maybe you know it, try to reinstall the device, if you dont have the inf, instead of search for a new driver use the another option to look in your windows data base in case you have lucky and find one there, a previous used inf or whatever.

Im not really experienced in retro system, you can use the regscan /restore in dos to rollback to a previous reg backup but from what i have seen if you have software installed there is a possibility that some software installed you'll dont see the option to unistall, so youre software is there but not in your registry.

Dumb question: what are you doing ? Are you trying to install some new hardware to an existing Windows install or install Windows first time ?
If new hardware: what new hardware ? What OS: 98 or SE ?

I’m trying to swap a VLB video card on an existing 98SE install/machine. When I try to run the hardware wizard it won’t run through the normal detection process and fails on this missing inf error.

My best guess is that the video driver for the previous card is still loaded and Windows thinks it has a driver for the new card but does not. Did you remove the previous driver/reset to generic VGA before swapping ?
Do you have the new cards drivers on the HD so you can just point to them ? I have rarely ever had to run the hardware wizard under Win9x, if it does not load a prebuilt driver I install one when it boots up and says new hardware detected.
If it does not detect new hardware I still follow same method and manually install one. Every ones machine is different but you should not have to fight to install video unless the card is an odd one.....

Appreciate all the suggestions.

I don’t understand why I can’t run the hardware detection process for non-pnp hardware, what could be preventing this from running?

Even if I don’t need to run it, it should still run without the inf error right?

Re-running windows installer now. It’s gotta be something I’ve done while experimenting.