Posts

Dosbox

Windows ME on Dosbox ECE, even on Raspberry Pi4b

If you search the web you’ll find a lot statements that the installation of Windows Millennium or Windows ME on Dosbox is just not possible, that it will not work, that it will not even complete setup, no matter what.
I wouldn’t be writing this if I hadn’t found differently. Nowadays it is indeed possible to run Windows ME on Dosbox and, even though it’s not supported, it is fairly stable. At least more stable than I expected and a lot more stable than Windows 98SE on the same environment.

Now the question is “Why? Why would anyone want to install an OS that was (and still is) considered the second most horrible operating system ever released by Microsoft? (The first most hated is Windows Vista) The answer to that is simple: Because people said it could not be done while there is no logical reason for this not to work. Also I never developed a bias against it as I didn’t use it at the time. I had a dual-boot Windows 98SE/Windows 2000 workstation and before I finally got around installing ME, Windows XP was launched.

Anyway, below a quick and dirty video of Dune 2000 on Windows Millennium running on a Raspberry Pi4b with Dosbian 1.5 install. One of these days I’ll modify this post with a how-to installing Windows ME on Dosbox.

Synology NAS

Synology Drive App for Windows 10 does not connect

When trying to connect, the app displays a message:

Connection fail. Check your network settings and try again.

The solution to this is that next to port 5000 and 5001, the port 6690 also has to be opened to the Synology NAS. If this port is not opened, the Windows app will fail.

The Android and iOS apps will work with just port 5000 (or 5001 if SSL is selected and the certificate is valid).

Hyper-V

Force Remove Host from SCVMM 2016/2019 & Hyper-V Console

To remove from SCVMM:

Open Powershell with administrative credentials:

PS C:\> $Credential = Get-Credential
PS C:\> $VMHost = Get-SCVMHost -ComputerName “<Hostname of Server here>”
PS C:\> Remove-SCVMHost -VMHost $VMHost -Credential $Credential

The Get-Credential cmd-let will open a prompt in which you have to supply credentials with the rights to remove the host. In the second line you specify the server. This doesn’t have to be the FQDN, the Netbios name will do.
The last line actually removes the server. This may take a few minutes, depending if the server responds or not. If the server does not respond, Powershell waits for a time-out.

To remove from a Hyper-V console:

Open Powershell with administrative credentials:

PS C:\> Get-VM
PS C:\> Remove-VM -name [“VM Name Here”] -force

Use this to remove VMs that are in the state of SavedCritical. The “Get-VM” command will show a list of VMs registered on this Hyper-V server. The Saved-Critical VMs will list there too. Make sure the -force is added or it won’t do the trick. If your machine name has spaces, use the quotes (without the square brackets of course].

This was tested on Server 2016 and Server 2019. It’s also expected to work on later server releases.

Abandonware

Command & Conquer – Play in Dosbox

When Command & Conquer was released in 1995 and its companion with a different tone Command & Conquer: Red Alert in 1996, it was something of a revolution in the RTS game play. Of course Dune II had been released a few years before, also developed by Westwood studios, setting the tone for many RTS games that followed in the years to come. (This includes Warcraft, which eventually let to World of Warcraft, DOTA and many others that a lot of people still play daily nowadays)

Now that the remastered edition is announced for 2020, the 25th anniversary of the game, I got interested again in the original Dos game. Since the original is 2CD’s (GDI and NOD) and later an expansion was added named: Command & Conquer: The Covert Operations, I thought it was time to create a quick batch file to load which ever disk instead of having to type the commands in Dosbox every single time.
Batch files are the reason that I’m using non-standard commands and add-ons to Dosbox, so here the bat-file that I’ve written for C&C:

:menu
echo 1) C&C: GDI
echo 2) C&C: NOD
echo 3) C&C: Covert Operations
echo 4) Exit to Dos
choice /C:1234 /N Option:

if errorlevel = 1 goto GDI
if errorlevel = 2 goto NOD
if errorlevel = 3 goto COVERT
if errorlevel = 4 goto EXIT

:GDI
imgmount d “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-CD1.iso” “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-CD2.iso” “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-Cov.iso” -t cdrom
d:\C&C
goto menu

:NOD
imgmount d “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-CD2.iso” “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-CD1.iso” “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-Cov.iso” -t cdrom
d:\C&C
goto menu

:COVERT
imgmount d “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-Cov.iso” “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-CD1.iso” “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-CD2.iso” -t cdrom
d:\C&C
goto menu

:EXIT
exit

The CD’s can be cycled with CTRL-F4 if C&C asks for it.

Linux

Ubuntu displays print_req_error: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0

With a new install as a virtual server, Ubuntu repeatedly displays the error:

print_req_error: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0

The reason is the virtual server does not have a floppy drive. To resolve:

# sudo rmmod floppy
# echo “blacklist floppy” | tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-floppy.conf
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure initramfs-tools

The message should now be gone for good.

Windows 10

Windows 10: Set search results default to detail view

For some reason Microsoft seems to think that “Content” view for search results is the best view. This goes for “generic” folders in general, but me for content view is a view that I’d rather see go completely from Windows. Unfortunately I for me there is no easy setting to change this. This means it’s time to dive into the Windows Registry a little and set everything to use Details view as default.

Folder views are user specific, local and are controlled by the Windows Shell. This means the registry keys can be found under:

HKCU\SOFTWARE\Classes\Local Setting\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell

Here you should remove the keys BagMRU and Bags. Once these two are removed, add the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\AllFolders\Shell{7fde1a1e-8b31-49a5-93b8-6be14cfa4943}

Create 2 DWORD values with:

“LogicalViewMode”=dword:00000001
“Mode”=dword:00000004

Now log off and log back on and every window should be set to Detail view.