tincup wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I wonder, is there any reason to use Win95 OSR2 over say Win98SE?

My guess is that for most people the answer is - not really. But there a *are* a number of early-mid 90's games, particularly flight sims in my experience, for which W95 3dfx upgrade patches were released and that only really work smoothly/easily in W95, as opposed to W98, since they weren't popular enough to go get the same patch treatment when W98 came around. Hind is an example - while it's entirely possible to get it running in 3D on W98 and even XP [with a wrapper], it can take quite a bit of fuss, tweaks, fan patches etc, and you are not guaranteed success. This is where a dedicate retro rig comes in handy - install, patch, run. Aces of the Deep is another that is more at home on W95. But the list is not too long...

IIRC Hind 3dfx is a DOS program. I'd be very interested in such list though; list of Windows 95 games that need special tweak/patch to run on 98.

I'm pretty sure the 3dfx version was W95. A quick check of my patch library and the updated exe [adding Voodoo 2 compatibility] is Hind95.

On the other hand the 2D DOS version runs very nicely in DosBox - though lacks the *spectacular* game-changer that is 3D effects...

But yes - a more thorough list of these types of "happiest on W95" games would be good.

tincup wrote:

I'm pretty sure the 3dfx version was W95. A quick check of my patch library and the updated exe [adding Voodoo 2 compatibility] is Hind95.

Ah, I see. It doesn't work well on 98?

tincup wrote:

On the other hand the 2D DOS version runs very nicely in DosBox - though lacks the *spectacular* game-changer that is 3D effects...

But yes - a more thorough list of these types of "happiest on W95" games would be good.

I'd be very interested in such list, and I wonder if Flying Corps Gold is on the list as well. How about 3D accelerated version of Mechwarrior II?

I find Flying Corps Gold runs well on W98 and even in XP with nGlide or dgVoodoo_v15 wrappers. The Lepus patches for HIND/Apache get it running on W98 but I still think it's more stable and easier to configure on W95. Another game is EF-2000 3dfx/Rendition which feels more at home on W95 - certainly easier to setup. Longbow 2? I have it running on 95 and 98 and I'd say it's more at home on 95 though other hardware issues may contribute to this impression. It's also a game that can act up in subtle ways if the CPU is a bit too much, I've heard that over 1ghz Maveric missiles won't operate properly. Great looking game for it's time.

tincup wrote:

I find Flying Corps Gold runs well on W98 and even in XP with nGlide or dgVoodoo_v15 wrappers. The Lepus patches for HIND/Apache get it running on W98 but I still think it's more stable and easier to configure on W95. Another game is EF-2000 3dfx/Rendition which feels more at home on W95 - certainly easier to setup. Longbow 2? I have it running on 95 and 98 and I'd say it's more at home on 95 though other hardware issues may contribute to this impression. It's also a game that can act up in subtle ways if the CPU is a bit too much, I've heard that over 1ghz Maveric missiles won't operate properly. Great looking game for it's time.

Fortunately, Voodoo5 drivers support both Windows 98 and Windows 95 --well at least in theory, since I've never tried Voodoo5 on Windows 95 myself. As for Longbow 2, I thought the problem is RAM, ie you need less than 256 Mb to play it. Nonetheless, Windows 95 is indeed interesting to try. What Windows 98 games don't run on Win 95, by the way? Is there any?

@KAN - yes ram is also a problem with LB2 - there's a even a nice fan made utility adapted for LB2 to throttle ram during boot. So overall it's a game that has an easier time not only with W95, but with more 95 era hardware; ram, CPU and video. It didn't stop enthusiast from running it well into the XP era, but only with a great deal of tweaks and fiddling around. Fortunately unnecessary if you keep a few retro boxes around specifically to avoid having to rely on modding old game to run on modern systems..

Looking at my gamelogs, an oddball adventure game that I can only get to run on 95 with vanilla S3 video is Armed & Delirious.

tincup wrote:

@KAN - yes ram is also a problem with LB2 - there's a even a nice fan made utility adapted for LB2 to throttle ram during boot. So overall it's a game that has an easier time not only with W95, but with more 95 era hardware; ram, CPU and video. It didn't stop enthusiast from running it well into the XP era, but only with a great deal of tweaks and fiddling around. Fortunately unnecessary if you keep a few retro boxes around specifically to avoid having to rely on modding old game to run on modern systems..

Looking at my gamelogs, an oddball adventure game that I can only get to run on 95 with vanilla S3 video is Armed & Delirious.

I see. My retro box is Windows 98, but I'd be very interested to convert it to Windows 95. I'll keep an eye on this thread.

Interesting thread. I am currently setting up my win95 machine! I have chosen an DX5 Setup, non of the installed software require DX6 or more.

USB Installation worked with USBSUPP, I did not need USBSUPP2. I had to install the driver manually.
After the USB installation I had to disably the caches again (K6-2/450) via "cpucache off" in order
to update the k6-drivers again, otherwise there is no way out of the "kernel-errors" on win95.

I would have stayed withDX3 drivers, but there are so many games I want to play on that setup that require dx5,
so I decided to go for dx5 instead of dx3.

I always liked speedisk for dos, but I am not willing to install complete norton utilities only for speedisk.
the first nu95 does not work on fat32 partitions, the second one does, but is there a freeware defrag that
is as good as the nu95v2 ?

dr.zeissler wrote on 2021-01-03, 16:51:

I always liked speedisk for dos, but I am not willing to install complete norton utilities only for speedisk.
the first nu95 does not work on fat32 partitions, the second one does, but is there a freeware defrag that
is as good as the nu95v2 ?

My best understanding was that the Unofficial Service pack linked in the primary post includes the better optimised version of Microsoft's own Defragmentation tool from Windows 98/ME. I've been plenty happy with that, but then I don't actually have experience with Norton Utilities.

tincup wrote on 2015-09-09, 00:57:

KT7AGuy wrote:

Are you aware of this?

XUSBSUPP - eXtended USB Supplement for Windows 95 OSR2

It's basically a soft-of NUSB for Win95. I haven't tried it.

The site says rloew was involved with this kit - if past experience is any guide this sounds very promising...

So I got a chance to reinstall Windows 95 again this year, and I decided to give XUSBSUPP a go. The results seem solid. Following the included instructions I skipped installing the official USBSUPP and USBUPD2 updates entirely and installed the eXtended USB Supplement instead, otherwise following my own previous instructions. The end result is that now when I plug in a USB-thumbdrive, a driver for the thumb drive is handily available with just a couple of clicks to allow Windows to use the included driver, and a small icon appears at the bottom right corner in the tray area that can be used to safely eject the thumb drive. Neat!

I will be recommending this as a replacement in the updated setup guide, once I get around to completing the edit on the original post.

This update together with the other updates from Conner McCoy and Rudolph Loew (also known as LoneCrusader and rloew over at MSFN) and the Unofficial Service Pack by Noel Piring (aka. the ERPMan, or erpdude8) require some testing. I discovered that the unofficial patches are starting to form a kind of web much like the official MS patches, meaning that they don't all work together and some require careful thought if they are going to get applied on the same system.

For example, preliminary testing has revealed that installing the Unofficial Service Pack after installing rloew's fast-CPU-patch (the one meant to supplant Microsoft's original amdk6upd.exe) will result in the system becoming unbootable. XUSBSUPP and the Unofficial SP seem to play nice, except maybe on my other computer, where I'm now getting constant page faults with EXPLORER in KRNL386.EXE:

This is confusing me, because I've basically done the exact same set up on both systems - and my P3 is completely fine, whereas the K6-III system has these constant crashes. The only difference is that in the end I had to lower the CPU clock of the K6-III to complete setup without having to apply either amdk6upd.exe or rloew's FIX95CPU patch. Without them, the Unofficial SP works and apparently also corrects the CPU issue. I'm not sure these are 100% related, so I am narrowing down other possible causes for the crashes before I update the guide for everyone else to follow.

One thing I didn't try yet, is installing the Unofficial SP first and then applying FIX95CPU. Might do that to see if that fixes the problem or creates another one.

I love finding threads like this. Thank you for all the hard work and experimentation!

leonardo wrote on 2021-08-15, 15:22:

One thing I didn't try yet, is installing the Unofficial SP first and then applying FIX95CPU. Might do that to see if that fixes the problem or creates another one.

This approach should work.

You can also try to install the FIX95CPU upon installation first, then continue the installation of Win95 as usual.
But instead of installing the unofficial SP, unpack it and replace any existing file with the ones from the FIX95CPU patch. Then run the infex.exe from the unofficial SP manually.
(The unofficial SP was released way before the FIX95CPU patch and has therfore not the most recent file versions included).

1541 wrote on 2021-08-15, 20:44:

This approach should work. […]
Show full quote

leonardo wrote on 2021-08-15, 15:22:

One thing I didn't try yet, is installing the Unofficial SP first and then applying FIX95CPU. Might do that to see if that fixes the problem or creates another one.

This approach should work.

You can also try to install the FIX95CPU upon installation first, then continue the installation of Win95 as usual.
But instead of installing the unofficial SP, unpack it and replace any existing file with the ones from the FIX95CPU patch. Then run the infex.exe from the unofficial SP manually.
(The unofficial SP was released way before the FIX95CPU patch and has therfore not the most recent file versions included).

I thought this might be the case and just went over the files on the boot floppy for FIX95CPU patch to compare to the ones on the HDD after the Unofficial SP install and... they all seem to be the same. In fact there was one file version on the floppy that was a little older, than what's now installed on my computer... It's puzzling. 😕

The benefit of the FIX95CPU patch obviously is that it can be deployed during system setup, whereas the Unofficial SP has to be installed after the initial installation has already completed successfully - likely by reducing the CPU clock speed... Both methods have their perks. I'd really like to keep the Unofficial SP in the instructions, because it contains so many other fixes and enhancements besides this one.

...and this thing with Explorer constantly crashing... I remember running into this issue before. I can usually tell when the system has this problem, because deploying Cacheman makes the crashing much more frequent. If I only knew what the trigger was!

I came across this issue as well and the culprit was the VMM creation during the installation of the FIX95CPU. The unofficial SP tried to replace some VXD file that messes up with the existing VMM32.vxd.
Currently I can't remember which VXD file from the SP messed it up. (Was it VMM.VXD?)

I have some findings to report back:

Firstly, I have now confirmed that one can install the FIX95CPU patch from rloew over the Unofficial SP, and everything will still be peachy after. However, this seems to offer no added benefit. If you install FIX95CPU during Windows setup and then follow up with the Unofficial SP, your system will break.

In tracking down the cause for the invalid page fault errors for Explorer/KRNL386 I have now concluded that neither the Unofficial SP nor FIX95CPU address this, nor should they really be the cause as I'm running the exact same OS with the exact same patches on another system.

I also tried swapping the updated Explorer.exe (4.00.953 from the Unofficial SP) with the original (4.00.950 from the CD), but this did not resolve the problem.

When the system was working prior to the reinstallation, it did not have any USB-support (legacy or otherwise) installed, so next up I'm going to attempt to complete Windows set up without applying the USB-patches. It could be that on this particular system, the USB controller is immature enough that it's better left disabled.

More findings...

It is in fact possible to install Windows 95 without USB support and use the Unofficial Service Pack if one installs Microsoft's original High-Speed CPU fix (amdk6upd.exe) before doing so. However, the patch has to be installed from Windows. You can't use the method of unpacking the patch and copying the files during setup-fix as that will also result in the system breaking IF one installs the Unofficial Service Pack on top. Naturally this means, that in order to apply Microsoft's patch, the CPU clock has to be lowered for the duration of the setup and applying the patch, which depending on your circumstances may be easy or not so much fun.

I almost thought I had solved the Explorer-crashes by doing the above, but no. We're back to somewhat-frequent crashing.

If only I knew better where to look! I'm certain it has to do with the caching/files/buffers/swap settings somewhere, because applying the Cacheman presets to those settings makes the problem a lot worse. In fact, I can reproduce the crashing on an affected system with these exact steps; right after starting the computer, right-click on My Computer, select Properties from the context-menu, then cancel out of / close the window. BAM. Instant page fault! ...and it is only Explorer too, other apps are completely stable regardless of how long they run.

It's driving me nuts, because the other computer used to do this before I reinstalled Windows on it, and this one was NOT doing that. Loads of trial and error await, just like the good ol' days...

I solved the crashes!

It had nothing to do with the Unofficial Service Pack, the high-speed CPU fix, or the eXtended USB Supplement. Instead, the culprit seems to have been a wonky Explorer Shell-extension for one of the apps I like to use.

Here's how I found out:

Since the error-message itself was not very helpful, I ran Dr. Watson to see if he could tell me more. Watson gave very full reports on each crash, but unfortunately the only clue I was left with was the information that an unknown module was trying to write to memory that doesn't exist. Quite cryptic, but following that trail led me to this thread over at Microsoft's TechNet, in which the OP describes a problem similar to mine (but on Windows 7).

A helpful answer from Luigi Bruno in that thread indicated a way to finding out what the faulting module might be:

The reported exception code ... indicates that a memory access violation occurred: a module loaded in the Explorer.exe memory space tried to access a memory location it was not allowed to.
The detail recorded in the Event Viewer does not indicate the faulting module, so you have to perform a step by step analysis: download and run Nirsoft ShellExView, which will provide you with the complete list of the shell extensions installed on your computer and allow you to easily disable and enable each of them; start turning off all the non-Microsoft extensions and watch your system's behaviour. Then re-enable each of them on a one-by-one basis until you'll find the faulting one.

At first I thought I'd have to hunt down an older version of the app or one similar to this one, but surprisingly Nirsoft's ShellExView and ShellMenuView both run on Windows 95!

Firing up the app I immediately spotted five extensions with a slight reddish highlight on them (the app does this for non-MS extensions).
I confirmed these were the suspect ones, by using the option to hide all non-MS extensions.

There were three extensions for PowerArchiver (a WinZip clone), one for Wang Image and one for DiskTools. Since ShellExView cannot disable extensions on Windows 95 or 98, I used the Open CLSID in RegEdit-context menu option to point me to the offenders in the registry, then used the Export-feature in RegEdit to make a backup of each entry (in case deleting them would cause mayhem), and then deleted those branches. I'm pretty sure I've confirmed the offender is PowerArchiver, since I haven't installed that on the newer system (used 7Zip on that one, for some reason) and because the other suspicious extensions were also present there without the crashes manifesting.

After deleting the registry entries for the offending extensions and rebooting, I have not had a single crash!

XUSBSUPP exonerated!
FIX95CPU exonerated!
Unofficial Service Pack 1.05 exonerated!
Cacheman exonerated!
Bill Gates exonerated! 😁

leonardo wrote on 2015-09-07, 16:57:

...
Will probably update the guide with images and some more specific instructions on how to make the most of the cool add-ons later...

Well... it took a couple of years between this comment and now, but I did it! The guide in the original post is now updated with more thorough instructions, image references and direct links to resources.

As a result it should be more newbie-friendly. For those of us who know everything already, the guide can be viewed in an expanding-tree format just to get an overview of the steps and the order in which they're meant to be taken, so nobody has to wade thru a mile-long post just to get to the part that interests them. I've been putting this together for some time and know that I likely have a typo or two, some rambling, and probably an inappropriate comment (by modern standards), so I welcome critique, nitpicks, suggestions etc.

Thank you all, and good night! x_X