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I can say, for one, that 98SE is pretty bad at shutting down. About 3/4 of the time I use Start - Shutdown it either hangs or takes quite a long time to fully shut itself down. On the other hand, if I use the front button it works about 1/2 the time or more? Weird behavior, but I have a feeling it's pretty standard for Win98.

Look for "Windows 98 Second Edition Shutdown Supplement", this may fix your shutdown problem

Another option with shutdown problems is to disable ACPI completely. Disabling ACPI fixed a lot of problems in a super socket 7 system I built couple years ago and also after that it does not shutdown automatically and you get the message on the screen telling that it is safe to turn off the computer now.

OK thanks for the info
I tried the shut down supliment but it didn't help. Everytime I select restart from Win98 The PC resets, and I get the POST screen then win98 reloads just fine. However when I select Shut Down it just hangs on the Win98 splash screen saying Windows is shutting down - but it doesn't. Though if I power off the PC manually and then reload windows I don't see the screen scanning C drive because windows was not shut down properly - so it thinks it did shut down OK even though it didn't

I found some more drivers (not on the ECS site) for the PCI ethernet adapter so that is now installed OK in control panel. I also found another drivers file VIA456 which loaded all sorts of chipset drivers in Win 98. So I no longer have a Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller with a question mark in control panel. I noticed that device said it was permanently disabled as it said it failed to load on a previous boot of windows (that explains a previous hang up during installation). However once I ran the VIA456 setup Windows hung on boot with a little flashing cursor. On a second attempt it loaded windows and in the device manager I no longer have a Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller with a question mark but I have s SCSI controller with Raid or something like that - which has a question mark and says 'this device was permanently disabled as it failed to run when windows was started.

I then tried running VIA456 setup in XP (even though the device manager shows everything is OK) but it failed tro run with an error, even though the readme says it is for 98 and XP etc. To be honest I am not sure I have all the drivers loaded, I could do with a copy of the original install CDROM. Does anyone here have one for this mobo who could send me an ISO ot know where to find one on the net?

So basically the problems I have in Win98 now are:

Will restart but won't shut down
SCSI raid controller in device manager has ? and disabled because it fails to run
USB ports work (my USB mouse works) but my USB stick is not recognised
Which DirectX should I have in Windows 98? I thought was DirectX 8 but loaded two different files from the net (8.1, 8.2) but dxdiag says I have 6.1

Otherwise it seems to run Win98 stable so these are just niggles rather than a big problem so far.

For your driver issues, I think you need the choose a different verison of VIA 4in1 drivers, according to the chipset you have. This might help:

VIA 4-in-1 driver experiences

Uninstall whatever you iinstalled before, and go for the "more correct" version for your chipset.

For USB issues, I strongly recommend NUSB (Maximus-Decim Native USB Drivers):

https://msfn.org/board/topic/43605-maximus-de … ve-usb-drivers/

This will most probably solve your "USB flash drive not recognized" problem. My machine can see all the pen drives that I tried (Sandisk Cruzer 2, 4 and 8GB), an 120GB homebuilt external HDD, and a modernish Digitus multi card reader properly with the help of it.

"Windows 9x is not shutting down properly" is a problem with many probable reasons and many probable solutions (that none would probably work). You either need to live with it, or perform a clean install using correct drivers (which might probably help). 🤣

OK lots of probables there. These are the VIA drivers i installed https://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php … riverid=1550924

I found that by googling 'ECS P4M800PRO-M 98 dual pci ide driver' because that is the one that had the Question Mark in device manager. The downlaod says it is the right one for this mobo.

On the ECS website there are only sound and USB drivers for this motherboard in win98 or win9x selection

I'll check that link out. Thanks

Check out the VIA Technologies website:

http://download.viatech.com/en/support/driversSelect.jsp

If the 4in1 installer works in the same way the XP one does, not all drivers will be automatically replaced, so you will have to do it manually. It's a tedious job as you have to extract the installer and point the devices to the relative INF files, but only in that way I got the chipset drivers installed properly on my machine, at least on XP. I use the 4in1 v4.43.

Some good advice on here, thanks guys

I now have Win98 recognising my USB Flash Drive

The only ?? in device manager is this one (see pic) Actually it's not a ?? it's a !!

Which version of DirectX should I have?

It seems to me people here forgot one good thing.. It's a Windows Millennium !!! 😀 😊 😀
I advice everyone to install Win ME instead Win98SE.
WinME is based on 98SE, it's have excellent compatibility with Win98's programs. On Win ME all USB works just fine. Also Win ME have all features for Network support (almost like a Win2000, sometime it is a solution with shutdown). And many other things) I had period of time i used Win ME.
On my Win98SE last version DirectX i used was DirectX9a (with my FX5900 from ASUS). I think it depends from videocard's driver. But DirectX8.1 for the Win98SE is just a necessary thing. Look for your MoBo user manual if it really should support Win98SE.