[TRLog] IFSHLP.SYS

[Paul Kirley]

The question was asked:
I have recently found a windows thing named IFSHLP to spoil
CW timing. Win98 won't run without it, and it is hard to get rid of. Where is the beast started?

I went to www.microsoft.com, typed IFSHLP into the site search engine and followed the resulting leads, including viewing the interiors of various binary files on my own Win 98 machine (which is NOT the one on which I run TRLog).

As I read the text portions of those binary files, it appears that Windows Virtual Memory Manager file VMM32.VXD loads as a device the Installable File System Manager IFSMGR.VXD, which in turn loads the Installable File System Helper Driver IFSHLP.SYS.

What this seems to mean is that the beast IFSHLP is started where/when Windows is started.  So don't start Windows.

I strongly feel that DOS 6.22 is the best environment for TRLog.  I have an old Pentium 60 /DOS 6.22/ Windows 3.11 machine on which I have a CONFIG.SYS menu that enables convenient selection of TRLog or "normal" Win 3.11 operation at boot.  This also enables pointing to the contest directory of the moment in the TRLog portion of the AUTOEXEC.BAT file (selected by the %CONFIG% environment variable set by the CONFIG.SYS menu), so that the machine can boot straight to TRLog under DOS 6.22 for the current contest.  Naturally the TRLog selection loads nothing that I think is extraneous.

73, Paul W8TM