How to fool an application program

[tcblovas]

Hi, I am trying to figure out how to fool an application program into thinking it's running in an XP environment when actually it's in an ME environment. Specifically it's an HP printer installation program. I didn't notice on the box it came in that the software installation disc only supports Win 2K and up. Having worked with computers since 1972 (both mainframes and PCs) I do have some expertise in these matters. At first the installation program blew-up with the message "unsupported operating system - OS not in list". So I examined the error logs and found that it was checking the OS against a variable called "oslist". I opened the autorun.inf script and added my OS to all instances of "oslist". While in the script I also located all the XP file names that it checks to see if they exist, They were all DLLs and a couple of INFs. I downloaded what I didn't already have and installed them in the appropriate directories on my computer. So far so good as I was able to get the installation program 3/4ths of the way thru the install. However it still keeps blowing-up with the message "environment variable %ALLUSERSPROFILE% not found" and "MSI not found". I am guessing that these are related because I do have MSIexec.exe on my system and it's even a higher version than the one supplied on the HP install disc. I have already done the research on the web regarding %ALLUSERSPROFILE% and understand it's an environment variable in the registry (ME has the same setup in the registry - just not all the same names or as many). I added the key (and value data) to my registry in the place where the script looks for it and added the appropriate folder(s) to my hard drive directory (Documents and Settings\All Users) but this did not help enough. I still get the same error message. I have looked thru every file on the setup disc that had the string "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%" in it but cannot find any line that looks like it is opening a file or reading the registry to get the value for %ALLUSERSPROFILE%. They all expected to have it already. I am guessing these environment variables are just inherited from the OS as the program runs. I thought that finding such would give me a clue as to what it was looking at or for. I'm running out of ideas and thought I'd ask one of you as maybe someone has successfully dealt with this kind of problem. Many thanks up front.

[IPR512]

I could be wrong, but I thought that Windows ME was released after Windows 2000 so if that's the case then your printer should work with ME.
What's the model number of the printer?

[smurfy]

Win95/98/ME are one "family"
Win NT/2k/XP/Vista/7 are another family.
You 'may' have been able to fool it into running on NT4 but it will not work on ME.

What HP Printer is it.
There may be an alternative driver/application available to make it work on ME.

[tcblovas]

Originally Posted by IPR512

I could be wrong, but I thought that Windows ME was released after Windows 2000 so if that's the case then your printer should work with ME.
What's the model number of the printer?

Thanks for your reply. You are correct that W2K was released B4 WinME however the W2K version number is higher (V5.0) than ME (V4.9). W2K was released in March and WinME in September. Just late in getting out the door I guess. With the release of W2K all Windows versions became NT based and so the difference. However I have found that I can get newer applications to work on my system just by reading the install script file...usually called AUTORUN.INF. In it you will see all the files that will be installed and all the registry keys that will be created. All the application software I have ever seen supplies it own files for operation with the exception that most will use 1 or more Windows supplied files. They will usually be DLL files and they contain convenient common routines that can be accessed and do not have to be rewritten by the 3rd party application developer. It just saves them some coding time. Anyway, after I posted this message yesterday I went back to work on the problem and solved it. The %ALLUSERSPROFILE% error was my own mistake. I forgot to restart the computer after I added the environment variable to the registry. Environment variables are read by the system at startup. Thanks for the value to put in %ALLUSERSPROFILE% goes to an article I found out on the web. The error with msiexec.exe I found in the script file. The registry key it looks at to find where msiexec.exe is located on the computer contains the location of msi.dll on my system and not msiexec.exe so all I had to do was change the key in the script file to the key in my registry that points to msiexec.exe on my computer. TA DA! If you ever have the time you should go to Wikipedia and visit the Windows versions pages. They discuss the different versions and what was added/changed/modified and removed between the different versions. I was enlightened to find out that ME actually includes some of the W2K and NT platform in it. The printer model is an HP Officejet 4680 All-in-one which I purchased 2 years ago. I only got around to installing it now because I only needed it for a project I was doing that I have just recently completed. I do have trouble understanding why a peripheral manufacturer would exclude certain operating systems. I can't help but think what if hard drive/monitor/cd rom drive/keyboard manufacturers did this too. Once again thanks and never give up...persistence usually pays off.

[tcblovas]

Originally Posted by smurfy

Win95/98/ME are one "family"
Win NT/2k/XP/Vista/7 are another family.
You 'may' have been able to fool it into running on NT4 but it will not work on ME.

What HP Printer is it.
There may be an alternative driver/application available to make it work on ME.

Hi Smurfy and thanks for your reply. Please see my reply to IPR512 above (or below). It will answer your question. Why the HP All-in-one? I wanted to have color printing and scanning capabilities and the copier and fax functions are nice extras (and it was on sale for $80). That seemed very reasonable. With all due respect I have found that you can make many things work successfuly on an older version of Windows by looking at the script file for the install. Besides what I said in my reply to IPR512, the script file will also show you what files the program will use from the operating system. It will actually check to see that any required system files are there. All that is needed to be done then is copy them onto your computer in the correct folder and if necessary create or modify the appropriate registry key to point to it.

[IPR512]

Thanks for the interesting reply.
I went to HP's site, and like you I don't quite get why they didn't include ME drivers for that printer. Maybe they felt that many people who had ME dumped it, because it was supposedly so bad so no sense in making drivers for it. I don't know, because I went from Win 98 to XP, and now Win 7.
I'm glad you persisted and found a solution.

[tcblovas]

Originally Posted by IPR512

Thanks for the interesting reply.
I went to HP's site, and like you I don't quite get why they didn't include ME drivers for that printer. Maybe they felt that many people who had ME dumped it, because it was supposedly so bad so no sense in making drivers for it. I don't know, because I went from Win 98 to XP, and now Win 7.
I'm glad you persisted and found a solution.

I was still online when I saw your reply so I wanted to add something. I have heard that about ME too and like all the Windows versions I had some problems at the start. But none were big. What I did was install all the updates, fixes and patches for ME from the Microsoft website and then went thru my system and deleted every unnecessary and/or duplicate file. How do you know which ones are unnecessary...trial and error. If it was necessary you just copy it back. The duplicate files I had to check with the registry and if they had a key I had to modify it to point to the current location of the file. Many files are shared by the operating system and 3rd party applications. There is a key in the registry called "shared dlls". This is generally where you will find them . And I also went thru my registry key by key and got rid of all the junk in it. It took me about 2 weeks to do this in my spare time. After all that ME works just fine for me...very stable. That's why I'm sticking to it for now. The only problem I have now is IE6. Many websites have dropped support for it because they have begun using HTML5 which is not in IE6. I still can go most places but I sometimes experience anything from a "very slow response" to IE6 just "locking-up". And I can no longer watch any videos such as You-Tube. Firefox works a little better but the last version of it which supports ME does not have HTML5 either. The version after mine is for W2K and up. And unlike other applications I have worked on (like the HP problem we have been discussing) the install program does not have a script file I can access. It's all internal to the setup program so I can neither view it or modify it. Perhaps this should be a new topic.

[IPR512]

I applaud your efforts in keeping ME working, but I think I would be leery about using an operating system that hasn't been updated or supported in years.

[tcblovas]

Originally Posted by IPR512

I applaud your efforts in keeping ME working, but I think I would be leery about using an operating system that hasn't been updated or supported in years.

I know. Microsoft discontinued support for the 9x series in June of 2006. But even though Microsoft still supports XP (which is unusual considering its' age) it's a 10 year old operating system now...only 1 year younger than ME. I don't really do much web surfing and I know better than to go anywhere suspicious and the Microsoft updates I did included fixing any security issues with ME and the internet. I also have Nortons Anti-virus software which is still supported by Symantec. I have seen Vista and that's a little scary. When we first got it at work none of our applications would run under it correctly...even after the updates from Microsoft. We dumped it and went back to XP. I thought it was funny when I heard the commercials trying to disguise Vista by calling it Mojave. They knew they blew it and were trying to put out the fire. I guess by now it should work well enough. Haven't seen 7 at all and 8 is about to be released. I mostly do programming and MP3 repair with my system and it does the job well. There is still support out there for ME...just not as much as there used to be.

Best regards
Terry

[IPR512]

I really liked XP Pro, but wanted to increase RAM so I went to Win 7 64 bit, and I'm very happy with it. I've tried Win 8, but will probably stay with 7 as long as my computer holds up.
Good luck and happy computing.

[jtdoom]

for educational purposes only.

if that driver has a WDM folder once you get it extracted, (even an SFX exe can be extracted whithout running its setup, with simple and FREE unzip tools), then it should show you the structure under WDM.
Since you already looked in INF files, you see what the INF says what OS it is for.

Since the registry entries for NT and win9x are not same, it won't do to change that header and hope it works.

But, if for some reason, the root setup INS defaults to NT, and there IS a WDM for win 9 classes, then you might (just might) either edit the INS, or try with a rightclick and show it the INF that had the win 9 support header.

I doubt you'll be having much luck, though.
If no win9 driver exists? then it would take an SDK kit to even try work around this, and I have not seen a WDM SDK kit ever. (msdn offers driver developer kits.. but I never seen any for WDM dev)

[jtdoom]

ahem,
what printer is it anyway? I did not see the model name?

I have a pretty huge archive of old models (many no longer found at manufactor sites, even under archived drivers)

However, millennium and win 98 and such, are OS's one should no longer run in real metal (and access the internet with).
One can run them in virtual PC on a secure up to date OS, so they are like in a sandbox, and, that way, the host machine can use your older hardware.
This may be useful if you have really old dedicated apps that have no equivalent in modern software.. (self programmed, or programmed to do things in Qbasic, par example) (I know a coroner that has to store windows 95 ( and earlier) machines at home, because the stuff written back then, has to be reproduced exactly as it was back then when the court of appeals asks for it. (I think Belgian court is like a court of the stone ages)

anyway, it seems to me that making a VHD from the hard drive could be a solution (raxco offers a physical to VHD solution)

In that coroner's example, still NOT so, because a VHD would use modern printer through the host, and if for whatever reason a belgian chief justice asks for original print, that old machine (what had no pdf, in those days) has to chug out a print on an antique printer (even dot matrix)

sounds absurd to me, but it is real life when that man has to produce original files for old 'murder' or 'death' cases that get retried.
The basement looks like a hall of computing antiques.
be

[jtdoom]

still thinking.
if there is one, setup.ins is hidden

INF files, are usually hidden

if the setup routine is MSI based (msft software installer), and the INF don't call a setup and its INS, you are shtuck?

one can ignore CAT files and try lots of other things, but you won't easily beat the different registry layout. (I think that SAM was not in WDM aka widows driver model, and XP uses WHQL, albeit one can use WDM in XP in older machinery)

I also think a reference to windir in NT5 and 6 is not same as a pointer to windows in win9x or windows\386 windows\inf windows\driver32 and so on... There was, after all, a reason why FAT32 was abandoned.

[tcblovas]

Hi itdoom,

Haven't been here in a while so I didn't know there were any more posts to this thread until today when I checked my email. The printer is an HP Officejet J4680 all-in-one. This was a printer introduced by HP in 2009 and never was sold with an install program that supported 98 or Me. I was able to get to part 4 of a 4 part install but the last log entry said "something happened in PSL run 4". I believe PSL stands for Post Setup Launch. Very informative and with that I could proceed no further. It is MSI based but also uses about 20 HP installer modules which also have setup info in them which cannot be seen. So I got the idea that if I could run the setup on an XP system and copy the files and the registry entries I should be able to do it (in theory). The 1st person I asked who had an XP system said OK and when I got over there they remembered they had a retail version of XP Pro on CD and gave it to me (the best way to get it as it does not care what system you install it on and does not require a VLK). So I installed on my 2nd of 3 hard drives. So now I can dual boot. Now, of course, I can see why it didn't complete...the registry file names are different. ME's registry consists of the files System.dat, User.dat and Classes.dat whereas XP's registry files are Default, Sam, Security, Software and System and they are not ".dat" files. XP's have no file extension. I would have thought the install program would have said something about that. However, the good news is that XP's internal registry structure Is the same as Me's and consists of the same 5 root keys: HKEY_CLASSES _ROOT, HKEY_CURRENT_USER, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, HKEY_USERS and HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG. That makes it completely compatible. Using inctrl5, a nice install tracker I found out on the web (compatible with 95, 98, Me,2000 and XP), I now have the necessary tools. I installed the HP printer on the XP side while running inctrl5 and it gives a complete report of all registry keys created and modified (with the data) and all the files and folders created. The report is very nicely done and gives you an HTML, text and CSV version of the report. I can use the text version to create a batch registry entry file by just copying and pasting (there were 6741 registry keys created...whatever happened to the 32K printer driver?). I have not done the install on the Me side yet because I have been busy getting XP settled in the way I want it. I have it set up in the classic view and it looks exactly like Me including all my applications from Me (which are very up-to-date). That way everything is exactly the same on both sides and that just makes it easier. Because the 2nd hard drive was only my "dirty data (work)" drive anyway, I moved everything on it over to the 3rd hard drive and then copied my Me system onto the 2nd one and did an overlay install (recommended by the MS install program) and that way all my applications and settings were brought into the new system without having to reinstall everything and redo all my setting and preferences. Don't write off Me because it is 11 years old. All the technology that we take for granted today with our computers existed (in its infancy) at the time Me was released and Me came with USB2 support, scanner and camera support and network support to name a few. And surprisingly, I found out that Me includes some of the NT platform in it already (from W2K I presume). It was a real improvement over 98. I like it and intend to keep it. But I do like XP too. A bonus to having both is that I can maintain compatibility backwardly with the other 9x series OS's and forwardly (to a point) with the NT based OS's. One last thing before I sign off. I found another little gem out on the web for 9x series OS's. It's called KernelEx and it allows 98 and ME OS's to run W2k and XP software under the 9x OS. It's by SourceForge (a software house I know and trust as I already have some of their programs on my computer). I have not installed it yet but will as soon as I'm done with XP "settling in". And thanks for your reply and ideas. Best Refards.