VioletGiraffe wrote:
I didn't blame Windows 98 for anything, it did what was made to do, no more, no less. And I certainly didn't intend to complain, was merely sharing my fresh experience. However, what you said should work simply did not. USB keyboard works in BIOS setup but not in Windows; USB thumb drive's activity LED didn't light up after inserting it. I followed a popular guide for installing USB mass storage drivers, and now the system locks up when I insert the USB stick. And it's formatted in FAT16B, doesn't get more compatible than that. I do find this all odd since it did install USB host controller drivers right out of the box, and it's supposed to support HID devices like a keyboard, so dunno what's up with that.
And as for the browser, the built-in IE starts up on a page inviting me to register with MSN, and it's looking for a modem. I cannot proceed without it, despite already having Internet access by means of PCI Wi-Fi card. Finding a browser capable of working with modern web was a fun challenge and only mildly frustrating: half of the suggested browsers don't work because they're using Win32 APIs not available in 98 SE (maybe they would work with that NT kernel emulator thing), but I still found a decent browser pretty fast.
I'm not going to be much help here, but I'll make a few generalities: So you "did everything right" and it still won't work. This is because you're trying to do things that Windows 98 wasn't designed for. The hardware and drivers. There is probably a way to get it working; I don't know. Or maybe not.
USB: you already know how arbitrary and finicky it is. There's no reason it should freeze, but apparently there's an issue with the driver or the card if it isn't integrated. The unsatisfying solution is to find other drivers or older more age appropriate hardware that should be cross compatible but obviously isn't.
Browser: again I don't know, probably nothing that happened in the old days when we had analog modems, so we wouldn't see such a scenario. It could be hardware. I don't know why it matters that the browser finds a modem, but at the very least you should be able to set up with an ethernet cable to get past this blockage of identifying an internet connection. Which brings me to the other scenario - I don't know how it goes because it was so long ago and I didn't use DSL in Windows 98, but the system may need a helping hand in recognizing the connection you have provided in internet options, presumably a DNS server.
In XP I have a wireless adapter and checked internet settings; to my surprise it is totally blank (not even "automatically detect settings"). But that doesn't mean anything for Windows 98. IE (although not IE 7 on XP) likely relies on the data in those settings. Using an ethernet cable eliminates or establishes the wireless hardware as a cause of your trouble. I hope you get it going.
It's funny, I know there were little compatibility issues with XP, but I don't remember what they were and why it matters. I never played games with other APIs, so that wasn't an issue for me. I like 98 and the experience it gives but when push comes to shove the forward compatibility of XP became more important to me than the backwards compatibility of 98. The only thing it stung me with is DOS though since you can't unload the OS and it sucks up a little conventional memory.