Category Archives: watcom v2

Using ReactOS, some more random notes.

So, first item, I have been using the nightly release builds. I started with the 0.4.14 version, but I wanted to try a newer version. As a note, upgrading from 0.4.14 to the nightly did not work for me, but I am not sure if it supposed to work. However, I have not had issues upgrading to newer nightly builds. I do take a snapshot before each update.

I am running ReactOS with VirtualBox, my current version is 7.0.6_Gentoo r155176, on a Gentoo host. I had no problem installing Guest Additions and video and sound work in my VM. The current ReactOS version:

Current ReactOS nightly version I am using.

First a disclaimer, the following issues I list might be from something I have done wrong and not a ReactOS issue.

One issue I have always had is saving the running VirtualBox VM and restarting. It is not a huge issue because the VM starts very quickly. It would be nice to restart without having to reopen all my apps. I have had this issue on two systems. This is the error I get:

Blue screen when restoring VBox machine.

Next issue is remote drive mounting. I keep most items on a Synology NAS share which is mounted on the host Gentoo system. I share the host directory with the ReactOS VM through VirtualBox using “Auto Mount”, “Make Permanent”, and a driver letter. When I used /Persistent with the net command, ReactOS would not restart after a couple of boots (cannot really remember), it displayed a red stripe with a frozen display. I just made a bat file on the desktop to mount with a drive letter. This might be a mistake on my part.

Another minor issue was installing Open Watcom v2 using the GUI installer (link is an example open-watcom-2_0-c-win-x86.exe file). On a new install it is just an uncomplicated way to get OW installed. The following is the GUI installer from the ReactOS desktop. Click no, the screen flashes and the same dialog is displayed. Click yes and the app closes.

Open Watcom v2 Install Screen

However, if I run it from the command line using the -i option (no dialogs) everything is installed. This is minor because after the install I unarchive nightly OW builds into the Watcom directory.

Open Watcom v2 After GUI Install

I did try to install Visual Studio 2017 and I get an error. It is no big deal; I just want to see if it installed, but it might not be supported.

MS Studio 2017 Install Attempt.

Occasionally, or maybe more, when an install dialog or other dialog is displayed some of the text is missing.

One installation I found useful is the GNU Utilities for Win32. I unarchive it in the root and put the binary directory in Path. This helps swapping between ReactOS and Linux considering I am always typing ls rather than dir.

Okay, there are some rambling thoughts/comments. Overall, I cannot understand why 0.4.15 is not the “latest and greatest” for downloading. It is much better than the 0.4.14 version.