing the owner of a piece of hardware from using a generic tool to configure/maintain the hardware??? What a pain.
</rant>

Sorry, about the rant. I hope the posting of the solution may be useful to someone.




keep the rudder amid ship and beware the odd typo

 

[Comtech]

Nicely put.
I use XOSL from

http://www.xosl.org

for my boot manager (Win98, Mandrake7, ME, Win2k) all on separate partitions/hard drives, and it's a charm to use...free too! Cheers,
Jim
reboot@pcmech.com

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/

Moderator at

http://www.56k.com

Staff at

http://www.pcmech.com

Windows 9x/ME instructor.
Jim's Modems:

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/modems/

 

[Jag56]

To get files from cab files you need to use the extract command ie

extract {options} {source} {file} for example

extract /Y D:\win98\net10.cab vnetbios.vxd

Hope this helps you out

Cheers

 

[Jag56]

By the way, you will find extract.exe in the c:\windows\command directory

 

[Jag56]

Further to my prior posting there is an easier way to extract files.
Windows 98 includes a System File Checker tool. You can use this tool to verify the integrity of your operating system files, to restore them if they are damaged, or to extract compressed files from the Windows 98 CD-ROM. To use System File Checker to extract a compressed file from the Windows 98 CD-ROM, follow these steps:

Click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click System Information.
On the Tools menu, click System File Checker.
Click &quot;Extract one file from installation disk,&quot; type the name of the file you want to extract in the &quot;Specify the system file you would like to restore&quot; box, and then click Start.
In the Restore From box, type the path to the Win98 folder on the Windows 98 CD-ROM, type the destination folder in the Save File In box if necessary, and then click OK.
Click OK, click OK, and then click Yes when you are prompted to restart your computer

 

[disconockerated]

Jag56....see the link in my original post.
;-)

 

[goBoating]

The saga continues.......

This has a question in it, but is posted mostly for information purposes, in case anyone else gets in this predicament.

After an initial re-install of Win98, as I reloaded drivers and then software (Word, Netscape,...normal stuff), performance began to decline quickly. Eventhough, Win98 indicated that it had an appropriate setup for my DELL (Sony Trinitron) Monitor, I began to have display problems..... and then more and more frequently, the blue screen of death (BSOD).

Back up and start again.

Fdisk - remove all partitions - create new primary parition taking the entire drive -- make that partition active - format and reinstall win98.

Now - The reason I post this.......in case others have the same problems.

Booted from Win98 startup floppy with CD support and E: to the Win98 CD. In past attempts, I ran the setup that was in the root dir of the CD. This time I wondered in to the Win98 dir and found another setup.exe. On a wim, I tried that one. Windows loaded with no complaints. However, it failed to find a number of PNP devices. But, the appearently happy win install made it possible to pursue the other lackings. And, the lackings were significant. It no longer saw my modem or sound card! But, since Windows seemed stable, I went ahead and installed other software which lead to several reboots. As those reboots occurred, Windows slowly found the modem and then the sound card. Eventually, everything worked except my DVD. There may be anther post about that in a day or two. I putzed around on it for a while and did not get the BSOD.

Sorry to include so much tedium, but, if anyone else is to get any use out of this they will need to know some detail.

So,... a question at last. Does anyone know if there is a difference between the setup.exe in the root directoroy of the CD and the one in the Win98 dir? That seems to be the only real difference between this reinstall and the several previous.

Plans for a LINUX install - buy a cheap 4-6 gig HD (reasonably inexpensive) and install there. Leave Windows alone! Setup LINUX to boot from floppy so I don't do anything to the MBR of the Win HD. I would eventually prefer to use a boot manager, but, getting Win98 reinstalled has been such a huge pain, that I'm reluctant to go playing with the MBR on the first HD. Any suggestions/opinions would be appreciated.

Later,


keep the rudder amid ship and beware the odd typo

 

[goBoating]

hopefully, very close to done.....

Next chapter....
As described above, most recently, I used fdisk to create one large partition ( the entire drive ), formatted, and reinstalled Win98. Got all peripherals working as they should. Boistered by my recent success, I got brave and decided, I would try to repartition the drive again with Partition Commander(commercial software). That worked fine. Win98 still completely happy. Then, installed LINUX on the new second partition. Now , LINUX is working fine also and LILO handles the dual boot stuff correctly.

The problem..., I have the last 4K of my conventional memory occuppied by the message M$ put there when I tried to repartition the drive the first time using FIPS (described above). How do I get that out of there? There have been several partition / format / reinstalls since that happened. How is it staying there or getting back in there? I know on a Mac, there is the 'P-Ram' that can be cleared (flashed). Is there such on a PC?

Gotta' get rid of this one last little pesky M$ symptom....

Thanks,


keep the rudder amid ship and beware the odd typo