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Win9x keeps track of all hardware in your machine, which can be seen in the Device Manager. Sometimes Win9x gets confused by all […]
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Win9x keeps track of all hardware in your machine, which can be seen in the Device Manager. Sometimes Win9x gets confused by all your hardware and starts to act strange. One can clear this confusion and hopefully it will solve any problems.

By deleting the this registry-key, Win9x will forget all information about hardware and at next boot it will start redetecting everything :

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Enum]

Note if Windows doesn't start detecting new devices after first boot, then go to Control Panel -> Add/Remove Hardware and force a scan for new hardware.

Note doing this will cause Windows to forget your network settings, and you might manually have to reinstall your Dial-Up Adapter. But it will remember the dial-up connection to your ISP along with userid and password.

Note before doing starting the detecting it is a good idea to have all necessary driver disks ready along with the Windows CD-ROM in case it cannot reuse the drivers which currently resides in the Windows directory.

Note it might be a good idea to Check for ghost devices after redetecting and installing all devices.

Note one can use this solution to migrate Win9x from an old computer to a new computer. Before moving the HDD into the new computer just delete the registry folder shown above. Though this solution doesn't come near the perfection of a clean format and install, but it is quicker and keeps the settings and applications.

Apparently this is a "all or none"-type of method. Deleting the whole parent registry key.

My method's usually flushing out C:\windows\inf\other and then removing the device and then restarting.

Can't remember if this was 95 or 98, but I recall the trick of creating a second configuration, and when offered the choice, select new, when it will ignore both and redetect.

Excellent thanks so much for the replies - I've been caught up in Christmas madness and unable to get my hands onto the relevant beige keyboard but I'll report back when I do.

leileilol wrote:

My method's usually flushing out C:\windows\inf\other and then removing the device and then restarting.

This !
In addition, if you restart in "safe mode" you'll see all hardware which were detected from the moment of windows installation until now in Device Manager (in "normal mode" you can only see currently present hardware). You can delete unneeded hardware from device manager in "safe mode". It should've gone forever...

zyga64 wrote:

leileilol wrote:

My method's usually flushing out C:\windows\inf\other and then removing the device and then restarting.

This !
In addition, if you restart in "safe mode" you'll see all hardware which were detected from the moment of windows installation until now in Device Manager (in "normal mode" you can only see currently present hardware). You can delete unneeded hardware from device manager in "safe mode". It should've gone forever...

Yes this was right on the money, thanks leilei.

I'll have to remember that "safe mode" trick too, very handy. More likely I'll forget both of these tricks in ~7 days time and will have to google it, but hopefully this thread pops up next time 😎

Hi future self!

badmojo wrote:

Yes this was right on the money, thanks leilei. […]
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zyga64 wrote:

leileilol wrote:

My method's usually flushing out C:\windows\inf\other and then removing the device and then restarting.

This !
In addition, if you restart in "safe mode" you'll see all hardware which were detected from the moment of windows installation until now in Device Manager (in "normal mode" you can only see currently present hardware). You can delete unneeded hardware from device manager in "safe mode". It should've gone forever...

Yes this was right on the money, thanks leilei.

I'll have to remember that "safe mode" trick too, very handy. More likely I'll forget both of these tricks in ~7 days time and will have to google it, but hopefully this thread pops up next time 😎

Hi future self!

Hilarious! That is soooooo recognizable I never even knew I had a brother in Australia.... we have to be related! 🤣
Don't you just hate it when you found a ''perfect'' solution just to having to invent the same f*cking wheel a few weeks/months later? And yes, sometimes even days.. 😎

Lolz yes I don’t know if it was having kids or the existence of the internets but I can’t remember anything anymore 🤣