Win 9x install log files – need to know

Multimedia, Plug and Play, support for legacy applications, 32-bit (well mostly), Preemptive () multitasking, network and Internet, long file names, advanced memory management. Support for large capacity drives.

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  SETUPLOG.TXT - Used to log installation of Windows. Contains a list of user components chosen during installation. The [Detection] section is built following the hardware detection portion of setup. It indicates whether the detection phase of setup completed successfully or not. Windows uses this file when it is recovering from a crash to determine how far it got in the installation.
  
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  DETCRASH.LOG - Used to log hardware detection during setup. Readable only by setup process to determine which module was running when the system halted.
  
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  DETLOG.TXT - Equivalent of DETCRASH.LOG written in a readable format. Keeps a record of hardware detected.
  

If Setup suspects that a network card is present, because it sees a network driver installed in Config.sys, it records in Setuplog.txt and Detlog.txt that it is about to look for the card. If it finds the card, it records the success in Detlog.txt. However, if an error occurs while Setup searches for the card, an entry is made in the Detcrash.log file. When Setup restarted, it looks at Detcrash.log and Setuplog.txt to determine what it was trying to do at the time of the crash.

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  NETLOG.TXT - Logs detected network component information.
  
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  BOOTLOG.TXT– Logs loaded drivers and services.
  

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  File Name
  
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    DOS 8.3 (8 character file name with optional 3 character extension)
    
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    File names should not use the following characters:
    
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      | < > \ ^ + = ? [ ] " ; : , * Very A+
      
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    Extension - dot not saved
    
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    VFAT, now we have FAT32, allows up to 255 characters
    

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  First character of file name is an E5h if file is deleted
  

1. 
   Create a file1, 2 and the file FILE3. The directory now looks like the following:
   
2. 
   .
   
3. 
   ..
   
4. 
   FILE1
   
5. 
   FILE2
   
6. 
   FILE3
   
7. 
   Delete File2 and file3. The directory now looks like the following:
   
8. 
   .
   
9. 
   ..
   
10. 
    FILE1
    
11. 
    E5H
    
12. 
    E5H
    

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  Attribute (hidden / read only / archive / system) - Very A+
  
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  http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/using/productdoc/en/default.asp?url=/WINDOWSXP/home/using/productdoc/en/attrib.asp
  
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  Time - Date
  
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  Size
  
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  Starting cluster – where the file lives physically on the disk
  

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  First change attributes (not hidden, not system, not read only) then you can edit it with Notepad
  
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  Options: BootMulti, BootWin, BootGui, BootMenu etc.
  
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  http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;118579
  
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A startup text file once used by DOS and used by Windows to provide backward compatibility. It executes commands automatically during the boot process.