[Dave-H]

I've just bought a card reader that reads six different types of camera storage cards.
It's branded Jessops (a photographic chain here in the UK) and is labelled "All in One".
Its system requirements needless to say do not include Windows 98, but they do include Windows ME and above.

I've been trying to get the wretched thing to work on Windows 98SE, but with no luck so far.
I have most of the bells and whistles from here installed on my Win98 system, Gape's Service Pack, and all the latest Auto Patcher updates. The one thing I don't have installed is KernelEx, as I've never needed it.

The card reader is detected as a "Mass Storage Device" as I would expect, but the drivers won't load.
It has a yellow mark against it in Device Manager, and it says "Error 10", which from my researches is totally meaningless (Error 10 means that the system doesn't know what the error is - very helpful!)

I have tried installing NUSB 3.3 to see if that helped, but no joy.
I had a very basic USB 2.0 driver installed before, but NUSB looks much better, and includes a lot of generic drivers for devices including card readers.
Unfortunately, none of them seem to work with this reader!

Were it a Windows 2000 and above only compatible device, I would probably just shrug my shoulders and give up at this point, but it does claim to be supported under Windows ME, so surely it should be possible to get it to work under Windows 98SE!

Anyone any suggestions for anything else I could try?
Thanks in anticipation.
Dave.

[Multibooter]

Dave-H, on Oct 20 2009, 03:09 PM, said:

Its system requirements needless to say do not include Windows 98, but they do include Windows ME and above.

Hi Dave, this means that your card reader requires a driver for Win98, but the manufacturer does not provide one, i.e. the card reader will most likely not work under Win98 unless you have nusb 3.3 properly installed, with no stuff interfering with nusb.

Quote

I have tried installing NUSB 3.3 to see if that helped, but no joy. I had a very basic USB 2.0 driver installed before, but NUSB looks much better, and includes a lot of generic drivers for devices including card readers. Unfortunately, none of them seem to work with this reader!

Since nusb didn't work for you, it looks to me like you have somehow corrupted your Win98 system during your attempts to get the USB card reader going. nusb 3.3 is a marvellous program and it is extremely unlikely that your new card-reader will not work with it, provided you do a lot of time-consuming footwork before installing it.

Quote

Were it a Windows 2000 and above only compatible device, I would probably just shrug my shoulders and give up at this point, but it does claim to be supported under Windows ME, so surely it should be possible to get it to work under Windows 98SE!

WinME has a built-in USB driver, but not Win98SE.

Quote

Anyone any suggestions for anything else I could try?

1) If you can, restore your system to a point BEFORE you started fiddling around with the card reader and nusb. Your system has most likely become a little corrupted and all your other USB and SCSI devices may be impacted. nusb is not just a little driver, it's a major system update which is very hard to reverse, so a system restore is the easiest solution.
2) To save you a lot of time: Return the card reader and get one which lists Win98SE on its system requirements AND which has a driver CD in the packaging. Quite frequently Win98 drivers from a website don't work with a card reader because the card reader has a new chip inside. There should be still some Win98 compatible card readers on the market, just look for them.
3) If you freshly install Win98SE, nusb 3.3 is the easiest and best choice. On a Win98SE system with a lot of stuff on it already, and many devices already detected, a manufacturer-provided driver is the easiest choice, nusb requires a lot of uninstalls prior to installation.
4) I am using nusb 3.3 on my main Win98 computer, and am very content with it. I have switched over from manufacturer-provided drivers to nusb about 6 months ago, but this was a VERY time-consuming project because I have over 150 software packages installed on my Win98 machine, with maybe 30-40 different external hardware devices.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 20 October 2009 - 10:45 PM

[dencorso]

Hi, Dave!
Since Multibooter was too modest to point it to you, let me do it: do read his own very interesting thread on SDHC & micro-SDHC card readers for Windows 98!
Moreover, it's worth mentioning that NUSB 3.3 is actually heavily based on Win ME's USB stack, so anything that runs on ME should run on 98Se + NUSB 3.3...
And in case you opt for troubleshooting your system till it works, of course I'm willing to help you with it, and I'm certain so is Multibooter.
But I agree 100% with him that it'd be highly advisable to restore your system to a point immediately before you started fiddling around with the card reader and nusb, if possible, and then proceed from there. Then I'd disable the INFs for any other USB related drivers you may have and install NUSB 3.3. It ought to recognize the Card Reader then, with no need of any manufacturer's drivers.
This is just my 2¢, of course.

[Ken-mkII]

One more think need to concern, maybe the USB connector is "half-dead", since I have a machine, it all will report "code 10" whatever what device you connect to one of its USB connector, but another connector work well.... Wierd... - -

(My machine run WinME)

This post has been edited by Ken-mkII: 21 October 2009 - 11:30 AM

[Dave-H]

Thanks guys!

I've managed to get it to work now up to a point.
The problem was being caused by some old card reader software that I hadn't uninstalled, doh!

NUSB has now installed properly, and my card reader is being recognised correctly.

The only thing still not right is that the card reader is shown as a Mass Storage Device in Device Manager and has generated four new disk drives, which is what I would expect.

They don't appear in My Computer though, as they have no drive letters assigned to them.
If I try to assign drive letters to them using Device Manager, there are no drive letters shown in the drop-down boxes, they are completely blank!

How on earth do I resolve that?!
Cheers, Dave.

This post has been edited by Dave-H: 21 October 2009 - 12:23 PM

[Multibooter]

Dave-H, on Oct 21 2009, 11:23 AM, said:

The only thing still not right is that the card reader is shown as a Mass Storage Device in Device Manager and has generated four new disk drives, which is what I would expect. They don't appear in My Computer though, as they have no drive letters assigned to them. If I try to assign drive letters to them using Device Manager, there are no drive letters shown in the drop-down boxes, they are completely blank!

Hi Dave, as I had suspected in my first reply:

Multibooter, on Oct 20 2009, 07:00 PM, said:

1) If you can, restore your system to a point BEFORE you started fiddling around with the card reader and nusb. Your system has most likely become a little corrupted

Try to click on the Refresh button in Device Manager, maybe the drives will then show up in My Computer. If that doesn't help, make a system restore, try to uninstall the old cardreader driver + any other USB stuff, then install nusb + see whether it works.

On my system an old and forgotten USB driver of an external Micro Solutions DVD burner, discarded long ago, had caused problems. I also suspect that an old forgotten utility called "Iomega Backup", for Iomega Jaz drives (SCSI), might have caused strange problems on my system when nusb was installed without removing this utility beforehand. Maybe not only old drivers and devices, but also unruly applications may possibly interfere with nusb. I also removed SCSI drivers and devices; I got rid of the driver etc of an old Umax Astra 1200S SCSI scanner, for example, which I had disposed of years ago, and which had no uninstall routine in Add/Remove. In order to uninstall that Win95-era scanner, one would have to connect the scanner to the computer, and then uninstall it via the Control Panel, but this is kind of hard to do without the scanner.

A little while back I had a multiple-drive-letter problem, with several drive letters appearing in My Computer and referring to the same device, e.g. 8 drive letters instead of 4. Maybe your problem is related, only a little different, i.e. zero drive letters instead of 4. My multiple-drive-letter problem was never resolved, until I restored the system to a state of 18 months earlier.

Recently I somehow got another multiple-drive-letter problem out of the blue, when I used 2 Iomega SCSI Jaz drives, one connected to the parallel port via an Iomega Jaz Traveller cable (=a SCSI-to-Parallel converter), the other connected to a CardBus slot of my old laptop via an old Adaptec SCSI 1460A PCMCIA card. I didn't try to find the cause of the multiple-drive-letter problem (i.e. 3 jaz drive icons in My Computer instead of 2), I just made a system restore, but even that didn't resolve the multiple-drive-letter problem, I suspect that the driver of the Iomega Jaz device wrote something somewhere in the jaz drive. After some fiddling around, this multiple-drive-letter problem was gone, but I have no idea why. Iomega has stated somewhere on their website that there is a multiple-drive-letter problem with their Jaz drives.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 21 October 2009 - 06:57 PM

[Dave-H]

Well I've done a lot of web research on this problem, but without any definite conclusions.

My USB pen drive has the same problem now, it's detected as two disk drives (it's partitioned) but no drive letters assigned and apparently no way of assigning any!

"Removable" is unchecked by default on all the drives, and "int 13 unit" is checked and greyed out on all of them.
I've tried changing them to removable drives (which surely they should be) and forcing "int 13 unit" off by editing the registry.
Nothing makes any difference though, still no drive letters appear in the "Reserved drive letters" dropdowns.

I also have a USB Iomega ZIP drive, and I removed it from the USB devices too.
When I reconnected that it worked fine, it appears as a drive, and drive letters can be assigned to it.
So how come that works, and the other drives don't?

I'd love to be able to "restore my system" but this is Windows 98, not ME with a "System Restore" facility!

This has got to be something really simple, everything including NUSB seems to be working perfectly, including a "Stop Hardware" icon in the system tray like Windows 2000, which I've never seen before!

It's just the drive letter assignment that isn't working, almost like they're the wrong sort of drives or something.
I've tried updating the drivers on the drives (it says no driver files have been loaded for them) and it says I'm already using the best driver (DISKDRV.INF) for them.
The drives are appearing in Device Manager just as "Disk drive". Should they be appearing as something else, like "Removable drive"? I can't remember what they appeared as before.......

Any more ideas anyone?

This post has been edited by Dave-H: 21 October 2009 - 06:08 PM

[dencorso]

Dave, don't you have any full system back-up, however old it may be?

In any case, do try the following: copy usbstor.inf and usbstor.pnf to usbstor.ant and usbstor.pnt
Copy system.dat and user.dat to system.ant and user.ant
Reboot to Safe Mode, enter the Device Manager and delete all entries under USB.
Reboot.
Say no to all automatic new device detections.
Delete usbstor.inf and usbstor.pnf
Reinstall NUSB 3.3
Reboot.
This time let the system install drivers for all new hardware it finds.
Test with your pen-drive again and see what happened.
Good luck.

[Multibooter]

Dave-H, on Oct 21 2009, 05:03 PM, said:

My USB pen drive has the same problem now, it's detected as two disk drives (it's partitioned) but no drive letters assigned and apparently no way of assigning any!

You have just detected the 1st corruption on another USB device. I suspect that there may be more problems hiding. Does ScanDisk or NDD work Ok on all of your USB mass storage devices, especially after safely-removing the USB devices (via the system tray icon) and then reconnecting them? Do 2 USB mass storage devices connected at the same time work properly? Before fiddling around any more you might also create a restore point (see below). Here 2 easy tricks:

1) download the Genesys USB driver from http://www.hama.de/webresources/drivers/00...350_win98me.exe and install it; it can be uninstalled easily again via Add/Remove. This driver has helped me to "break the neck" of nusb when I was fiddling around with nusb. (If you lateron decide to re-install nusb again, uninstall the Genesys driver via Add/Remove before installing nusb)

2) if this doesn't help, then rename \Windows\INF\USBSTOR.INF and USBSTOR.PNF to anything, e.g. to: Usbstor.inf.deactivated & usbstor.PNF.deactivated. Then uninstall and re-install the manufacturer-provided driver of your USB pendrive.

Quote

I'd love to be able to "restore my system" but this is Windows 98, not ME with a "System Restore" facility!

I use the following method to create a restore point under Win98: I go into another Windows operating system (e.g. WinXP) on my computer and rar up \Program Files\ and \Windows\ of the Win98 system into a single .rar file. When I want to restore Win98, I again go into WinXP, delete \Program Files\ and \Windows\ on the Win98 partition and then unrar the .rar file there, re-creating \Program Files\ and \Windows\. To create a restore point takes about 30 minutes on my old 750MHz laptop, to restore Win98 takes less than 10 minutes. When I install new software I try not to install it to the default \Program Files\xxx\, but to E:\xxx\, this keeps \Program Files\ small for faster system backups and restores.

Quote

This has got to be something really simple, everything including NUSB seems to be working perfectly, including a "Stop Hardware" icon in the system tray like Windows 2000, which I've never seen before! It's just the drive letter assignment that isn't working, almost like they're the wrong sort of drives or something.

If the 2 tricks above don't work, I don't know of a quick and easy fix.

@dencorso: I guess we posted at about the same time. I would still try the trick with the installation of the genesys driver first, even if it doesn't solve the underlying corruption problem. Your suggestion about a clean installation of nusb addresses the underlying corruption which Dave will eventually have to fix. Since it looks like Dave doesn't have a recent backup, his best long-term choice is to follow your suggestions and make a clean installation of nusb.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 21 October 2009 - 10:53 PM

[Dave-H]

dencorso, on Oct 22 2009, 03:31 AM, said:

Dave, don't you have any full system back-up, however old it may be?

Sadly, no.

dencorso, on Oct 22 2009, 03:31 AM, said:

In any case, do try the following: copy usbstor.inf and usbstor.pnf to usbstor.ant and usbstor.pnt
Copy system.dat and user.dat to system.ant and user.ant
Reboot to Safe Mode, enter the Device Manager and delete all entries under USB.
Reboot.

Did all that.
Why the ".ant" and ".pnt" extensions as a matter of interest?
Any significance to those, or would anything actually do?

dencorso, on Oct 22 2009, 03:31 AM, said:

Say no to all automatic new device detections.

A lot of things just installed anyway and I couldn't stop them.

dencorso, on Oct 22 2009, 03:31 AM, said:

Delete usbstor.inf and usbstor.pnf
Reinstall NUSB 3.3
Reboot.
This time let the system install drivers for all new hardware it finds.
Test with your pen-drive again and see what happened.
Good luck.

Well, everything seemed to go OK, but what's happening now is that when I insert the pen drive, I'm offered two possible drivers, "Mass Storage Device 11/16/07" and "Mass Storage Driver 4/22/99".
If I use the latter, it installs OK, but I've still got a "Mass Storage Device" in the Device Manager with a red mark beside it. If I use the former (which seems to be the most likely anyway) it does install the driver correctly.
Unfortunately, what happens then is that messages pop up saying the system has found "Removable USB Disk" which sounds very hopeful, but then it pops up another message saying found "USB Disk" and the system freezes.
No response at all with the mouse and keyboard completely dead.
I have to hard reset, and if I then plug the pen drive in, the same sequence repeats, followed by a system freeze again.

I've tried reinstalling the pen drives own Windows 98 driver software, and that now doesn't work either, even after uninstalling NUSB.
It does sound much more correct for the device to be a "Removable USB Disk" rather than just a "Disk Drive" which is what I was getting before. I doubt that was the right type of drive, which is probably why it wouldn't let me assign any drive letters. It was possibly being detected as a fixed disk, which I think in Windows 98 you can only assign drive letters to using fdisk.
Any more suggestions?
Thanks, Dave.

This post has been edited by Dave-H: 24 October 2009 - 06:17 AM

[Multibooter]

Dave-H, on Oct 24 2009, 05:16 AM, said:

No response at all with the mouse and keyboard completely dead.

Do you use a USB mouse or a USB keyboard?

Quote

I've tried reinstalling the pen drives own Windows 98 driver software, and that now doesn't work either, even after uninstalling NUSB.

I don't know how to uninstall nusb on my system. Renaming Usbstor.inf and usbstor.pnf only de-activates nusb. The entry in Add/Remove "Remove Unofficial Universal USB 2.0 Stack" is not a complete uninstall of nusb. In order to make an uninstall of nusb, I make a complete system restore (including dlls, \INF\ etc) to a state prior to the installation of nusb, which is quite easy on my system. The author of nusb should add a text like "Before installing nusb, you MUST make a complete system backup" on the first installation window of nusb. During my fiddling around with nusb I made maybe 50 complete system restores @ 10 minutes, with the method described above. I am also using my own little method for installing nusb.

Again, nusb is an excellent piece of software once you get it going correctly and I have switched over from manufacturer-provided drivers to nusb.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 24 October 2009 - 10:28 AM

[dencorso]

Dave-H, on Oct 24 2009, 10:16 AM, said:

Why the ".ant" and ".pnt" extensions as a matter of interest?
Any significance to those, or would anything actually do?

Anything would do fine. It's just a way to back-up them. But "ant" stands for "anterior" (= previous in Portuguese, my native language [common usage], and in English [rare usage]) and "pnt" because "ant" was already used and the original extensions were "inf" and "pnf".

[Dave-H]

Ah, thanks for explaining that Den!

Multibooter, yes I had noticed that the NUSB uninstall routine doesn't roll things back to normal very much at all!
I use a USB mouse, but the keyboard is a good old fashioned PS2 device.

[dencorso]

OK. Lets get rough, then.
From 2k, rename user.dat and system.dat to user.b01 and system.b01 ("b" from "bad").
Then copy (not rename!) system.ant and user.ant to system.dat and user.dat
Be sure that the original system.ant and user.ant remain safe and sound.
Reboot int 98 and you should be back at your former, not-so-good system state, but no worse.
After confirming this is so, go back to safe mode, run regedit and delete the whole HKLM/System/Enum.
Close regedit and reboot.
Undergo patiently all the redetections of all your hardware, and then report where this led you to.

[Multibooter]

Dave-H, on Oct 24 2009, 10:13 AM, said:

I use a USB mouse

Your system corruption seems to possibly include now a 3rd USB device, the USB mouse. What happens if you use an old serial mouse? dencorso's suggestion is the right way to go.

dencorso, on Oct 24 2009, 10:27 AM, said:

OK. Lets get rough, then... go back to safe mode, run regedit and delete the whole HKLM/System/Enum.

@dencorso: Did you mean HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum ? Or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum\USB and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum\USBSTOR ? On the other hand, wiping out all the hardware currently installed may be useful house-cleaning. I have never done that yet on my system, I am not sure what the impact on other software installed in my system would be, e.g.:
- Alcohol with a virtual drive which creates an entry "VAX347S SCSI Controller" in Device Manager
- Acronis True Image, which has an entry in Device Manager under Acronis Device
- the printing software cum driver of my HP2605dn Color LaserJet, which renames the whole USB category in Device Manager to "HPP EWS"
Dave's system looks like in trouble and a complete hardware-oriented house-cleaning is a thorough step most likely obviating the need to re-install Win98.

@dencorso, Please apologize my constant comments here. This topic is very important, it might even be renamed to "How to repair a failed nusb installation".

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 24 October 2009 - 01:14 PM

[dencorso]

Multibooter, on Oct 24 2009, 03:44 PM, said:

Did you mean HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum ? Or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum\USB and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum\USBSTOR ? On the other hand, wiping out all the hardware currently installed may be useful house-cleaning.

@Multibooter: I mean the whole HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum, of course!
It's pretty radical. But my intention is to try to obviate the need for a full system reinstall. And, in any case, since Dave preserved the back-up copies of the registry (system.ant and user.ant), he can always return to the point where we started, in case things go wrong. So I think it's safe enough. In any case, since the .infs are already there, win 98 ought to locate all the drivers it needs, so all should be normal after a longish device redetect. But all the trash will be left out, or so I hope.
@Dave-H: in case you didn't start yet, copy also autoexec.bat, config.sys, msdos.sys, control.ini, system.ini and win.ini to corresponding .ant files, just in case, so we'll have a full backup of the configuration files, although I doubt they'll ever be needed, in the present case.

[Multibooter]

dencorso, on Oct 24 2009, 12:16 PM, said:

It's pretty radical

Dave's system and nusb will then most likely work, but what about his external devices? I have a lot of external devices for my laptop which are entered under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum. Re-installing the software and drivers for my external devices would be quite time-consuming (PCCards [SCSI, USB 2.0, Ethernet], USB devices [Printer, scanner, USB DSL-modem using NDISWAN], parallel port devices [Iomega zip, Jaz Traveller parallel-to-SCSI converter, Micro Solutions floppy disk drive, parallel port printers] and SCSI devices [Iomega Jaz/zip]). Dave is lucky if he doesn't have that many external devices.

If Dave's computer works with an old serial mouse, then the corruption of his system may be limited to USB/SCSI. Hopefully Dave can solve his problem, but if nothing should work, Dave has then a 3rd alternative: installing a clean 2nd Win98 opsys with nusb, and continue using his original Win98 opsys for everything which does not involve USB.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 24 October 2009 - 08:34 PM

[dencorso]

Multibooter, on Oct 24 2009, 03:44 PM, said:

@dencorso, Please apologize my constant comments here. This topic is very important, it might even be renamed to "How to repair a failed nusb installation".

There's nothing to apologize about, Multibooter: on the contrary, your constant contributions to this thread are very much appreciated! But, as regards to renaming the thread, I prefer to wait until we have achieved the complete repair, before any such move, although I do hope we'll be there soon.

Now, on to your next question: I plan to have Dave-H redetect all his USB devices again, but in a quite controlled way, after we get his machine working properly without them. And there are more advanced levels of registry-surgery in store, if needed be. I believe all the non-USB hardware will be detected correctly and the relevant software installed from what windows had already saved previously. When this point is reached, I think some sort of back-up will be in order, perhaps by the method you suggested. After securing the back-up, we can then proceed to install the USB mouse, and then try nusb 3.3 once again, but this time standalone. That's, in brief strokes, my general plan. Fortunately, Dave-H has a working Win 2k second bootable partition, from which he can safely do all types of difficult procedures to restore Win 98SE, which is a great asset in the present situation.

[Multibooter]

What about trying to restore an old registry backup in \Windows\Sysbckup\ ? My Windows98 has several files like rb000.cab of the last 5 days. Maybe Dave should back these files up also, before they get replaced. Dave posted his problem 4 days ago on 20-Oct-2009. My oldest backup file rb004.cab has currently a modification date of 20-Oct-2009, so there might be a chance that he still has a pre-nusb version, if he makes a backup of these files under Win2k before starting Win98 tomorrow.

I would also check with data recovery software for any old deleted files rb*.cab. I am content with EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard v4.3.6 under WinXP (it doesn't run under Win98, but Win2k is supposedly ok)

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 24 October 2009 - 09:25 PM

[dencorso]

Great idea, Multibooter! I didn't even imagine there still might be a usable registry back-up there, but you're right, of course: there may still be one, and if he doesn't save it now it'll be lost. If he finds it (and it's easy to recognize it by its date and time), after making the back-up copies you just suggested, he ought to try to restore it, using SCANREG /RESTORE and ascertain whether it fixed his machine, or, if not, how better it is as compared to its present state, before doing anything else.