Safe Mode Device Manager (vs. Normal Mode)
Thursday, August 23, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Windows 98 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by DNA
(549 messages posted)
When installing the Generic USB Mass Storage Driver on an existing Win98SE install,
I remove all USB devices from Device Manager in Safe Mode.
Safe Mode Device Manager shows devices that are NOT 'currently installed' (but are
still logged in the system), unlike Normal Mode Device Manager.
For instance, in Normal Mode Device Manager, you will only see your currently
installed optical drives in the CD-ROM tab, whereas in Safe Mode Device Manager,
you will see every optical drive that has ever been installed in that computer
(even all of the external optical drives that were ever used, as applicable), unless/until
you remove them from Safe Mode Device Manager.
You might be surprised at how many conflicts can be resolved by the correct use of
Safe Mode Device Manager. It is generally safe to remove any listing for an internal
device that is known to be no longer installed in the system, and it's even a good
idea (to prevent possible conflicts).
Removable USB devices don't show up in Normal Mode Device Manager unless they are
plugged into the system, so you can't remove them from there unless they're plugged
in, and removing them from (Normal Mode) Device Manager while they're plugged
in may not be a good idea in certain cases!
In Win98 Safe Mode, USB is disabled, so you can safely remove any and all removable
USB device listings from (Safe Mode) Device Manager.
So, before installing the Generic driver, you should uninstall all of the removable
drives' Win98SE drivers in Normal Mode, then boot to Safe Mode and remove the drives'
listings under Disk Drives and Universal Serial Bus Controllers, as applicable.
I've done this procedure for several 'existing' Win98SE installs (on my 1.1 Athlon,
and others' computers), and the Generic driver has worked fine in every case...
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Athlon 1.1 - 768 MB RAM = 98SE & XP Home
Athlon 3000+ 64 - 1024 MB RAM = 98SE (@768 MB RAM) & XP Pro
IBM ThinkPad PIII 900 - 384 MB RAM = 98SE & XP Pro SP2
Windows 2000 Server in the basement
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