Hello everyone, this is my very first message since signing up for My Computing.net, and I hope you can help me. I have Windows 3.1 installed in Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, and it works fine, except for this: when I run Windows in 386 Enhanced Mode, and I open a window, bunches of black bars appear where the window used to be after I close it. I also get an error message when I try to open control panel. The same happens for Windows 3.11, which I have installed and running in the same environment as 3.1 - 4 MB of RAM and a 20-30 MB hard drive. This only happens in 386 Enhanced mode. Standard mode works fine, but is a little inconvienient when I want to run DOS in a window. I have tried more RAM, but that doesn't work. I do not have this problem with Windows 95 and Windows 98 which I also have installed in Virtual PC.

I also have Windows 3.0 installed, which won't boot to 386 Enhanced Mode. I just get the message "WINA20.386 must be present in the boot drive". But on my other computer, which has an actual installation Win 3.0, there is no WINA20.386 anywhere, and it boots to 386 Enhanced mode just fine. Thank you in advance to anyone that replies,

-Trent

This may or may not be accurate, as I'm working off several year old knowledge, but I recall, WINA20.386 was somewhere under the \WINDOWS or \DOS directory.

You can search for it by typing "DIR C:\WINA20.386 /S/A/B", without the quotation marks, at the command prompt. Note that there is a single space after the DIR command and before the parameter starting with "C:\" and also there is another space before the parameter "/S". If it's found, DOS will display the full path to it. Navigate to that directory and copy WINA20.386 to your root directory.

It should then work, if my memory is accurate.

Good luck!

SweetBearCub, thank you for your reply. I will post the results soon. As for the black bar and control panel problem, I need not any replies! I fixed the problem myself. I switched the video mode to VGA Version 3.0 instead of just VGA, and that fixed the problem in 3.1 and 3.11.

And just a small sidebar question: what version of DOS does Windows /386 2.1 require? Thanks in advance!

-Trent

No dice. Your command didn't bring anything up. I used "dir *.386" on all of the folders and subfolders and found nothing. I started Windows (in Standard mode, of course) and searched through the virual hard disk in File Manager with the "Show Hidden Files" option enabled, and found nothing. I also did the same with My Windows 3.1 and Windows 3.11 virtual hard disks, and found nothing. I then opened the virtual hard disks using WinImage (in the host OS), searched for the file, and found nothing. I looked for the file on my older computer, which has actual installations of 3.0, 3.1 and 3.11, and found nothing.

I don't know what else to do. WINA20.386 simply does not exist. I don't know why Windows 3.0 is asking for it in virtual PC to boot to 386 Enhanced mode, yet it doesn't need it to boot to that in an actual installation. Perhaps someone who has it can email me a copy of the file? Thanks in advance.

-Trent

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2002

AMD Sempron 2500+ @ 1.74 Ghz

512 MB RAM