Even though you have USB on a Windows 98 system, it still doesn't mean that it fully supports the USB 1.1 standard. You could even format the HD and load a copy of Win 95 with the USB Supplemental patch and it would run USB devices, but wouldn't be able to handle a device that needs the 1.1 standard drivers. So USB has been around and working since Win 95, just not fully supportive as the standard didn't happen when 95 or 98 was out. 98SE was after the standard and included the needed fixes. And since Microsoft thought that everyone should be upgrading because they released a new OS, they didn't release any patches for 95 or 98 to bring it up to the standard.

From Windows 98SE and up, Windows included the 1.1 drivers. Basically Windows 98SE was a new OS, not just a bunch of updates that you could download.

You can also think of it this way, Windows XP (pre Service Pack 1) doesn't support USB 2.0 by default. You can either use the drivers that came with the 2.0 card, or you can get Service Pack 1 with the built in support. The same holds true for 98 vs. 98SE, except that 98 is stupid and you can't load 1.1 drivers as the OS just doesn't support it.

And no, you don't have Windows 98SE, you have just plain old Windows 98.

-Michael

This message was edited by mrailing on 03/26/03 08:01.