I'm trying to make this work strictly for Win98/Dos gaming

I can't install the Crystal CS4205 audio driver because the file ksuser.dll and others liks swmidi.sys are not found anywhere.. and it's not on my Windows 98 CD either?

octopoos wrote on 2024-08-16, 22:27:

The biggest issue I have however at the moment is I've spent 2 days installing Win 98 SE and hunting for drivers to try to get it to work. I've tried manual installs, the C840 Resource CD (which has no Windows 98 drivers) etc. and it's been a nightmare. I managed to get the USB ports working but little else. Graphics no but I almost managed to install the audio drivers and sound worked but only for one restart. I've also had to reinstall Windows 98 since things got corrupted after much trying.

Dell designed this laptop around Win2K and WinXP so it's not surprising that neither the Resource CD nor the official site provided Win9x drivers. OTOH the laptop was only six months younger than WinXP RTM so most hardware should still have respective Win9x drivers.

What exactly was "things got corrupted"? Reinstalling from CD might be a bit annoying but if you partitioned a D: drive and dump your Win98SE CD, the Resource CD, and all Win9x drivers for respective hardware into it, the reinstalling takes very little time (usually ~30 minutes max).

Have you tried installing WinXP? If the system gave you BSOD and crashed repeatedly then there's chance that your RAM modules might be defective; run MemTest86 or similar software to test your RAM. OTOH if WinXP runs perfectly then we could focus on software issues, drivers in particular.

You might want to update your system BIOS, followed by video BIOS of your GeForce4 440 Go, before additional diagnostic procedures.

octopoos wrote on 2024-08-16, 22:27:

Should I just give up and buy something that came out of the box with Windows 98? ..and if so do you have any recommendations?

There are several successful stories on this site so I wouldn't give up so soon if I were you. Maybe you could reexamine their procedures / problems they had encountered, and/or ask them to share their experiences. After all I don't own a C840 or any Dell laptop at this moment. 😅

Thanks for replying, I'm aware it wasn't designed for Windows 98, I wanted a powerful Win98SE laptop. I managed to install the audio driver with the Win98SE boot cd the installer asks for (which oddly didn't seem to work before).. I have freshly installed Win98SE again, the laptop was working perfectly with Win2k... I've struggled with most of the drivers but the graphics driver is proving impossible... I found a thread about what I've been facing here. I'm not facing BSODs just a failure to install the graphics driver and the resource CD does manage to install some of the drivers, but most don't work.

I will try the BIOS updates you have suggested tomorrow but I suspect that is not the issue.

octopoos wrote on 2024-08-18, 02:52:

Thanks for replying, I'm aware it wasn't designed for Windows 98, I wanted a powerful Win98SE laptop. I managed to install the audio driver with the Win98SE boot cd the installer asks for (which oddly didn't seem to work before).. I have freshly installed Win98SE again, the laptop was working perfectly with Win2k... I've struggled with most of the drivers but the graphics driver is proving impossible... I found a thread about what I've been facing here. I'm not facing BSODs just a failure to install the graphics driver and the resource CD does manage to install some of the drivers, but most don't work.

Darn, I didn't know that NVIDIA never had GeForce4 Go driver as a selectable option on their driver page; must be a false impression because of drivers of GeForce Go 7 Series is still readily available even today.

However, while browsing through the release note of 45.23 (the most popular GeForce driver for Win9x) I noticed that GeForce4 Go models were listed together with other NV25 products (early batch of GeForce4 Ti), despite of having NV17 core instead.

As far as I could find, the last driver with specific support to GeForce4 Go series was 67.02:

71.84 had "GeForce4 MX Integrated Graphics" but no "GeForce4 Go" anymore.

The release note of 81.98, the final Win9x driver for GF4 Ti or MX, had omitted GF4 Go or any IGP product completely.

Maybe you could give ForceWare 40-60 series a try?

octopoos wrote on 2024-08-18, 02:52:

I will try the BIOS updates you have suggested tomorrow but I suspect that is not the issue.

I suggested so because Dell specified that driver "42.58 A03" required video BIOS updated to A05.

II have tried pretty much all the compatible installers on the vogons nvidia driver website all fail for various reasons... have a look at the thread I linked before here at the bottom is the fix...very annoyingly one of the admins has locked that thread for some reason, it is not a very old thread. This method actually gets me to the installation process with the 4.14.10.4403 driver.. then the directx issue crops up... about half way through, shown below...

I made progress this morning... for anyone else dealing with this issue in Win98SE

-unpack the 4403 Nvidia graphics driver found here
-copy the NVAML file found here into that folder (that topic should be opened so I can link here for the fix)
-copy the directx.cpl file found here into that folder (you don' t need the directx 9 file)
-run the installer manually through the device manager (update graphics driver or whatever), direct all installers to the 4403 folder

Voila.. that worked for me.. now to test some games with it.