[georg]

The PQI brand sold by Fry's works very well for me on both Win98FE and SE. A comparable 512MB model sells for about $15. It would be interesting to know if the PQI software will work with other brands. It is a 309K self executing .exe file. I did not try the separate utility pkg.

PQI = Power Quotient International, Inc., Tel +886-2-82265288, Fax +886-2-82265268

www.pqi.com/tw
www.pqi.com/tw/download.asp

The one I use is listed as BB53 series, U230 Traveling Disk 512MB
Once installed, the flash drive appears in Device Manager under Hard Drives as
"Generic USB Flash Disk"
"Standard disk 4-23-1999 no driver required Int13 unit"
"Driver free"
"No driver files are required or have been loaded for this device"
498 cylinders
64 heads
32 sectors per track / cluster
512 bytes per sector

[georg]

(supplementing my earlier post on the PQI USB Flash Disk)
Note unit has to be plugged in for entries to appear in Device Manager
"Standard disk drives" 5-11-1998 on the FE machine

In Device Manager, under Hard disk controllers, appears as "USB Flash Drive"
Device type: Hard disk controllers
Manufacturer: Generic

under Driver Tab,
Provider: Generic
Date: 2-24-2006

Clicking on Driver file details,
\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\SKUMSS.SYS file date is 11-17-04
\SYSTEM\VMM32.VXD (ntkern.vxd) file date is 5-19-99 (SE is 12-26-03)
\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS\SKPDR.PDR file date is 11-17-04
Provider: Microsoft Corporation
File Version: 5.00.1868.1

[Andromeda43]

It's common knowledge among techs, at least, that every PC running the old cluggy Win-98 should be upgraded to Win-98/SE. The USB and printer support is greatly enhanced and many other problems in 98 are fixed.

Companies like SanDisk provide Mini and Micro drivers, but for 98/SE....not 98. I have them all.
Windows ME has even greater USB support and does not require drivers for many USB devices.

Copies of the 98/SE Upgrade CD are as common as can be and even a 98/SE OEM install CD can be made to work if you first rename 'win.com' to something else (like, win.old) so the setup.exe program on the CD can't see it. Then the upgrade to SE goes off without a hitch. The old registry, drivers and all data is preserved.

I've never found any downside to doing this upgrade and the benefits are many.

Add to that the 'Unofficial Service Pack for SE' and you have one very nice OS, Indeed.

Just Googling for "98 USB drivers" will give you over 2 million hits.

Google till you drop!

Cheers!

[sadievan]

Andromeda43, on Apr 16 2007, 03:08 PM, said:

Copies of the 98/SE Upgrade CD are as common as can be and even a 98/SE OEM install CD can be made to work if you first rename 'win.com' to something else (like, win.old) so the setup.exe program on the CD can't see it. Then the upgrade to SE goes off without a hitch. The old registry, drivers and all data is preserved.

I've never found any downside to doing this upgrade and the benefits are many.

Add to that the 'Unofficial Service Pack for SE' and you have one very nice OS, Indeed.
Cheers!

I have Win 98 on an old laptop. I tried using my 98/SE OEM install CD and I get an error message that I cannot use this CD and must buy the Upgrade. I did rename 'win.com' to 'win.old'. Any suggestions. I am also trying this to use a flash drive.

Thanks,
Carol

[AlexaD]

Andromeda43, on Apr 16 2007, 03:08 PM, said:

It's common knowledge among techs, at least, that every PC running the old cluggy Win-98 should be upgraded to Win-98/SE. The USB and printer support is greatly enhanced and many other problems in 98 are fixed.

Yep and then my scanner doesn't work. And that's a USB scanner. Spent several days on the phone with the manufacturer before I gave up, formatted the drive and dumped 98 on it, where the scanner works perfectly. They fixed that one till it broke.

I'd never before found any reason to pick one over the other but after that BS, I destroyed my copy of 98SE to make sure I never used it again. I'm sure it works fine for other people, but 98 works fine for me and is probably faster (just a guess, but every upgrade I've ever seen is bigger and slower).

Andromeda43, on Apr 16 2007, 03:08 PM, said:

Copies of the 98/SE Upgrade CD are as common as can be and even a 98/SE OEM install CD can be made to work if you first rename 'win.com' to something else (like, win.old) so the setup.exe program on the CD can't see it. Then the upgrade to SE goes off without a hitch. The old registry, drivers and all data is preserved.

In my experience, renaming win.com has never confused the setup program. It's been awhile since I "played", but it seems to me that it looks for the registry and those are the files you'd have to rename, but then you'd get no import from them.

Just my opinion...,
Alexa

[noguru]

georg, on Apr 15 2007, 12:20 AM, said:

(supplementing my earlier post on the PQI USB Flash Disk)
Note unit has to be plugged in for entries to appear in Device Manager
"Standard disk drives" 5-11-1998 on the FE machine

In Device Manager, under Hard disk controllers, appears as "USB Flash Drive"
Device type: Hard disk controllers
Manufacturer: Generic

under Driver Tab,
Provider: Generic
Date: 2-24-2006

Clicking on Driver file details,
\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\SKUMSS.SYS file date is 11-17-04
\SYSTEM\VMM32.VXD (ntkern.vxd) file date is 5-19-99 (SE is 12-26-03)
\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS\SKPDR.PDR file date is 11-17-04
Provider: Microsoft Corporation
File Version: 5.00.1868.1

All drivers provided by manufactures that I know of use these .sys and .pdr files. They differ in name and date/time stamp only. I use the same from Pointchips (or something like that) and these work on all 3 USB-sticks that I own(ed). It's always the same generic Ms 5.00.1868.1 driver no matter how it's called.

[georg]

There is an interesting article, last updated 1/24/2007, about using the driver for "an older SanDisk USB device" with the newer Cruzer series to work with:

Windows 95 OSR/2.1 ("B" version with USB or later)
Windows 98 with a USB port that is already recognized by the system.

His solution was to "modify the the Plug-And-Play ID numbers to match the one being sent by the Cruzer..."

Working links are provided to download both the modified and unmodified drivers.

http://toastytech.co...ruzerwin95.html

[BenoitRen]

Yup, that's the driver I use for my USB stick! Nathan Lineback is the webmaster of that site.

[Andromeda43]

Quote

Just my opinion...,

this is a place for facts, not opinions.
Opinion never fixed a computer in his life.

I've installed 98/SE OEM over 98 more times than I even want to admit to. (Sorry, Bill !)

You first copy the SE OEM disk to a folder on the HD. Only the \win98\ folder need be copied.
Then you boot up the PC with your 98 boot disk and go into the windows folder and rename win.com to win.old
.....then you navigate into the newly created \win98\ folder and run Setup.exe /ie /is

Setup will start and run normally. It only looks for win.com, not the registry.
Setup will also run much faster and smoother from the folder on the HD than from the original CD.
And, if ever 98/SE needs to install some new feature.....the files are already on the HD.

This is a hard, cold fact that MS probably doesn't want anyone to know about. (Bbviously! )
But I've been doing it as long as there's been copies of 98/SE OEM on the streets.

In this process, all apps, data and drivers are preserved. (Don't ask me why it works....it just does!)

Cheers Mates!

[sadievan]

georg, on Apr 19 2007, 03:29 PM, said:

There is an interesting article, last updated 1/24/2007, about using the driver for "an older SanDisk USB device" with the newer Cruzer series to work with:

Windows 95 OSR/2.1 ("B" version with USB or later)
Windows 98 with a USB port that is already recognized by the system.

His solution was to "modify the the Plug-And-Play ID numbers to match the one being sent by the Cruzer..."

Working links are provided to download both the modified and unmodified drivers.

http://toastytech.co...ruzerwin95.html

Thanks. This worked for me on my old laptop running 98. I unzipped the files to a floppy drive. After inserting the flash drive, it asked for drivers. I steered it to the floppy and it installed. This has worked with a sandisk drive and a generic 2 gig one I bought from Micro Center.

[sadievan]

Andromeda43, on Apr 21 2007, 06:20 PM, said:

Quote

Just my opinion...,

this is a place for facts, not opinions.
Opinion never fixed a computer in his life.

I've installed 98/SE OEM over 98 more times than I even want to admit to. (Sorry, Bill !)

You first copy the SE OEM disk to a folder on the HD. Only the \win98\ folder need be copied.
Then you boot up the PC with your 98 boot disk and go into the windows folder and rename win.com to win.old
.....then you navigate into the newly created \win98\ folder and run Setup.exe /ie /is

Setup will start and run normally. It only looks for win.com, not the registry.
Setup will also run much faster and smoother from the folder on the HD than from the original CD.
And, if ever 98/SE needs to install some new feature.....the files are already on the HD.

This is a hard, cold fact that MS probably doesn't want anyone to know about. (Bbviously! )
But I've been doing it as long as there's been copies of 98/SE OEM on the streets.

In this process, all apps, data and drivers are preserved. (Don't ask me why it works....it just does!)

Cheers Mates!

Thanks for the detailed explanation. When I tried, I did not boot up from a boot disk, that was my problem. I used the drivers mentioned above by georg and they worked on my 98 laptop. I have saved this thread in case I need to update in the future. Thanks again.