Member Avatar for cparky

I have just reinstalled W98 SE ... got it working in basic mode ... hence i am here... but I have no sound and the display is minimal colours. The hardware profiles say there are conflicts and the drivers are not installed (unfortunately, I did not make a note of the hardware/drivers before I reformatted). The problems are PCI devices ... and I do not know how to find and install the correct drivers for them. Can any one help, please?

Also, my internet broadband connection does not work when I boot up - only when I take out and reinsert the USB connection. Any ideas why this is happening?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

Chris

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For : symptoms (no sound, limited colours, generic “PCI device” entries and a USB device that only works after re‑plugging) point to two separate but related problems: missing chipset/USB drivers that prevent proper device enumeration, and PCI resource allocation issues. Combining ’s motherboard-driver angle with ’s note about IRQ/resource sharing will resolve most of this class of problems.

A practical order of work that has the best chance of restoring audio and full video:

  • Identify the motherboard/chipset (BIOS POST, model printed on the board, or a hardware‑ID utility run from another PC).
  • On another machine download the motherboard/chipset drivers (including USB/OHCI/UHCI/EHCI) and copy them to the Win98SE machine (CD/flash). Install chipset and USB controller drivers first — correct chipset drivers let Windows assign resources and initialize devices properly.
  • After chipset drivers, install the correct video driver (not generic VGA) and then the audio driver. If only “PCI Device” shows, capture the vendor/device IDs with a hardware‑ID tool and match those IDs to drivers.

For the PCI conflicts and the USB init problem:

  • Reduce variables: remove non‑essential PCI cards and add back one at a time; disable unused legacy ports in BIOS so there are fewer fixed resources for Windows to map.
  • If a manual resource change is required, back up the registry, change one device at a time in Device Manager > Properties > Resources, and reboot after each change. Be cautious — manual edits can leave the system unbootable.
  • The USB broadband adapter that needs re‑insertion is usually the USB stack or adapter driver failing to initialize at boot; installing the correct USB controller driver or trying a different back‑panel port usually cures it. If vendor Win98 drivers are unavailable, look for the motherboard vendor’s legacy/archived downloads or consider a simple PCI network card as a stable fallback.

These steps avoid trial‑and‑error guessing and restore proper enumeration so Windows 98SE can use full audio/video capabilities.

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Member Avatar for caperjack

This program can help find what video and sound cards you are using .
http://www.lavalys.com/products.php?lang=en

Not sure on the usb problem ,i assume you install the usb device drivers for it !

Member Avatar for dlh6213

The first thing you should do, if you haven't already, is find out the make and model of the motherboard and get the drivers for it.

Member Avatar for DMR

The word "conflict" in PCI device error messages refers to incorrectly assigned PCI resources. The problem usually lies with the system assigning a single Interrupt Request (IRQ) line or I/O address space to two different devices at the same time. Although current PCI specifications require that drivers be able to handle "shared" IRQs, it doesn't always work out that way.


If that's what is happening on your system, here are three things you can do to try to eliminate the conflict(s):

1. If the devices are actual PCI cards (that is, not built into the motherboard) you can put one of the devices into a different physical PCI slot; doing so can force the system to reallocate IRQ and I/O resources at the next boot-up. If your video card is an AGP card, the possibility of an IRQ conflict still exists, because the AGP slot is usually hard-wired to share an IRQ line with one of the PCI slots (exactly which slot is shared depends on the model of motherboard).

2. If your BIOS' setup program has a setting to enable/disable Plug-N-Play (PNP), sometimes toggling to the alternate setting will clear things up.

3. In Device Manager, you can manually configure resources for each device, although this method can take a bit of "trial and error" to find a non-conflicting configuration.

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