Access denied error on "MMSYSTEM.DLL" while installing Win3.11

[Alabamarebel1861]

I'm at my sanities end with my laptop at this point. I've checked the bootlogs for 3.11 and all it seems to fail to load is "NETAPI.DLL" which wouldn't explain why it's locking up on startup (I don't think at least). When I reinstall 3.11 it keeps giving me an Access denied error on "MMSYSTEM.dll" indicating that the file is already in use but I don't see how that's possible considering I nuke 3.11 before reinstalling every time. I've also noticed that it throws the same error for "TIMER.DRV" sometimes but it doesn't happen everytime Any help in this mess is greatly appreciated.

 

[SomeGuy]

Sometimes access denied messages can be from file system corruption. Have you reformatted the drive?

Another possibility is a DOS driver is loading that reserves that file name as a device name. Are you loading a CD-ROM driver at startup? What is the device name being assigned to it? Are there any other drivers being loaded at startup?

How are you installing 3.11? From CD? From network? From floppy? From a hard drive folder? Note that it is much less hassle, and often faster, to copy the Windows 3.x setup files in to a single folder on the hard drive, such as c:\setup31, and run setup from there. That will also let you use a minimal boot disk with no CD or network drivers.

 

[Alabamarebel1861]

Sometimes access denied messages can be from file system corruption. Have you reformatted the drive?

Another possibility is a DOS driver is loading that reserves that file name as a device name. Are you loading a CD-ROM driver at startup? What is the device name being assigned to it? Are there any other drivers being loaded at startup?

How are you installing 3.11? From CD? From network? From floppy? From a hard drive folder? Note that it is much less hassle, and often faster, to copy the Windows 3.x setup files in to a single folder on the hard drive, such as c:\setup31, and run setup from there. That will also let you use a minimal boot disk with no CD or network drivers.

The drive has been formatted since it originally came with a very very messed up copy of 95 on it. The only thing I've really done to DOS since installation is run memmaker. I'm not loading CD rom drivers or really anything else for that matter. The HDD only contains DOS and Windows. I'm installing from floppy since thats the only form of 3x that I have.

 

[kc8eyt]

When I run into a situation such as yours I do a "wipe" as I like to call it:

- Boot from DOS 6.22 floppy install disk 1 (hold LEFT SHIFT key down when you see "Starting MSDOS" until you see an A:\ prompt)
- FDISK and remove all partitions
- Reboot from DOS 6.22 disk 1 again (hold LEFT SHIFT again)
- FDISK /MBR
- Reboot from DOS 6.22 disk 1 again (LEFT SHIFT)
- FDISK and create primary partition of max size
- Reboot and this time let DOS install from 3 diskette set
- Once DOS is installed make a directory called WINDOWS
- Go into the WINDOWS directory and make a subdirectory called OPTIONS
- go into the OPTIONS subdirectory (C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS)
- XCOPY the entire contents of each Win3.11 diskette to the OPTIONS directory
-- XCOPY A:\*.* C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS
-- this will be 7 or 8 diskettes depending on your version of 3.11
- Once all files copied from diskettes run SETUP from the OPTIONS directory
- Install Windows as normal
- You won't need the diskettes any longer - Windows will look in OPTIONS directory from now on when diskettes are needed
- Once Windows is up and running then do memory management
-- add needed drivers to AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS
-- run MEMMAKER with options desired

This works for me 99.9% of the time.