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General discussion

Hardware Requires 98SE

Dec 4, 2003 10:51AM PST

I am looking at purchasing a USB hard drive. It has a requirement for Windows 98SE. One machine that I am looking to use the drive on is Windows 98 first edition. Would I be able to get this hard drive to work on first edition? Is there some kind of work around that would deal with this?

BTW - The hard dive is the Western Digital 80GB USB drive.

Thanks for any thoughts you may have,
Jody Wood

Discussion is locked

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Re:Hardware Requires 98SE
Dec 4, 2003 8:25PM PST

I would review http://www.usbman.com , but from memory USB 2.0 does indeed see vendor support only in 98se. You'll get USB 1.1 speeds in former versions.

Bob

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Re:Hardware Requires 98SE
Dec 5, 2003 6:06AM PST

1. Win98SE, WinME/XP provides the most complete USB support above Win98 first edition which also supports it and get all of the software support needed by default through the operating system software, [Q258773]. But, some USB devices may come with a floppy or CD which could include specialized drivers for a particular device. At one time there was some limited USB support for the Windows 95 operating system but finding supposedly for it is almost nill.

2. To determine whether a PC is USB ready, download this very small Intel utility called "USBReady" and run it.

3. USB 2.0 drivers are available for WinXP through Windows Updates (supports only the NEC USB 2.0 host controller which is the first EHCI certified controller available, hardware IDs: PCI\VEN_1033&DEV_00E0&REV_01 and PCI\VEN_1033&DEV_00E0&REV_02). USB 2.0 driver support for Win2000 is currently under development, and may be available later in the first quarter of 2002. Microsoft will not provide USB 2.0 support for the Win9x platform or WinNT 4.0 USB 2.0 and Windows. Note that even though the Windows platform does not provide support for USB 2.0 itself, this does not mean that third-party vendors cannot.

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Re:Hardware Requires 98SE
Dec 11, 2003 11:38AM PST

At this time, I have decided against purchasing the USB hard drive. I have found another possible solution to one of my reasons for purchasing the drive.

Thanks to everyone for their input. It proved to be useful in making my decision, though other factors weighed into my decision. Based upon what I have heard, it sounds that, in general, I would be able to work with the drive in 98 FE. Though, the machine with 98 FE that I am dealing with has other issues going on, so I have opted not to potentially battle problems with the USB drive there. I was looking for a possible backup mechanism before correcting the issues by reformatting the old drive and rebuilding the system.

Everyone here proves, once again, to be a great resource in resolving issues and answering questions.

Thanks,
Jody Wood