Visiting a friend over the weekend, his W98SE system wouldn't boot - this
happened while I was watching, and he said he'd not had any problems the
last time he'd used it (the previous day).

It came up with the usual sort of message '98 does when an important file is
missing, and said ("one or more of" which seems odd!) the following were
missing:

vmm.vxd
shell.vxd
vtd.vxd (yes, definitely a t, not an f)
vxdrdr.vxd
vpicd.vxd
vwin32.vxd

I tried an ERU to the last one I'd saved (only around the start of
February), no luck, same message; I checked for the files, and sure enough
they weren't there (apart from possibly the first one, vmm.vxd, which might
have been in windows\system\vmm32). I also checked the W98 installation
files, intending to do an extract if necessary, and the files (well the two
or three I tried) weren't there.

I eventually did a Windows reinstall (followed by the ERU), and all is well
again; however, those files are _still_ not there - it just isn't looking
for them this time.

Naturally I'm somewhat cross; can anyone tell me what it was that was
looking for them, and is it something I can back up (i. e. the version that
_isn't_ looking for them) to avoid having to do a reinstall if it should
happen again?

(And what do those files do?)

(I say all is well: one - the important one! - aspect of Brothers' Keeper,
the genealogy program, is now not working.)
--
J. P. Gilliver | Tel. +44 1634 203298

Essex home for sale, £59,950: see http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/home/

"J. P. Gilliver" <john.gilliver@baesystems.com> wrote in message
news:47cc5688$1_1@glkas0286.greenlnk.net...

As a precaution, run a RAM test


http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

Check this out J. P.:
http://projectdream.org/wordpress/20...98-and-vmmvxd/

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS-MVP Shell/User
www.grystmill.com

"J. P. Gilliver" <john.gilliver@baesystems.com> wrote in message
news:47cc5688$1_1@glkas0286.greenlnk.net...

On Mon, 3 Mar 2008 20:07:23 -0000, "J. P. Gilliver"
<john.gilliver@baesystems.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

These files are not missing. AFAIK they are included as "static" vxds
within vmm32.vxd which is custom built during Windows installation.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

On Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:42:52 +1100, Franc Zabkar
<fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> put finger to keyboard and composed:

See this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\VxD

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

philo wrote:
Normally good advice (though you shouldn't make suggesting it a reflex
response!), but I somehow can't see how a RAM fault could have caused such a
specific problem!

The article Gary S. Terhune points to in the next post describes something
very similar.
--
J. P. Gilliver | Tel. +44 1634 203298

Essex home for sale, £59,950: see http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/home/

Gary S. Terhune wrote:
(Name's John by the way.)

Interesting; sounds like exactly the same problem. However:
1. He seemed to associate it with some USB driver device that had recently
been installed. I hadn't done so on my friend's machine (and after I got it
working again, the one USB pen drive - my mp3 player - I use to transfer
stuff to it, still worked);
2. he somewhat dissed those of us who like '98;
3. he pointed to the universal USB driver that gets mentioned here from time
to time. I've tried that twice - right royally screwed up my system, took me
ages to get things working again. Presumably they do work fine for many
people.
--
J. P. Gilliver | Tel. +44 1634 203298

Essex home for sale, £59,950: see http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/home/

Franc Zabkar wrote:
[]
(Sorry, I'm not at the machine - it's at a friend's house whom I visit
rarely.)

1. What will I find if I do see that registry key?
2. Any suggestions for something I can save that would let me get back to
normal should it ever go wrong again? (Remember it won't even boot into safe
mode if it does, so - AFAIK - I couldn't just export a registry key, as I
couldn't import it. Besides, ERD to a previously-saved set didn't either,
and that includes the two registry files.)
--
J. P. Gilliver | Tel. +44 1634 203298

Essex home for sale, £59,950: see http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/home/

Dang! I thought that one had promise.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS-MVP Shell/User
www.grystmill.com

"J. P. Gilliver" <john.gilliver@baesystems.com> wrote in message
news:47d6e924$1_1@glkas0286.greenlnk.net...

On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:38:58 -0000, "J. P. Gilliver"
<john.gilliver@baesystems.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

I'm not a programmer, but that particular registry key appears to
contain references to a whole bunch of drivers that are loaded during
the boot process. The "static" VxDs are lumped together into a single
file, vmm32.vxd, so I don't really understand why Windows would say
those static VxD files are missing, unless vmm32.vxd is itself missing
or corrupted. I'd run a hard disc diagnostic tool to verify that there
are no bad sectors on your drive. Just in case vmm32.vxd is occupying
some intermittently bad sectors, I'd make a copy of it (if it is
readable) and rename the original to vmm32.bak, say. The copy will
hopefully occupy good sectors.

FWIW, this is what Wikipedia has to say:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_9x

================================================== ================
Virtual Machine Manager

The Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) is one of the core components of
Windows 9x. The VMM creates virtual MS-DOS environments for system
processes and Windows applications that still need to run in MS-DOS
mode. The VMM is the replacement for Win386 in Windows 3.x, and the
file vmm32.vxd is a monolithic file which contains many basic VxDs
that are needed for booting Windows.
================================================== ================

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Franc Zabkar wrote:
[]
Nor did I.

Well, the machine has shown no sign of any hard disc problems; a quick
Windows reinstall made it OK, and it's not given any (of that sort of)
problems since. (We're having trouble getting the Edit function of Brother's
Keeper [genealogy s/w] to work, but for the moment I'm working with the
programmer, John Steed - I can't see how that's going to be on topic for
this 'group anyway).
Well, I don't _think_ it's that - I can't think of any DOS-based (or early
Windows) s/w we run. The page that one of the regular experts on here found
which seemed to describe the problem almost exactly implied that it was
something to do with USB drivers, though that seemed unlikely too.
--
J. P. Gilliver | Tel. +44 1634 203298

Essex home for sale, £59,950: see http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/home/