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MS-DOS Compatability Mode

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by suzie_q

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I have a Workstation running Windows 98 2nd. This unit was the company owners system. Her computer was running very slowly and the only problem I could find with it was this message on the performance tab in Device Manager:
"Compatibility-mode paging reduces overall system performance."

"Drive C is using MS-DOS compatibility mode file system"

This seems to be a relatively obscure problem and there is not a lot of info on fixing this problem. But it does seriously degrade the system performance.

What I have tried so far. I put the hard drive in this computer in another system and it worked fine. I ordered a new hard drive for this system. After installing, Fdisking and formating the new drive the MS-DOS compatability modeproblem is still with me. The best info I could find for this problem was at: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q130/1/79.ASP
However, none of this seemed to help. Either the settings were correct or the problem cause mentioned inthe article was not present on this system. I did rename the atuoexec.bat and the config.sys files and that did not help.

If anyone has any good fixes for this problem I would appreciate it. My email is: tom@dfwgroup.com.

Thanks

Tom

9 replies

by gmstrong

Usually the problem is caused by not having the right Hard drive controller drivers. You need to find out what chipset you have and get the proper drivers from your motherboard or chipset manufacturer. Sometimes there is a ? in device manager withPCI bridge under it.

by suzie_q

Thanks, You may find this funny, it was not the drivers it was the wrong controller. I the Drive is IDE and it was connected to a UDMA 66 controller. Once it connected it to the IDE controller the problem was resolved. Hardward Problem afterall.

Thanks for you help though. And to everyone else.

by dmiles

To force windows to attempt to reinitialize the protected-mode IDE driver you'll have to remove the noide entry from the registry
1.Start the Registry Editor
2.Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\IOS
3.Delete the Noide entry
4. Search your Registry for BAD_IDE (Use F3 while working in registry editor)
After updating the Registry,restart windows
Micrsoft has a update that may help Remideup.exe
One other option would to try using the Fdisk /mbr using the bootdiskand reboot

by tamj123

I have same problem with a Win 95 system. the reason was I have viruse in the memory. so I suggest you, get a Emergency virus boot disk, (make sure no memory software load), and do a deep scan.

Hope this will help.

by slogmeister

Every time I get that particular problem, it is invariably a partition virus. Because there aren't many of those, you can still use an old DOS virus scanner. No new partition viruses have been release recently that i know of. Usually I download McAfee's Shareware VirusScan and run it in dos mode, after booting from a clean diskette. This will clean it out. Note that now you have to go through every floppy you have and test it because that is usually how the virus is transmitted.

- Jason

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