While installing and using ReactOS 0.34 (on Windows XP Professional with VmWare Workstation 6.03) I'm experiencing a couple of issues.
- Are there any new requirements to install ReactOS? 586+ with 64MB for example instead of earlier 486+/16MB ? - Are there any new requirements to bootup ReactOS? 586+ with 64MB? would/should swapfile work with lower amount of system memory installed on the machine? - Are there any new requirements to use ReactOS? 586+ with 64MB? Does swapfile work? - Is commandline-only supported on machines with not enough memory installed? Ofcourse booting from CD has to be supported on the target machine, either natively or through tricks like Smart Boot Manager or GRUB(-4-DOS) (or FreeLDR even?).
The actual trouble I'm having is completing 0.34's installation process with Dutch language and USA keyboard layout (which isn't default, you seem to prefer Belgium keyboard layout by default, which might be just as strange as a Dutch keyboard layout by default. Those keyboards hardly exist at all). It seems to hang on this machine at a random moment of time during the file copy phase. In the end, I cannot install FreeLDR to diskette (empty WinImage 1.44MB diskette image), nor can I return to previous screen to select "install to harddisk". My goal was having a FreeLDR bootdisk in case I mess up the partition bootsector.
Anyway, using English as installation language and its defaults, I can complete SETUP properly. While in ReactOS booted from harddisk, opening a simple console window (CMD) and doing DIR A: results in a blue screen (instead of a message like "no floppydrive installed") Same issue as known earlier I guess - non-working floppydrive(r).
My old FreeLoader diskette is based on a FreeLDR bootdisk that Casper Hornstrup(?) had available at the time. It's available from http://odin.fdos.org/odin2005/ Booting the diskette, pressing CTRL-C, then doing a simple COPY /Y C:\FREELDR.SYS A:\FREELDR.SYS does the trick for updating FreeLDR from 2.xx to 3.xx, resulting in being able to boot ReactOS 0.34 from a diskette. Strangely enough no single DOS tool/command can handle FREELDR.INI (copy, ren, del, edit, all fail) - any idea why?
Last of all, SHUTDOWN doesn't shut off the computer (guess you want to be sure everything in cache is flushed?), and LOGOFF won't allow me to get out of entering my username and password.
Looking forward to a ReactOS with OpenOffice and FireFox 3.xx in a while,
Any help, ideas or recommendations much appreciated (as well as pointing me to the correct mailinglist if it shouldn't be ros-dev)
Bernd Blaauw
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Bernd Blaauw