Windows NT 4.0 wishlist: ChkDskX, generic ESTAR.SCR, FileDisk, USBHID.SYS, universal Ntldr, QEMU

  • Thread starter Windows 2000/2003/NT4 Latest Topics
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Windows 2000/2003/NT4 Latest Topics

Hello Forum,

I'd like to share a bunch of Windows NT 4.0-related issues where I
haven't yet found satisfactory solutions:

1.) Sysinternals' FAT32NT4 v1.06 FAT32 driver
Wayback Machine
comes with CHKFAT32.EXE, which reports errors on these volumes, but
cannot fix them. Worse: CHKFAT32 *crashes* when checking larger drives
with many files, making this tool completely useless.
ReactOS 0.4.4 contains ChkDskX v1.0.1, which is based on sources by Mark
Russinovich, and was ported by Emanuele Aliberti. This binary doesn't run
in WinNT4, but it's sources seem to be available.
Has someone probably ported them to WinNT4?

2.) In 1995, Matrox has released a slim, efficient DPMS screen saver for use
with their graphic boards ftp://ftp.matrox.com/pub/mga/scrnsaver/estar.zip .
For hardware from other manufacturers, DPMS screen savers by D-System may
be used, e.g. http://www.dev-labs.com/dpms/dpms14.zip . These contain some
gimmicks and are much bigger, even UPXed, v0.2 is about 150 KB, eight times
the size of ESTAR.SCR. I guess the latter queries the hardware ID, to limit
it's usage to Matrox cards. Suggestions how to remove this vendor query
(binary patch) welcome, in order to make it usable on other hardware.

3.) Bo Brantén has developed a virtual disk driver which uses files to
emulate physical hard and optical disks. FileDisk Release 14 from 2006
http://www.acc.umu.se/~bosse/filedisk/filedisk-14.zip is the last which
works in Windows NT 4.0. The more recent Release 17p3 can mount partitions
within images http://www.acc.umu.se/~bosse/filedisk/filedisk-17p3.rar .
This and later releases are build with MS C/C++ 7.0, they would require a
recompile for WinNT4 compatibility. I do not have the necessary tools, e.g.
Visual Studio 2005, which still creates WinNT4 binaries. Can anybody help?

Alas, when used with DVD Write Now by Alexander Telyatnikov ("Alter"),
http://dwn.alter.org.ua/downloads/dwn_1_5_12_sp2.rar , FileDisk ISO mounts
appear "empty" in certain setups, i.e. it cannot be used simultaneously
with the DWN UDF driver.

4.) I'm using the popular IO Networks v4.06 USB driver stack for WinNT4
http://ftp1.digi.com/support/driver/i4usb406.exe with v4.20 update (in
an "i420usb" archive available on several sites). It works fine with mass
storage devices, but not with human interface devices. According to Calvin
Windows NT 4.0 and USB , IONUSB's USBHID.SYS conflicts with PS/2
keyboard and mouse drivers. I failed to get it working on legacy-free systems.
Does anyone know a setup where WinNT4 operates with USB input devices?

The IO Networks stack contains an Edgeport driver, for USB-to-Ethernet
devices, if I got things right. I wonder about the hardware supported by
this driver: only particular units, or a wider variety of generic products?
The Ethernet-over-USB approach is particularily interesting for embedded
systems with unsupported onboard NIC chips (e.g. RTL8111/8168), where it
may be the only way to establish network connections.

5.) Windows 2000's OS Loader 5.00 is the last version which permits to
boot Windows NT 4.0 from HPFS drives (by means of PINBALL.SYS). However,
it cannot boot Windows XP (reports "The 'osloadfilename' parameter does
not point to a valid file. \system32\ ntoskrnl.exe."),
which relies on it's proper OS Loader 5.10. I'm looking for an OS Loader
with both capabilities, booting from HPFS and into WinXP. Ideas welcome.

6.) For years, Stefan Weil has ported the QEMU CPU emulator to Windows,
ref. QEMU for Windows – Installers (32 bit) . V2.70 is the latest version which runs
in Windows XP (dummy builds of bcrypt.dll and dwmapi.dll required by
newer versions fail). None of his earlier builds works in Windows NT 4.0,
nor does the alternative ftp://kolibrios.org/users/Asper/Qemu/qemu-1.2.0.7z
port. Stefan used the MinGW compiler for his builds. I doubt whether
the incompatibility of current builds with WinNT4 is related to missing
system functions, or rather to inadequate compiler settings. Does someone
have experiences with the MinGW compiler, with WinNT4 as target platform?

Feedback welcome,
Regards Torsten

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