USB mouse and keyboard work out-of-the-box in 98SE. I would blame any additional, unofficial stuff you installed, especially the unofficial Service Pack should not be installed, it's a piece of crap.

Try with a fresh install of 98SE.

I use USB devices just fine on 98SE including modern gaming keyboards n mice, something must be very wrong there, not enough resources maybe? Try and disable parallel, serial com ports and anything you're not using in the bios, I wouldn't even bother with the USB 1.0 as it just sucks in general, USB 1.1 and 2.0 cards should work once drivers are installed although you may not get keyboard and mouse support until windows boots.

Edit: make sure USB keyboard support is enabled in the bios

derSammler wrote on 2020-05-13, 15:58:

USB mouse and keyboard work out-of-the-box in 98SE. I would blame any additional, unofficial stuff you installed, especially the unofficial Service Pack should not be installed, it's a piece of crap.

Try with a fresh install of 98SE.

I have tried all combinations including a fresh install, I have been at this for hours and have pretty much exhausted all options I have.

Can not honestly work out why this is such a problem at all..

The last thing I can think of is maybe turn PnP Off in BIOS maybe ? idk..

Ok so in desperation I tried Windows ME and I actually got further with this then 98SE..

As of now I have the VIA USB 2.0 PCI Card fitted, Parallel,Serial Ports and onboard USB 1.0 Disabled and my USB Keyboard and Mouse plugged in to the VIA PCI USB 2.0 Card.

For a while things seem to work fine, I could even use a USB 3.0 Hub and a USB 3.0 Memory Stick w/o to much issue via the PCI card ...then after a while things have gone wrong which started with on some reboots the machine locking up totaly.

As of right now when I tap the caps lock key a few times Windows ME will lock up totally. Everything is fine when using the Mouse only though but as soon as I toggle that caps lock its bye bye.

Also in my tinkering with device manager in safe mode to attempt clear up the USB issues I seem to have killed off the display drivers somehow ?

I have put hours (actually the better part of all of today) into trying to sort these problems with USB on 98SE and now ME to no avail. I honestly do not understand why this is going so wrong for me, and its very very frustrating indeed.

Check if the display adapter and the USB controller share the same IRQ. If so, change that.

Have you tried a different keyboard? On the off chance there is just something non standard about its controller? That's if theres no resource conflict

When I try and change the IRQs I get a "Resource can not be modified" error ?

From what I understand VIA motherboard chipsets of this time are known for poor AGP and also poor USB support.

Might a solution be to try my PCI Voodoo 2/ Matrox setup instead of the Voodoo 3 AGP ?

I use usb with 98se on multiple via mobos...only issue has been getting sb live! to work.

Some USB keyboards don't work well with the original drivers.

For example: my converted 122 key Model M will not be recognized properly, because the USB composite drivers lack features.

There's a package with backported XP drivers for 98SE out there: usb20drv.exe.

This is the only one that worked for me. Maybe it'll help you, too.

Well this is fun, and by fun I mean really really dumb.

Tried the USB20DRV.EXE package and that gave me the correct VIA 6202 Enhanced Host Controller entry in Device Manager, however despite being disabled the BIOS the onboard USB1.0 still shows up, 2 entrys in fact ? and the kicker is the 6202 entry has the yellow exclamation mark to so something still is wrong..

Tried various PCI slots as I cant actually edit the IRQs of anything relevant in the Device manage for some reason ? I get a "Resource can not be modified" error..

Also pulled the Opti Firelink USB1.0 card from my old Power Mac 7600 in desperation and that simply will not work despite showing with no errors in Device Manager ?

The TLDR is, none of this works properly in terms of USB.. none of it, no matter what I do.

May fall back to the Voodoo 2/Matrox PCI combo as I hear early VIA chipset support for AGP can be bad and that may feed in to my issues ?

And if THAT does not work then I am going to try Windows XP as a very last ditch attempt as that is the newest Windows version I can get away with running on this machine I figure and if THAT does not work well I think I need to find a different Super Socket 7 Motherboard or go to Slot 1 or something ? .. may be more in keeping with the Voodoo 3 AGP anyway. .

Update: moving to the Voodoo 2/Matrox combo failed to make the situation any better.

Last stop is Windows XP, and if that fails I guess I need to find a new board..

Xs1nX wrote on 2020-05-14, 09:12:

Well this is fun, and by fun I mean really really dumb.

Tried the USB20DRV.EXE package and that gave me the correct VIA 6202 Enhanced Host Controller entry in Device Manager, however despite being disabled the BIOS the onboard USB1.0 still shows up, 2 entrys in fact ? and the kicker is the 6202 entry has the yellow exclamation mark to so something still is wrong..

Might be a buggy bios? If USB is disabled in bios it shouldn't show up at all

Tried various PCI slots as I cant actually edit the IRQs of anything relevant in the Device manage for some reason ? I get a "Resource can not be modified" error..

For that you have to set the hardware profile, it won't let you change the default profile but you can with other profiles

synrgy87 wrote on 2020-05-14, 14:33:

Might be a buggy bios? If USB is disabled in bios it shouldn't show up at all […]
Show full quote

Xs1nX wrote on 2020-05-14, 09:12:

Well this is fun, and by fun I mean really really dumb.

Tried the USB20DRV.EXE package and that gave me the correct VIA 6202 Enhanced Host Controller entry in Device Manager, however despite being disabled the BIOS the onboard USB1.0 still shows up, 2 entrys in fact ? and the kicker is the 6202 entry has the yellow exclamation mark to so something still is wrong..

Might be a buggy bios? If USB is disabled in bios it shouldn't show up at all

Tried various PCI slots as I cant actually edit the IRQs of anything relevant in the Device manage for some reason ? I get a "Resource can not be modified" error..

For that you have to set the hardware profile, it won't let you change the default profile but you can with other profiles

If it is a buggy BIOS there is zero I can do about it, have the last BIOS version installed already I think.

Damnit, been so long since I last used Win 9x properly let alone troubleshoot it that I forgot about the hardware profile thing..

Installing XP right now as a hail mary last ditch anyway..

Make sure you remove all of the USB devices in the device manager after installing USB20DRV.exe - it will pick up the correct ones after a reboot.
(Best way to do this is in safe mode, where you can also remove all hidden USB devices.)

If it still doesn't work, I am out of ideas.

Myself I had trouble with VIA usb controllers. No matter if they were onboard or just a pci card, both 6202 and 6212 chips (did I get the numbers right?)
Managed to get the correct drivers from the via website but still mice, thumb drives and cheap usb sound made my system hang.

Switched to a NEC based usb PCI card and problems vanished... Even on Win98se stock drivers.

Could you try to install a NEC based card and disable the via usb? Might that be a solution?

Well this is interesting, installed XP and the VIA 6202 based USB2.0 PCI card now works fine ? no weird stuff happening so far anyway ..

I just do not understand this at all, the only conclusion I can draw is VIA is trash.

Reading up a bit more it seems my issues on 98/ME may be something to do with 98/ME not doing IRQ resource sharing very well ? .. is there a work around for this specifically ?

Xs1nX wrote on 2020-05-14, 20:29:

Reading up a bit more it seems my issues on 98/ME may be something to do with 98/ME not doing IRQ resource sharing very well ? .. is there a work around for this specifically ?

Is there an option for APIC in th the BIOS ? Might want to try toggliing that .