USB Pen drives and Win 98?

October 13, 2005 1:41 AM

ObsoleteWindowsFilter: Is there such a thing as a universal or at least general driver for USB 'Pen' Flash Drives for Windows 98?

To which the likely response is 'Windows 98', why don't you scrap that old junk? Well there's absolutely no reason to, apart from this single feature. Win 98 just doesn't play nice with pen drives. Unless you know the manufacturer (which increasingly people don't), download a specific driver and usually reboot, they don't work. Is there any way around this? Is there a driver or set of drivers which will work with, say 50% of the drives out there or is this a hopeless quest? Any advice would be great.

posted by grahamwell to computers & internet (6 comments total)

My experience with our old Pavilion is that the pen (or any other USB device) has to be USB1. The computer won't do USB2.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:08 AM on October 13, 2005

That's odd, Kirth. Usually if the device is 2.0 and the computer is 1.1 the device will switch to be compatible.
posted by musicinmybrain at 3:59 AM on October 13, 2005

According to Wikipedia: "Windows 98 does not support generic USB mass storage devices out of the box; a separate driver for each manufacturer's USB drive used on the machine must be installed." However, I found this post, where a comment links to this unofficial generic USB driver. I have no idea if it actually works.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:09 AM on October 13, 2005

There have been times I've gotten lucky and it autodetects a previously installed "Generic USB Storage Device" driver that works. That's been for cameras and MP3 players, though. I'd try installing whatever driver you have, then plugging the drive in and seeing what happens.
posted by First Post at 9:57 AM on October 13, 2005

I (heart) monju_bosatsu. I don't believe I would ever have found this. Having done so I have to say that installation is not straightforward. Can't yet say whether it will actually work. I'll check it out and report back.
posted by grahamwell at 2:02 PM on October 13, 2005

Oh yes! It does work. Installation's not the problem I thought, as long as you have vanilla English Windows 98 Second Edition.

I've tried it with three different drives, each time it goes through the installation routine but finds the driver (which is the generic one) and, well, just works - without a reboot as well, which is particularly welcome.

One small caveat. On trying to remove the drives it has a tendency to blue screen, although this varies from machine to machine. Still, a real discovery. Thanks again.
posted by grahamwell at 1:14 PM on October 21, 2005