Syslinux - Dec 2004 - Why WinME/XP boot disk doesn't work with MEMDISK

It appears that the WinME/XP DOS boot disk links code into the INT 15h 
AH=87h "mover" function which crashes the system DELIBERATELY (it puts
the system in a cli/hlt/jmp loop.)  I first thought it was specific to 
MEMDISK, but it's not; calling this function under just about any 
circumstances from within this version of DOS seems to crash the system 
hard.  It's possible EMM386.EXE overrides this and installs something 
else, but I don't have a WinXP/ME version of EMM386.EXE to try with.

This sucks, because there are pretty much no good alternatives.  In real 
mode I can enter protected mode myself -- modulo A20 screwiness -- and 
take care of things, but if the machine is already in protected mode 
(e.g. if EMM386.EXE is loaded) then it may not work that way.  The XMS 
access functions don't seem to be applicable, either.

The whole point of using the INT 15h, AH=87h interface is to let things 
like EMM386.EXE be able to do the "right thing" when entering
protected
mode directly isn't an option.

Microsoft.  What an astonishing bunch of jackasses.

I'm thinking of producing an alternate version of MEMDISK which uses 
"raw" high memory accesses.  I've already confirmed that it can
boot
this version of DOS.

	-hpa

I have been having problems getting the Western Digital Diagnostics working
on my systems (A8V Deluxe, P5AD2 Premium, A8NSLI Deluxe) and have been
unable to for a long time.  I did have it working at one point and couldn't
figure out why, I posted on here and someone suggested going back to an
older version of memdisk which I did (1.6.7) which is the version I used
when it worked.  To my surprise, it did not work with the older version of
memdisk.

This post made me try the Western Digital Diagnostic Utility (5.0.4) in a
DOS 6.22 disk (vs. the other disks I've tried -- Caldera DR-DOS, Win98SE/ME
DOS) and happily, it now works on these new systems.

Passing this info along, thanks Peter.  Looks like some BIOS flashing
problems I've been having trouble with (freezing when starting the flash but
not actually flashing) are resolved with downgrading the disk to DOS 6.22.