Member Avatar for Chris44

My power supply blew, which has also ruined the motherboard.
I need to keep the hard drive, which has win98SE, due to some s/ware I use which I can't re- register.
I need to get a new M/board, and would like a more powerful cpu such as Intel Q 6600.
Can anyone confirm if it's possible to have win98se working with a more modern m/board and cpu.

Chris

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Short summary and practical plan for : keeping the physical Win98SE hard disk is possible, but the real work is matching the new motherboard to the old OS expectations (BIOS mode, storage controller and available drivers). and were right to flag driver problems, and ’s point about finding compatible older hardware is the safest route; below are concrete checks and steps to make an informed choice.

Before you buy anything: make a full sector-level image of the Win98 drive (so you can recover if something goes wrong) and export any licence/registration files you need. If the new board has SATA only (no PATA/IDE), ensure its BIOS can switch the SATA controller to “IDE/Legacy/Compatibility” (not AHCI) — Win98 has no built-in AHCI support and will generally not boot if the controller is in AHCI mode. Also confirm the board has a legacy BIOS or CSM (UEFI-only boards will not boot Win98), and that it has at least one free PCI slot (so you can add an old PCI NIC, sound or a PCI controller with Win98 drivers if needed).

Options in order of risk (practical steps): replace only the PSU or locate a like-for-like motherboard (lowest risk); choose an LGA775-era board that supports IDE or SATA-legacy for a Q6600; if forced to use a modern board, plan to attach the Win98 drive to a PCI SATA/IDE controller that explicitly supplies Win98 drivers; or image the disk to a virtual machine to run the software in an emulated environment. In all cases be prepared for missing audio/network/video drivers under Win98 and keep spare legacy PCI cards with known Win98 drivers handy.

Checklist when shopping: socket match for Q6600, BIOS CSM/legacy support, SATA mode = IDE/compatibility switchable, presence of PCI slots, and vendor/third‑party Win98 drivers for any controller you rely on. If the application’s licensing is hardware‑locked, also contact the vendor before swapping hardware so you know whether a license transfer is possible.

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Member Avatar for caperjack

My power supply blew, which has also ruined the motherboard.
I need to keep the hard drive, which has win98SE, due to some s/ware I use which I can't re- register.
I need to get a new M/board, and would like a more powerful cpu such as Intel Q 6600.
Can anyone confirm if it's possible to have win98se working with a more modern m/board and cpu.

Chris

its not likely that win98 will have support drivers for such a new motherboard ,but i could be wrong.
I was once before !

Member Avatar for The Dude

If you look around you might be able to find drivers that will work.....

I commend you for wanting to keep Win98se (Very good OS) and i wish you luck getting her going :)

Welcome to Daniweb!

Member Avatar for caperjack

good read here .
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Member Avatar for salim hussain

Hello Cris44,
Isn't it simpler to find a old PC with a working and replace the power supply - so you won't be doing any acrobatics to get it working again.

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