win98se VB - fatal exception OD...VXD VMM....

[irishlazz]

So the good news is that the Win98se VB is running fine - mostly. And the ancient software I need it for is also running fine - mostly. The error occurs when, within said software, I attempt to run a plot of the data generated.

I've googled and there is a TON of suggestions on how to go about fixing this (in a win98 physical machine) - most common one being to reinstall the OS. That was such a pain the first time, before I try that, or anything else, I was hoping to be reassured that it won't screw up the VB as a whole and put me back at square one.

[mpack]

Please ensure that a zipped log file accompanies every support request.

Early response: that's an error in a device driver. In fact it's an error in an obsolete device driver, because VxDs had been replaced by "Windows Driver Model" .sys files by the time of Win98SE. VxDs only existed for backwards compatibility. If you can find out what VxD is crashing then you might be able to replace it with a less obsolete WDM driver.

Researching what VMM.VXD is... it seems to be part of the core OS. There was VMM.VXD and VMM32.VXD. I've a feeling they have to do with protected mode memory management (e.g. paging). I would ask how much RAM did you give to the VM (i.e. hopefully not too much for a Win98 era PC), but actually I'll get that from the log.

[irishlazz]

512 MB ram. I don't know when the VBLog restarts (if ever) so I made the program do its bluescreen right before I saved the log, so it will be easy to find. A few minutes before that I got a VB error and crash (also in the zip). This occurred twice today while running the rheometer program. Second time I was taking snapshots and had a restore point.

[mpack]

A new log is created every session, at which time past logs are renamed log.1, log.2 etc.

4 logs are kept, but we only need the most recent one (vbox.log, no number). However we do need the complete log, which you don't get if the file is still open because the VM is still running. You need to shut down the VM before collecting the log, so please try again.

In the meantime, 512MB is a huge amount of RAM for the Win98 era. In 2002 my XP PCs still only had 256MB RAM. I would reduce the RAM allocation to something like 64MB. I'd reduce graphics ram to 32MB.

Your hard drive is distressingly large too at 10GB - this is above the 8GB threshold at which CHS sector addressing stops working. None of my own Win9x VMs have such a large drive, though I don't know that it's really a problem (my Win98SE VM has a 2GB system drive).

Also: you can turn 2D and 3D acceleration off. There are no Guest Additions for Win98, i.e. no graphics drivers to take advantage of the available acceleration support, so enabling these features can not benefit you - but can still cause a crash.

[irishlazz]

I would reduce the RAM allocation to something like 64MB. I'd reduce graphics ram to 32MB.

Done

Also: you can turn 2D and 3D acceleration off. ...

Done.

Your hard drive is distressingly large too at 10GB - ...

Found instruction for making it bigger, but when I tried same for making it smaller it said 'no'.

At least if I have to start over I have a better starting base.

[mpack]

You should eject the Win98SE install CD from the virtual drive, I've known that to cause problems.

I've looked around, and I can't find any mention of 10GB still being a problem for Win98, so probably we can forget about that one.

I don't see where you mention what graphics driver you installed?

[irishlazz]

For the most part I followed the instructions I found here (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=59559). The SciTech Display Doctor. But since the instructed 512 MB RAM, 64 MB vid ram, 2D & 3D acceleration, and 8+ GB HD aren't the best recommendations, maybe there are better video drivers to be found as well.

Did NOT run the .bat files as there was a bunch of stuff in them I did not need.

There were some issues during the install of the antique's software as well.... I think I am not at all opposed to starting from scratch. It won't take a week this time!

[irishlazz]

Well poop. So the re-do was having the same issues, and I was ready to work around them. It would run a test or two before needing a reboot and I could have lived with that. Then I got a VB crash. And somewhere toward the end of the day the rheometer lost its "Home" position by a couple centimeters. Decided to deal with that glitch today.... but today it has lost its Home position by around 30 cm and is not going to be usable unless I can get that figured out. So I've attached the VB error, but not the log file as there is no point until/unless I get the machine itself back to normal. (wish me luck!)

[irishlazz]

OK, back in business. Long way to go yet. The blue screen quit happening after I did some tweaking on the databases It came back when I restored the DB to originals again. So I'm pretty certain that is a glitch within the old software and won't bother you with that anymore. I'll start a new thread for the new error....