System Admin

17-Jul-03 3:51

I've been running into this a lot in the past few months. On PCs with 128MB RAM or more, 5GB HD space free, and Win98SE installed the systems crash for lack of resources when only 2 or 3 apps are running. I can't figure out what may be causing it. I've read that earlier MS O/Ss had time bombs built in that cause them to cease working after a set date, but I've found no evidence of this in Win98. The owners of these PCs want to install more memory, but I think that's a waste of their money and I don't believe that lack of RAM is really the problem. I've tried to relieve the situation by clearing out the cache for IE and removing temp files, but it hasn't helped. Any other ideas?

"The Lion shall lie down with the Lamb;
but the Lamb will not get much sleep..."
Lazarus Long

Venet17-Jul-03 4:59

Venet

17-Jul-03 4:59

Hi Roger,

Believe or not I had that exact same problem as well.

Ok here is the story:

I was using Win98 as a test machine on my network at home and I had the ZIP drive connected to it, shared with all other machines on the net.

From time to time I was finding that resources would be 100% is use, and couldn't start any apps --> Error: Not enough memory to run this application.

I thought the iomega driver was causing this (as it did in the past). removed it, to my disappoitment it wasnt that.

So I had a copy of Win98 First Edition and installed that in. Bang, problem did not appear anymore, it has been running for a year now with no problems, but the mystery with Win 98 SE, still not solved.

Strange thing about that was, with Process Explorer I couldn't see what application was eating the memory!

What's happening on your machines when you run a Process Utility? Can you see where the RAM is going?

Regards,
Venet.

Donec eris felix, multos numerabis amicos.

Roger Wright17-Jul-03 6:08

17-Jul-03 6:08

The processes running vary, and none seems to be eating RAM excessively. I thought initially that the swap file was running out of space, but checking the disk revealed far more avaiable space than needed. The drive had also been scanned and defragged within the past 5 days on both of the machines I'm currently looking at. There could be a leak somewhere in Win98SE itself, but both machines are turned off every night. Crazy OS...

"The Lion shall lie down with the Lamb;
but the Lamb will not get much sleep..."
Lazarus Long

Michael Martin17-Jul-03 5:35

17-Jul-03 5:35

Roger Wright wrote:
Any other ideas?

I don't have a solution for you even tough I have run into this problem myself recently. Trying to talk these particular customers into purchasing new machines with (shock horror) Windows XP Professional on them. They have heaps of money and are running their own domain and Exchange Server on NT 4 Server so 9x is a piece of crap in this situation. This gets rid of our Windows 98 problem but also gets them systems that will work with their current setup correctly.

Back to your problem, I have two other steps I perform in conjunction^* with what you have already done. Ad-aware 6 just in case there are some nasties there and Norton WinDoctor (I have SystemWorks which launches select utilities from the CD) which does a great job of removing crap from the registry.

I also perform WindowsUpdate to the machines in case Microsoft actually manage to fix a problem that maybe causing this error. By the sounds of it WindowsUpdate couldn't make it much worse.

^* Not the word I wanted to use but after a couple of minutes of hard thinkning I couldn't come up with something better.

Michael Martin
Australia

"I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end."
- Chris Maunder 15/07/2002

Roger Wright17-Jul-03 6:12

17-Jul-03 6:12

Michael Martin wrote:
Not the word I wanted to use

It was an appropriate choice. Big Grin | :-D

Windows Update, in my experience, is more likely to destroy the machine than fix it, but it may be worth attempting if I can get assurance from the boss involved that buying a new machine is possible if all else fails. I hesitate to try it, though, because at least one of these machines has a lousy ISP connection that drops out frequently, and changing ISPs is not an option.

"The Lion shall lie down with the Lamb;
but the Lamb will not get much sleep..."
Lazarus Long

J. Dunlap17-Jul-03 8:33

J. Dunlap

17-Jul-03 8:33

Windows 9x has some of the old Win 3.11 resource limitations imposed on it. It only allows something like 2MB for GDI heap, another 2MB for user, etc.

Windows98SE and ME are worse in this respect than Windows 95/98, but they all have big resource trouble. I use Windows 98 for everything I do, 'cause it's what I have. (I'm going to be upgrading when I get the funds.) I have to restart my computer every 15 minutes. I recommend they have resource meter running in the system tray, and restart when the resouces go below 35%. AND upgrade ASAP.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." - Jesus

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi

Error when exporting from Registry

Alexander ^M.,23-Jul-03 4:15

Alexander ^M.,

23-Jul-03 4:15

just dont use win98... it's insecure, buggy and wastes much resources

Don't try it, just do it! Wink | ;-)

Bjarne Jørgensen17-Jul-03 2:47

Bjarne Jørgensen

17-Jul-03 2:47

Hi

I'm having a problem when exporting from the registry.

One of the values are a empty string (according to regedit / regedt32 / and my program) but when exporting this value to a file, it has a value. It is not garbage, but a string copied from one of the other values in the key.

The name of the value is "Start_Parameters"

If I manually delete and add the value , with "new > string value" the value has no data in regedit, but on export is has a "square" char. My program reads it as <empty>

After importing the file, the program reads it as "?"

It's really annoying since my program wont work on another pc when the settings are imported there. I've to edit it in notepad before importing.

Using W2K / VC 6

Michael Martin17-Jul-03 5:39

17-Jul-03 5:39

to_be_unknown wrote:
...but on export is has a "square" char.

This sounds like a character that the font doesn't support. Can you use a hex editor to see the characters ascii value? It may have some significance and help you to determine what it is or how it gets into the file upon export from the registry.

Michael Martin
Australia

"I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end."
- Chris Maunder 15/07/2002

Bjarne Jørgensen17-Jul-03 22:50

Bjarne Jørgensen

17-Jul-03 22:50

Hi
It has the value 00 00 (registry is exported as uni-code I guess)

I have tried to expiriment but it doesn't seems like this error is consistent. After several trial and errors it suddenly stopped giving the exporting error.

I suspected it could because I used forward slash "/" in the key name, but other keys with "/" exported alright.

It is like the value has not been initialised.

------
Starting of with a clean (deleted / non-existent) registry key.
After my program creates the key and the empty string value, then every empty string values added manually (via regedit.exe) to this key would give this error. The empty string will be exported as having a value of another string value

I'm beginning to think it's an error in regedit.exe
When watching the same key in "regedt32.exe" it is not empty, and neither when watching the contents from my program

Michael Martin21-Jul-03 19:02

21-Jul-03 19:02

It's me again. Don't have the silver bullet unfortunately, but something I ran into last night maybe related or at least as bizarre as what you ran into.

Under Windows 2000 I exported the registry key for Outlook 2000 attachments. I was running on NTFS. I copied this file to a Windows 98 SE machine running FAT32 and found I couldn't import the file as it wasn't a registry file according to Windows 98. I then looked at the file using notepad and found several black squares where carriage return line feeds should have been.

Wondering if this weirdness in Windows was the same problem yoiu were running into.

Michael Martin
Australia

"I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end."
- Chris Maunder 15/07/2002

Windows XP Pro SP1 and NT Server - Shared Printer

Bjarne Jørgensen23-Jul-03 4:20

Bjarne Jørgensen

23-Jul-03 4:20

Hi
I don't think it is the same problem.

When you export from w2k, the reg file is unicoded. This can't be shown in w98 notepad (try wordpad instead)

According to the reg export from the w2k system it is:
"Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00"

Maybe w98 can't read these because it is to new a format ?

Wind2k DDK

anshumanshinde16-Jul-03 22:51

anshumanshinde

16-Jul-03 22:51

hi!

i want to develop file filters for win2k.
i have installed win2k ddk.
i am using visual c++6.0 Enterprise Edition

i tried to run samples provided with the ddk.
/src/storage/filters/diskperf
when i compiled it i got 102 erros,just pasting a couple:

c:\ntddk\inc\ddk\ntddk.h(370) : error C2061: syntax error : identifier 'PULONG_PTR'
c:\ntddk\inc\ddk\ntddk.h(371) : error C2059: syntax error : '}'
c:\ntddk\inc\ddk\ntddk.h(824) : error C2061: syntax error : identifier 'KSPIN_LOCK'
c:\ntddk\inc\ddk\ntddk.h(824) : error C2059: syntax error : ';'
c:\ntddk\inc\ddk\ntddk.h(825) : error C2143: syntax error : missing '{' before '*'
c:\ntddk\inc\ddk\ntddk.h(3654) : error C2061: syntax error : identifier 'ULONG_PTR'

so i traced back the definitions of 'PULONG_PTR',
'ULONG_PTR' etc.. those are defined in basetsd.h
basetsd.h is included in ntdef.h which is inturn included in ntddk.h, for which we are getting the errors.
there are 2 versions of basetsd.h on my system
one provided by ms-visual studio and the other is provided by win2k ddk.
the basetsd.h provided by win2k ddk has the definitions of the 'PULONG_PTR','ULONG_PTR' etc..
while compiling the compiler is taking basetsd.h provided by ms-visual studio and not the one provided by win2kddk.

so i changed the path in #include for basetsd.h in ntdef.h
so that while compling ddk's verion of basetsd.h is used.

i complied and it worked 102 errors were cut down to 3 following ones:
c:\ntddk\inc\ddk\ntddk.h(9106) : error C2061: syntax error : identifier 'PCONTEXT'
c:\ntddk\inc\ddk\ntddk.h(9107) : error C2059: syntax error : '}'
c:\ntddk\inc\ddk\ntddk.h(10347) : fatal error C1189: #error : "Target architecture not defined"

now i dont know whats the problem.
the ddk is not compatilbe with vc complier or i cannot guess.

so please enlighten me with the above said problem

regards
anshu

Re: Wind2k DDK

Alexander ^M.,22-Jul-03 9:35

Alexander ^M.,

22-Jul-03 9:35

DON'T USE THE IDE TO COMPILE!!!

use the build-in build environment from the ddk...
start menu/ddk/build environment/...

create the makefile and sources(or better copy them from an example driver source) and use the "build -cZ" command

Don't try it, just do it! Wink | ;-)

Michael Martin15-Jul-03 0:53

Re: Windows XP Pro SP1 and NT Server - Shared Printer

15-Jul-03 0:53

I have a customer with a small network running an NT Domain. They have a whiz bang Toshiba something or other printer/photocopier/... hanging off the NT Server which is shared.

Last night I installed a new Windows XP Professional SP1 machine and forgot to setup the printer. Today when I tried to talk the customer through setting up the network printer over the phone they received the following error -

A policy is in effect on you computer which prevents you from connecting to this print queue. Please contact your system administrator.

I can't get on site tomorrow so will be playing backup support by phone to the bloke who can.

Looking in the knowledge base led me to this[^] article. Unfortunately it is talking about Active Directory Forests which don't affect me here.

I believe they are getting this error as the ploicy currently doesn't allow the XP machine to connect to the server. According to the article when this happens XP will look for the drivers locally.

The only part that seems relevant to me is using Group Policy Editor (anyone know how to run this?) to enable the User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Control Panel\Printers policy and set User can only Point and Print to these servers to the only server there which is NT.

My quandry is how to get the printer drivers to the XP machine once we get it access to the server in question.

Should I load the XP printer drivers to the NT server so it can hand them over when we connect the XP computer?
Should I store the drivers on the XP machine so I can load them from there when I connect? If so where should they reside?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Michael Martin
Australia

"I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end."
- Chris Maunder 15/07/2002

Roger Wright15-Jul-03 2:32

Re: Windows 2000 Hardware

15-Jul-03 2:32

I haven't worked with XP in a mixed environment, but as a general rule I prefer to install the drivers for any printer in the network on each machine that might use it. That way I am assured that the correct driver for each machine's OS version is at least available locally, in case the printer server doesn't have or can't locate the correct version.

The error sounds like a permissions thing, and there is a default GPO in WInXP. When XP refers to a server, it may be using the term to reference any host providing a service, including printing. Remember that in Microsoft terminology, any client which is sharing a printer on a network is called a Print Server.

"The Lion shall lie down with the Lamb;
but the Lamb will not get much sleep..."
Lazarus Long

Windows 2000 Hardware

Robby14-Jul-03 4:05

Robby

14-Jul-03 4:05

I am looking into the possibilities of creating an IN-HOUSE solution for restoring an image of 2000 O/S to any server regardless of hardware. The only way I know this will work is if I can somehow detect the current hardware and enter those settings in the registry. Does anyone know of a way (or is there an existing command line util) that will run the hardware detect? I would like to restore a Win2K image and then run hardware detect (similar to what Windows does during setup). Any thoughts?

Roger Wright14-Jul-03 6:02

Re: Windows 2000 Hardware

14-Jul-03 6:02

This[^] may be of some help.

"The Lion shall lie down with the Lamb;
but the Lamb will not get much sleep..."
Lazarus Long

Mike Dimmick14-Jul-03 7:08

Mike Dimmick

14-Jul-03 7:08

A Windows 2000 image will only work correctly if the right kernel, HAL and boot drivers are in the image.

There are two main versions of kernel, uniprocessor (NTOSKRNL.EXE on the install disk) and multiprocessor (NTKRNLMP.EXE). There are also physical address extension versions (NTKRNLPA.EXE and NTKRPAMP.EXE) for systems with >4Gb of memory. A 'normal' and a PA image are both installed on any given system; once installed they're simply named NTOSKRNL.EXE and NTKRNLPA.EXE - the multiproc versions are renamed.

There are a multitude of HALs supplied with the OS, including 'basic', 'multiprocessor', 'ACPI', 'single-processor APIC', 'ACPI with APIC'. Again, get the right one, or your system likely won't boot.

Finally, your system loads a number of drivers at boot time, which are needed to be able to load the rest of the system. These are the drivers which are listed before the switch to graphics mode when you select a Safe Mode boot. Typically this includes system bus drivers and disk drivers. If one system's Athlon-based and another Intel-based, you may have problems if you're not using Microsoft's generic drivers.

Windows NT Domain

Michael Martin13-Jul-03 19:04