$Id: misc.txt,v 1.9 2001/11/17 17:16:35 bdenney Exp $

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.

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Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 02:24:22 -0700 (PDT)
From: Sancho Roberto <rsanchov@yahoo.com>
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.
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Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 13:31:34 -0800
From: David Christy <davidc@davidc.biz>
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 <image_name>

... 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=<insert number here> <image_name>
/mount/dir

or if it's just a floppy image, just

mount -o loop floppy.img /mount/dir

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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 <fstype> flag to the mount command to specify the
filesystem type.

see man mount, losetup, and fdisk for more info



