Crazy man tweak

JonG · Post by **JonG** » Fri Feb 09, 2001 10:19 am

Has anyone tried anything of this nature with windows 95/98? I'm trying something close to it, placing the TCP/IP driver files (dlls, vxds) onto a RAMDrive, and with my 56k modem am achieving 190 pings. Although it may be wishful thinking, I'm making sure it is actually helping out my connection because I'm sure most of you understand the "uncertainty" of analog

I may just be getting lucky, who knows. Dannjr is gonna have to help me test this rather simple process out, so we'll let you guys know if anything comes of it.
Note of caution: DOS OWNS!

Juggernaut · Post by **Juggernaut** » Fri Feb 09, 2001 3:07 pm

I had the path in there before and it didn't help. Why would adding the path for the ZA directory make a difference? ZA is basically already loading, or is loading during the time the .bat file is run.

Juggernaut · Post by **Juggernaut** » Fri Feb 09, 2001 3:56 pm

Has anyone else experienced this too?

donald_k · Post by **donald_k** » Fri Feb 09, 2001 4:01 pm

maybe I'll go play with my neighbour's computer later. I can probably get it to go cause since win98 relies on DOS the ramdrive asnd copy script can be executed before the GUI shows up..and in the reg make win98 look in the ram drive...it then sees them in the ram drive

and loads....i'll try it later if I can hop on her computer. But I am not putting win98SE back on my computer...I like win2k so much more.

donald_k · Post by **donald_k** » Fri Feb 09, 2001 4:02 pm

btw the speedguide UBB loads quicker with this tweak....

and WinAMP does not skip anymore.. (it used to, I would have like 6 IEs open at once and a few telnets going just after running Quake III)

Juggernaut · Post by **Juggernaut** » Fri Feb 09, 2001 5:03 pm

I also noticed that Tiny Personal Firewall has a problem with this tweak too...when u reboot it gives error messages about unable to find the IP (or something to that effect). I think these are having problems because (correct me if I'm wrong) they try to determine your settings, if u'r on the net, etc. right off the restart and all this is happening before the tcpip and afd services are started, so they are unable to get that info. That's why after everything is completed and you shutdown the firewall and restart it, it works.

Another thing that is strange tho is that the True Vector Internet Monitor service never appears to start, even after ZoneAlarm Pro is shutdown and restared. It just says "Automatic" and is never started. But ZAPro still works.

Radio- · Post by **Radio-** » Fri Feb 09, 2001 6:37 pm

Has anyone ever tried running Windows off a Ramdisk?

Killing-Angel · Post by **Killing-Angel** » Sat Feb 10, 2001 12:50 am

jonG,I think that's great...I'm trying something like that myself...maybe it wil work...I'll let you guys know!

deathstalker · Post by **deathstalker** » Sat Feb 10, 2001 2:58 am

Whats supposed to be at these lines :
\??\Z:\tcpip.sys
The ?? I mean. And how much can I make ramdrive out to be. I tried to enter more than 25mb but its doesnt load after I did this. Anyone knows why or how to make the Ramdrive size bigger? Thanks

cablenut · Post by **cablenut** » Sat Feb 10, 2001 3:56 am

The ramdrive driver is a 16bit file service this it will only allow upto 33MB or so to be allocated... if you want bigger ramdrives use RamDiskNT located on one of the posts on this thread by me...

deathstalker · Post by **deathstalker** » Sat Feb 10, 2001 4:28 am

33Mb? I could manage 25Mb before it stops loading. I tried putting 6000000 in the Registry and it stops working. The max I could get is 5999999 which shows out to be 25Mb in reality. Thanks Cablenut.

Lobo · Post by **Lobo** » Sat Feb 10, 2001 8:36 am

4.0, It's been a long time, so chop-chop

theduek1234 · Post by **theduek1234** » Sun Feb 11, 2001 2:09 am

Hey to ask a newbie question, but I will.

Why the heck wont the RAM disk driver install properly on my Win 2k Adv. Server box?

Get an error on install notice saying that it wasn't installed properly.

Any help much appreciated. Do I need a developer kit or somethang?

Thanks for your assistance!

donald_k · Post by **donald_k** » Sun Feb 11, 2001 2:53 am

make sure that you did not disable a service that ramdisk depends on. II was doing some tweaking and disabled unnecesary services to find out that ramdisk actualy needed on of them and it took forever to find the right one.

theduek1234 · Post by **theduek1234** » Sun Feb 11, 2001 3:28 am

To simplify this discussion, maybe I'm being overly simplistic, why not
1.install RAMDisk NT and configure like discussed earlier
2. Copy afd tcpip and netbt to the new ramdisk.
3. Alter registery for the above sys files.
Reboot
Isn't that it?

Acid · Post by **Acid** » Sun Feb 11, 2001 7:10 am

Well I can't seem to manage to get it working.
The ramdrive loads without any problems,I have changed the image dir for the tcpip.sys & afd.sys in the registery. I have put a .bat file in the starup folder.
This is my bat file:

@echo on
copy d:\winnt\System32\DRIVERS\netbt.sys z:\
copy d:\winnt\System32\DRIVERS\tcpip.sys z:\
copy d:\winnt\System32\DRIVERS\afd.sys z:\
net start afd
net start tcpip
net start netbt
ipconfig
@pause

On the bootup when the computer comes to net start afd, it stays ther for a couple of minutes, after that I get a blue screen. I am not sure if it said something about irq or something, but I know it said, dumping physical memory, and than the computer reebots.

What could I be doing wrong?

Thanks in adanced!

JonG · Post by **JonG** » Mon Feb 12, 2001 9:40 am

I've done some messing around with Windows 98. I'm sure my process should work for windows 95 as well. Basically, I've "placed" my tcp/ip DLLs and VXDs on a ramdrive as I said before with quite a bit of success. I was getting as much as 5.7KB/sec on my analog phone modem, which isn't usually considered bad

Anyway, here is basically what I did.
(These instructions are tested out only on a windows 98 machine as well as dannjr's DSL)

Step 1.
Edit config.sys and add these lines

DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 700 /E

save, reboot, and go to My Computer and find out what drive was assigned to your ramdrive, it should be D: but it could be something else

Step 2.
Edit autoexec.bat, go to the very bottom and add these lines
(X: is used in place of whatever your RAMDrive's letter happens to be)

PATH=X:\;%PATH%
rename c:\windows\system\ndis.vxd ndisvxd.bak
copy c:\windows\system\ndisvxd.bak X:\ndis.vxd
rename c:\windows\system\vtcp.386 vtcp386.bak
copy c:\windows\system\vtcp386.bak X:\vtcp.386
rename c:\windows\system\vudp.386 vudp386.bak
copy c:\windows\system\vudp386.bak X:\vupd.386
rename c:\windows\system\mstcp.dll mstcpdll.bak
copy c:\windows\system\mstcpdll.bak X:\mstcp.dll
rename c:\windows\system\wshtcp.vxd wshtcp.bak
copy c:\windows\system\wshtcp.bak X:\wshtcp.vxd
rename c:\windows\system\wsock.vxd wsockvxd.bak
copy c:\windows\system\wsockvxd.bak X:\wsock.vxd
rename c:\windows\system\wsock2.vxd wsock2.bak
copy c:\windows\system\wsock2.bak X:\wsock2.vxd

There, that should be it for now. I'll be refining this list as I go on. What this process does is copy the above files to your ramdrive and assign the path statement the X: drive. By doing this, you are telling Windows to look in the system folder, then, if it doesn't find what it is looking for, to look in the X: drive. When it does, it finds the needed files and there ya go. There are far more files for me to add to this list, but the above ones are just basic. Because I'm on dial-up there are files I'm adding which most of you cable modem users/DSL users would not have on your system. Again, this process above will work only for Windows 95 and 98. ME, I do not believe it will work for, nor any other Windows OS (as far as I know).
If you want to play it safe, make a batch file which you can execute (should the need arise) that will rename your files back to their old names. Here is what to put into that batch file.

rename c:\windows\system\ndisvxd.bak ndis.vxd
rename c:\windows\system\vtcp386.bak vtcp.386
rename c:\windows\system\vudp386.bak vupd.386
rename c:\windows\system\mstcpdll.bak mstcp.dll
rename c:\windows\system\wshtcp.bak wshtcp.vxd
rename c:\windows\system\wsockvxd.bak wsock.vxd
rename c:\windows\system\wsock2.bak wsock2.vxd

When you execute that batch file, remove all the added items in your autoexec.bat file otherwise when you reboot you'll be back at square one. Let me know what you guys think.

Don't worry if you see some errors while your computer starts up about missing files (as it tries to copy them to a ramdrive), thats ok. Some of the above files that this process uses may not actually be on your system, in which case you can just ignore it.

[ 02-12-2001: Message edited by: JonG ]

Killing-Angel · Post by **Killing-Angel** » Mon Feb 12, 2001 10:33 am

Under what line should I place the thing on step 1?

Under: [menu]
[CD]
[NOCD]
[HElP]
or under[ COMMON]

Wich one!!!!

Radio- · Post by **Radio-** » Mon Feb 12, 2001 4:14 pm

JonG - I'm kind of confused about your tweak..

Essentially your copying the files to the ramdisk, and then hiding the copy in the system folder by renaming it.

However, Windows looks in the system folder for those files, so how is it supposed to find them in the Ramdrive?

Thanks.. Maybe I just don't quite understand this

dannjr · Post by **dannjr** » Mon Feb 12, 2001 4:39 pm

Originally posted by Killing-Angel:
Under what line should I place the thing on step 1?

Under: [menu]
[CD]
[NOCD]
[HElP]
or under[ COMMON]

Wich one!!!!

Step 1.
Edit config.sys and add these lines

DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 700 /E

These two especialy HIMEM.SYS has to be on the first line no matter what..
Per microsoft
Next before you do this check to see how many netrans keys you have and how many you have after reboot..

I will say this Jon and I did this tgether on a fresh install win98SE machine we did not tweak the machine and there was nothing on it but the OS and ramdrive loaded.
I went and did a little surfing and was able to open the speedguide forum with out a wait prior to installing the ramdrive it had nothing but problems.
I also hit a few other sites that have allot of bandwidth users and it worked fine..
Check the keys nad back them up just to be safe
Dan

[ 02-12-2001: Message edited by: dannjr ]

JonG · Post by **JonG** » Mon Feb 12, 2001 7:23 pm

The reason Windows looks in the ramdrive is because of that small addition I have you add to the autoexec.bat file which is this:

PATH=X:\;%PATH%

What this does is tell Windows where to look when its system folder does not contain what is needed. Normally, windows follows a pattern which looks like this when looking for DLLs, VXDs, and 386 Enhanced mode files.

Windows System Folder, Windows Folder, Current Folder, then finally it searches through the path environment variable.

Because it searches through the path environment variable, this tweak can actually work.

Hope that helps!

Radio- · Post by **Radio-** » Mon Feb 12, 2001 9:01 pm

Do you know if there is a parameter to set the dos ramdrive to a certain drive letter?

Right now mine just happened to select e:, which was previously uses for a CD-rom, leaving that device now left off my drive list =P

Killing-Angel · Post by **Killing-Angel** » Tue Feb 13, 2001 12:43 am

I tried the tweak,and it worked for me!

JonG · Post by **JonG** » Tue Feb 13, 2001 1:26 am

As far as I know, there is no option to specify what drive your ram drive is created on. Sorry. The only way I know how to do this would be through some old DOS drivers which would just slow your computer down. It's just something you'll have to live with I guess, sorry

Raos · Post by **Raos** » Tue Feb 13, 2001 2:10 am

ninja6o4 · Post by **ninja6o4** » Tue Feb 13, 2001 3:26 am

Originally posted by JonG:
As far as I know, there is no option to specify what drive your ram drive is created on. Sorry. The only way I know how to do this would be through some old DOS drivers which would just slow your computer down. It's just something you'll have to live with I guess, sorry

I had to register just to remind you that Windows is programmed on top of DOS. If you have installed ramdrive.sys, that is a DOS driver, and you certainly can specify a drive letter.

Don't ask how though, I have long since forgotten the switch for it..

I'm sure it's documented somewhere out there.

[ 02-13-2001: Message edited by: ninja6o4 ]

RicRogue · Post by **RicRogue** » Tue Feb 13, 2001 4:26 pm

Is it possible to do this with WinME?

Micand · Post by **Micand** » Tue Feb 13, 2001 6:42 pm

I'm running Win98 SE. I tried JonG's tweak, but with no success. I typed in the two lines in Config.sys, above the only other line, a call to setver.exe. When I rebooted, my RAM drive was at F:. I then just copied and pasted the rename/copy calls to the bottom of my autoexec.bat. I then did a global search and replace for X:, replacing it with F:. Rebooted again, watched as my TCP files were renamed and then copied to F:. All is well until I try to access the Net; it simply didn't work. I then run WinIPCFG, but get a Fatal Error -- Cannot Read IP Configuration. I dunno where I messed up (or even if I messed up).

I just ran the undo batch file, and removed all the calls from autoexec.bat. That brings me here. I'd appreciate any help with this, as I'm yearning to lower my pings and raise my speeds.

Opticflare · Post by **Opticflare** » Tue Feb 13, 2001 8:27 pm

Same here.. i tried those steps and followed it exactly, but It didn't work. The second i ran the restore batch file though everything was back in place... Im using windows ME (with the dos patch installed that allows you to actually edit the config.sys and autoexec.bat files). Any Ideas?

-Derek

Engineer · Post by **Engineer** » Tue Feb 13, 2001 8:45 pm

Same here....no luck! Windows 98SE...As soon as I copied the files from the Ramdrive back to System directory, everything was OK!

Opticflare · Post by **Opticflare** » Wed Feb 14, 2001 6:20 pm

it follows the general idea of using ram to make your internet connection faster, but its not the same as what cabluenut is talking about.

-Derek

neo86 · Post by **neo86** » Wed Feb 14, 2001 7:12 pm

hmmmmmm......... jong, how should i say this? it doesn't work!

. when you specify that command does windows acknowledge it? it's dos!

[ 02-14-2001: Message edited by: neo86 ]

Juggernaut · Post by **Juggernaut** » Wed Feb 14, 2001 7:36 pm

I'm not quite sure how to get it working since I'm running Win2k instead of 9x but are u sure you put the PATH command in there?

Originally posted by neo86:
when you specify that command does windows acknowledge it? it's dos!

Windows 98 is built on DOS so the commands u have run in dos will affect Windows (ie. having Doskey in u'r autoexec will allow you to use doskey when u run a DOS window while in 98)

neo86 · Post by **neo86** » Wed Feb 14, 2001 7:44 pm

well, it turns out that putting rem in front of the winsock related file helps. after that everything worked. vtcp and stuff kicked ass, but that was it. besides the device drivers nothing loaded

neo86 · Post by **neo86** » Wed Feb 14, 2001 7:53 pm

update works with explorer.exe to! actually it's easier with that one but it works with this method too! fast! i need to order another stick of tinybga 128mb!

TheMyth · Post by **TheMyth** » Wed Feb 14, 2001 10:54 pm

I'm not sure the win98 way works with PPPoE, I have Verizon and I can dial in fine, but when I load up a browser 'The page cannot be displayed'.

cruze · Post by **cruze** » Wed Feb 14, 2001 11:12 pm

I have done the ramdisk voyage,never found much use for it.But as always cablenut and dan and jon have got my attention.I would guess these guys are working and testing out this outstanding move to the next level of speed.Don't always agree,but your always on top of the issues (BRAVO).I for one, am waiting from them for a more comprehensive test and conclusion.But as always to all on this site,you make my internet surfing much more enjoyable.I am always impressed by the intellect on this forum,thank you so much.

Opticflare · Post by **Opticflare** » Wed Feb 14, 2001 11:37 pm

neo: rem in front of which winsock related file? See below:
<other stuff>
rename c:\windows\system\mstcp.dll mstcpdll.bak
copy c:\windows\system\mstcpdll.bak E:\mstcp.dll
rename c:\windows\system\wshtcp.vxd wshtcp.bak
copy c:\windows\system\wshtcp.bak E:\wshtcp.vxd
rename c:\windows\system\wsock.vxd wsockvxd.bak
copy c:\windows\system\wsockvxd.bak E:\wsock.vxd
rename c:\windows\system\wsock2.vxd wsock2.bak
copy c:\windows\system\wsock2.bak E:\wsock2.vxd

etc. etc... rem out both the rename and copy lines for wsock.vxd?

-Derek

JonG · Post by **JonG** » Thu Feb 15, 2001 12:13 am

I've been away from this thread a little to long I guess, better get back up to speed

Lets see, lots of questions and so little time nowadays. I just got finished with a project in my computer science class that took me 8 hours to complete, which is amazing considering some of the other people I was talking to had been working on it for the past 2 days

Anyways.......

Lets see, ninja6o4, I'm well aware that DOS is what Windows is programmed on top of, which is why this works. I have a manual sitting next to me which documents all versions of ramdrive.sys up to DOS 6.0's version, and it didn't say what argument to use to specify your own drive letter. I was going to look it up further on the net but didn't have time. Sorry!

This tweak won't work with any version of Windows other than Windows 95 or Windows 98. WindowsME is weird and would seem to resemble more of Windows 2000's critieria for this tweak, and I don't yet have access to it to test anything out, so for the time being we have little to help you guys out on there.

Ah yes, let me add that this "tweak" that I thought of for win95/98 is just brand new. There are lots of files I posted on here to rename/copy that quite frankly won't affect a lot of you guys because you aren't on dial-up like me (in which case if the files do exist they're just taking up worthless space). I still have quite a bit of work on this to do, so for now try at your own risk. Thats all I can tell you. I like the fact so many of you are willing to try it anyway.

One big problem I faced in finding what files I would want to add to this list was the matter of whether or not windows had, inside the registry, a path to the file. If that was so, then Windows would expect the file to be in a certain place, regardless of where I put it. A good example is wsock32.dll. As bored as I was, I tried moving it to the ramdrive and successed. However, TCP/IP still wouldn't work because it seems to have other "helper" files that it needs to have in the same directory. It's hard to explain, so I don't wanna try.

All I know is that all of my dial-up adapter driver files are now loaded onto my ramdrive, which is seeming to help out quite a bit. Thanks for your help so far guys.

donald_k · Post by **donald_k** » Thu Feb 15, 2001 12:49 am

hmm..anyway to get explorer.exe in the ram drive in win2k???? or is this overkill.