First post, by AaronS
I'm currently trying to get working a 250GB with Windows 98SE on a Thinkpad T42 laptop. To my understanding I need two patches, one for the HDD itself and another for the partition;
BHDD31 or rloew's PATCHATA for the HDD itself
rloew's PATCH1TB for the partition
I'm able to install and run Windows 98SE fine, no problems at all until I pass the 137GB barrier (or 128GB?). I have verified under DOS using rleow's 48BITLBA.EXE that the motherboard does support >137GB/48 bit LBA, so I'm not sure if I'm doing anything wrong. I have tried both bhdd31 and PATCHATA with 98SE reinstalls to see if one or the other works and even the "auto install with autoexec.bat" where it pops up with the message right after the Windows 98 logo. The corruption still happens though (usually installing a game or something that modifies the registry, reboot, get a BSOD saying something about Invalid VxD dynamic link call). I have confirmed the drive is legit by connecting it to a modern system.
My procedure for everything is:
Connect the drive to modern PC, format the drive with Rufus / MS-DOS files on the drive, copy the win98 folder to the root
Run the installer "SETUP /IS" (I get an error "out of memory" after choosing C:\WINDOWS but continues fine after that - I'm using 512MB FYI), after first reboot, boot into MS-DOS with a USB stick containing bhdd31 and PATCTH1TB
copy and replace WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS\ESDI_506.PDR with the one from bhdd31
Run PATCH1TB.EXE
Reboot and continue Part 2 of W98SE install, arrive at desktop with no hangs or errors
Install bhdd31's INSTALL.BAT immediately and reboot
Install all drivers, set HDD to DMA under Device Manager
Power off, connect HDD to modern PC and copy 120GB worth of disc images to a "C:\Discs" folder (I have more than 120GB but for the sake of trying to trigger the corruption I'm only copying this much)
Put HDD back and power up, no problems, install something (anything that writes to the registry), reboot and VxD BSOD followed by more reboots/scandisks/registry recoveries etc. can only get into Safe Mode at this point
Even without going beyond the first boot/install bhdd31 step, if I fill the drive past 137GB at this point it will BSOD as soon as something else is installed, initially I suspected it was something to do with Daemon Tools automounting at startup but that ruled out it being to do with any specific software being installed.
I know typically using drives larger than 120GB isn't recommended and I'll probably just end up giving up and going with that in the end, but I'm curious if anyone has gotten such a setup to work without corruption like this, even for a little while? The only thing I haven't tried is ~137GB partitions but I assumed that's what PATCH1TB was supposed to fix?