$Id: misc.txt,v 1.12 2002-11-02 16:51:18 ndavidg Exp $ Testing testing.... This is a temporary place to paste in stuff that should go into the docs one day. When it is transferred into docbook, let's remove it from misc.txt. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 02:24:22 -0700 (PDT) From: Sancho Roberto To: bochs-developers@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [Bochs-developers] WinMe install tips Parts/Attachments: Instalation of WinMe 1) Install Win98 My Windows Me is an update version, that is, it upgrades over Win98. So the first think I have to do is to install on a HD image a Win98 It is not necessary to do the full install. What I've done is - Create a HD image (Win98.img) with 500MB - Format It, install MSDOS6 on it so I can boot from c - Make a W98 directory. - Copy using mtools the instalation directory from the original Win98 CD - Run bochs - run the setup program into the W98 directory - Select WIN98 as Windows directory. All other setup options are left by default. - I don't care about HW detection, etc. Just uncompressing the cab files to the WIN98 directory es enought for WinMe. (Note that Win98 is not functional and cannot boot) 2) Copy the WinMe install files to the HD In Win98.img, with mtools, I create a directory called WinMe. Again, I copy the contents of the Win9x directory from the original WinMe CD. Note that I copy the CD to my HD, and then with mtools from my HD to win98.img. I also delete then W98 directory. 3) Create WinMe.img Now, I created another blank HD called WinMe.img with 500MB. I format it and install MSDOS6 so I an boot using it. 4) Prepare the instalation Bochs I edit the bochsrc.txt file so - WinMe.img is diskc - Win98.img is diskd 5) Running setup I start bochs: the C: drive is empty (it only contains the MSDOS6 command.com, IO.SYS, etc). The D: drive has: D:\W98 - The "installed" Windows 98 D:\WINME - Windows Me setup files I go to the WINME directory and run: SETUP xxxx The description of the setup options can be found in the Microsoft Knowledge page as Q186111 - Description of the Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me Setup Switches I've done a lot of trials with this setup options until I finally found a correct way to finnish the installation. These are the setup options I used. I've copied a brief description (from the KB) and added my comments. /m - bypass the playing of the Setup sound (.wav) files. Not necessary as my Bochs has no sound device activated /nf - Do not prompt to remove the floppy disk from the drive Maybe not necessary. Just in case /nh - This switch bypasses running the Hwinfo.exe program at 0 percent files and RunOnce. If not present, freezes on HW detection /ie - This switch bypasses the Windows 98 Startup Disk wizard screens. To speed things up - I allways can create a Statup disk latter /iv - This switch bypasses displaying the Setup screens during an upgrade within Windows. To speed things up /c - This switch bypasses running SMARTDrive. Maybe not necessary. Just in case /im - Causes setup to ignore the conventional memory check. Maybe not necessary. Just in case /is - This switch causes Setup not to run ScanDisk. Very important as SCANDISK freezed bochs /iq - If you use the /is switch to bypass ScanDisk or if ScanDisk does not complete successfully, Setup checks your drive for cross-linked files. The /iq switch prevents Setup from doing this. Very important. If not used, Setup stop the installation with a message "error found in C:, run scandisk and setup again" (or something like this). Of course, there is no errors in C: because is an empty, just formatted disk, but the WinMe setup thinks so. The only way to progress from this point is with this switch /it - This switch bypasses checking for the presence of "dirty" or "deadly" terminate-and-stay-resident programs (TSRs) that are known to cause problems with Windows Setup. Maybe not necessary. Just in case /p b;g=3 b: This switch enables Prompt Before mode. It prompts you before a detection module is called so that you can step through each detection module manually and decide if you want to skip it. Very important. See bellow g: This switch controls how verbose the built-in progress bar is There is another main issue that must be handled WinMe requires a 150Mhz computer as a minimum. If you try to run the WinMe setup, you will receive a message telling you so, and the installation will stop. The only way I found to solve this problem is to change the IPS value in bochsrc.txt. I raised the IPS value until setup stop complaining. In my machine (P3 @ 450MHz), I achieved this with ips: 500000000 This this IPS value, the keyboard and mouse are updated each 100 seconds. This makes very dificult to type the CD-KEY numbers, select type of instalation, etc. One way to solve this is to lower the vga_update_interval and the keyboard_serial_delay. I lower the value until - I have a minimum respons from keyboard and mouse (say 1 second delay between keypress/mousemove and the screen update) - I still pass the 150 Mhz check The values I used are vga_update_interval: 10000 keyboard_serial_delay: 200 They may be diferent for other computers. Note that bochs, on starting up complains about vga_update_interval with the message "bochsrc.txt: vga_update_interval not big enough!": ignore it. 6) Follow the Windows Me setup instruction ... Just a warning: it is very, very, very, *VERY* (very) slow ... Two days running non stop on my PC. Don't wait ... enjoy yourself during the process ... you that the time. 7) Hardware nightmare At a given moment, you are prompted to detect the hardware. There is a prompt for each type of device: Bus, keyboard, mouse, HD, CDROM, etc. Say NO to everything. If you say YES, sometimes setup will detect your HW, but normaly it will crash with GPF on COMMCTRL.DLL (setup crash, but bochs still alive. Nice!). If you sat CANCEL, setup will stay in this screen forever (ok, ok, I have just wait 10 hours). 8) Configuring Setup will configure you PC. You can set your timezone, etc. Then Setup will create the Statup menu icons. Here, time to time, you will get a GPF in PIFMGR.DLL. Just press Ok and continue. Again this procedure is very very very very very very slow. Worse of all, you cannot leave it running by night. You must press Ok a lot of times to clean the GPF. 9) Restart. At last, setup will restart the PC. Exit Bochs. I recomend to make a copy of WinMe.img just to save all your time. 10) Run bochs again Setup will do some stuff ... just wait After a while, the Start button appearch on the lower left corner of the screen! Just for safe, I executed within WinMe msconfig.exe, and in the advanced tab set the Disk Compatibility mode". Also, I've turned of the menu and windows animations, to speed thinks up a bit. Also it may be a good idea to turn off scandisk on setup. Do not forget to exit from Windows with the Shutdown menu ... 11) That's all Now you can comment out the diskd line in the bochsrc.txt. WinMe.img contains a working WinMe. NOTE: if you lower the IPS, WinMe will be unstable ... surelly a timing issue. But even if IPS is high, lowering vga_update_interval and keyboard_serial_delay will help on getting an acceptable usability. DO not forget to use your Pentium 10 at 500 GHz to get a good speed within Windows. Some bugs i've found - MSDOS Scandisk freeze - Hw detection is very problematic - If bochs is visible when it switchs from text mode to grafic mode, the size of the window is correct. But if Bochs is minimized when doing so, the size of the Bochs window is incorrect. It does not take into account the height of the top banner (the one with the disk icons, mouse, snapshot, etc), so the botton of the screen is clipped. - Dont expect to run WinMe at full speed unless you use your Pentium10 at 1500 GHz - (not a bug, but a comment) The splash screen when booting/shutdown WinMe is double height. I personally prefer to see the full image as it was time ago. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 13:31:34 -0800 From: David Christy To: bryce@tlw.com Subject: usefull info for mounting I didn't see this in the doc's so I thought you might like a short description of how to mount a disk image file into loopback filesystem for maintenance purposes. -------------------------------------------- 1) First run fdisk -l ... and it should print out a partition table (with a few complaints requesting the drive geometry, and I don't know if older versions require a block device) In fact fdisk will even work to modify partitions in an image, but you must specify the drive geometry that's in the bocsrc first. 2) Whatever it says the starting partition is, subtract 1 and multiply by 512 3) Type mount -o loop,offset= /mount/dir or if it's just a floppy image, just mount -o loop floppy.img /mount/dir --------------------------------------------------- I would recommend putting -o ro for read only access if bochs is in use. For unusual filesystems you may need to add a -t flag to the mount command to specify the filesystem type. see man mount, losetup, and fdisk for more info BOCHS Rocks!!!