Do you know a program similar to 'Unknown devices' but with the option of deleting them from the system?

Some more tools:

CPUID ClockGen 1.0.5.3
CPUID CPU-Z Vintage Edition
(see also Need help to improve the support of 486/586/686 class CPUs in CPU-Z)
CPUID HWMonitor 1.17 win98
CPUID PerfMonitor 1.0.0.8
EVEREST Home 2.20.466 Beta
REALiX HWiNFO(32/64)

7-Zip 9.20
CloneSpy 2.41
VLC 0.8.6i
WinSCP 4.4.0

K-Meleon 1.5.4
RetroZilla 2.2
RZ browser 2.2

... also available from my website's tools page (-> https://soggi.org/misc/tools.htm).

Sorry for those I forgot to mention.

jheronimus wrote on 2019-02-28, 23:29:

RetroZilla

If you absolutely need to browse Web on your machine, this is probably the only actively developed web browser for Win9x.

This is outdated, I would recommend the updated versions of K-Meleon 1.5.4 (2024/06/01) or RetroZilla / RZ browser (2024/05/26) by roytam1 - they support TLS 1.3 on Win95+. There are even special DLLs for K-Meleon 1.5.4 to for pre MMX CPUs down to i386. The builds are available from roytam1's pages (-> https://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/) and from my tools page (-> https://soggi.org/misc/tools.htm).

jheronimus wrote on 2019-02-28, 23:29:

Note that I'm not including Win98SE unofficial service packs because they always gave me issues (for some reason they mess up the Active Desktop, so My computer can't show anything 90% of the time). I would be happy to find a vanilla compilation of all official Microsoft updates for Win98SE though.

Second this...I had also problems with these packs.

bofh.fromhell wrote on 2019-03-01, 13:57:

"HZtool" and "Unknown devices".

leileilol wrote on 2019-03-02, 02:00:

Rain

Great tools I also used ~25 years back...maybe I should consider to add them to my tools page.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2019-03-02, 17:35:

Everest Home 2.01

Why this old version? The latest version is EVEREST Home 2.20.466 Beta dated 2005/11/15, it is available from my tools page (https://soggi.org/misc/tools.htm).

red_avatar wrote on 2019-03-03, 15:54:

As a very fast program to not only edit but also to browse images, Paint Shop Pro 7 is hard to beat.

Then there's WinAMP which for me was always an essential part to the Windows 98 experience. I know WinAMP has a bit of a mixed reaction from a lot of people but nostalgia rules here.

PSP7 and Winamp are great, BTW I still use PSP7 here and then on my WinXP SP3 POSReady daily driver!

red_avatar wrote on 2019-03-03, 15:54:

To be honest, a lot of the apps I used back in the day, I would no longer use on a retro PC: NERO - why risk failing to burn CDs? MSN Messenger - defunct. ICQ - same.

I still use Nero Burning ROM version 6 f.e. to burn CDs for my car's CD player. ICQ has been defunct this year (2024) and while the protocol was a great thing the app wasn't since ICQ 2003(!?). I used Miranda then, also because it still supported Win98SE back then.

zapbuzz wrote on 2021-05-11, 13:01:

Spybot search & destroy although all the dialup hijackers aren't around anymore theres still updates for IE and Firefox including useful HOSTS innoculation
https://www.safer-networking.org/mirrors162/

Yeah...another must-have back then! Today I still have it installed but does it still help!?

zapbuzz wrote on 2021-05-11, 13:01:

SpeedFan is a program that monitors voltages, fan speeds and temperatures in computers with hardware monitor chips. SpeedFan can even access S.M.A.R.T. info and show hard disk temperatures. SpeedFan supports SCSI disks too. SpeedFan can even change the FSB on some hardware (but this should be considered a bonus feature). SpeedFan can access digital temperature sensors and can change fan speeds accordingly, thus reducing noise. SpeedFan works fine with Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, Windows 7, 2008, Windows 8, Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012. It works with Windows 64 bit too.
https://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

SpeedFan is still a must-have. After Motherboard Monitor wasn't in development anymore I changed to SpeedFan back then and I'm still using it to measure temperatures and S.M.A.R.T. values. But the latest version (4.52) doesn't work on Win9x - version 4.51 does, it is available from my tools page (https://soggi.org/misc/tools.htm). Unfortunately Alfredo Milani Comparetti (the author of SpeedFan) didn't post anything new on his website for many years, I hope he is OK.

mgtroyas wrote on 2023-09-17, 08:16:

PS2Rate

I always disliked how laggy/clunky mouse movement is on Windows98 inside PCEm/86box... until I rediscovered this tool I used back in the day. And now my G325 is as smooth as it's on the host OS! That 40Hz default refresh rate was a crime.

Haha yes, I also discovered this tool in ~1999 and was able to "overclock" our then new PS/2 mouse which replaced the COM one.

kind regards
soggi

soggi wrote on 2024-10-31, 04:25:

Second this...I had also problems with these packs.

Agreed, installing those "unofficial service packs" always results in trouble.

For people who want to update their Win98/ME systems the official way, this Microsoft Windows Security Update CD might be a better option.

soggi wrote on 2024-10-31, 04:25:

red_avatar wrote on 2019-03-03, 15:54:

To be honest, a lot of the apps I used back in the day, I would no longer use on a retro PC: NERO - why risk failing to burn CDs? MSN Messenger - defunct. ICQ - same.

I still use Nero Burning ROM version 6 f.e. to burn CDs for my car's CD player.

I came here for this too! I've never had an issue with Nero on Windows 11!

I find Taskbar Shuffle 2.5 to be a very nice addition to a 98SE and ME setups. It does what the name suggests : it allows to move taskbar items around to your own liking, something normally not possible.

https://gist.github.com/Seramis/46822b1fee68f … 401ead6c34ec929

This is a little .inf file, that can be installed (and uninstalled!) that mainly adjusts some registry keys, but also does some stuff in system.ini and msdos.sys.
Beware, it does some optimizations, which only benefit you if you have 128+MB of ram!

Contents is mostly gathered from the unofficial SP3, but i've added and adjusted some other things as well.
One day, i might split it up so every file's name specifically says, what optimization does it do.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-10-31, 06:00:

For people who want to update their Win98/ME systems the official way, this Microsoft Windows Security Update CD might be a better option.

Yeah, I have the German .iso, downloaded from archive.org, but didn't have the chance to try it yet. Unfortunately this February 2004 version seems to be the last available!? Two years before Win98(SE)/ME reached end of support.

kind regards
soggi

Well...I had AppPlus installed on an old Win98SE tower and only installed on a current one, meaning I didn't set it up yet. It is an enhanced toolbar that has extra features. I don't know where to get it online, but you should be able to Google it. My old system had very little hard drive space, so I had to run through loops to get more, including compressing floppies and Zip100 disks. I tried AppZip, but it didn't work on the system. It keeps programs compressed and decompresses them as needed. I used batch files and the console version of 7Zip. It sometimes worked, but fiddling with 7Zip's settings helped. 7Zip is good but had bugs, where unzipping across drives didn't work properly, and some large files caused the console version to lock up when compressing to lzma2. WinRAR helped there. BTW, if you use Windows' ShellNew menu, on old or modern systems, you can try out my Template Creator program at https://sourceforge.net/projects/tmpcreat/files/. It is a way to create new files from old ones and allows you to with the click of the mouse create a new file from any of several installed templates. It also makes it easy to associate a file class to it and add templates. Its current flaws are that you need to manually run some of its modules and is install program in Administrator mode, and it doesn't automatically highlight new files upon creation. The file is Picker02.zip. Try it out!