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Call the police! Games are performing illegal operations on Windows 98 SE

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First post, by flightjunkie

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What the title suggest, I was trying to run Porsche unleashed on my Windows 98 build initially, but it seems there's a broader issue.

My system is as follows
QDI advanced 10t
Pentium 3 1000mhz
Nvidia FX 5500 and MSI mxr(mx400)
256 MB of RAM

My previous graphics card on this system was a voodoo 3 2000, and if I recall correctly the game would run. However I decided to retire the voodoo 3 because it was "too finicky".

I swapped it for an FX 5500 and then to test it swapped it with an MX400. Cleaned up the system from the old drivers and installed the official drivers from Nvidia (81.98 forceware win9x English)

The game will boot, it will play the intros, but after the loading screen when he tries to enter the main menu, then it's when it crashes. I tried reinstalling it, but to no effect.

I think it does it on other games as well but this is the instance I was able to reliably capture.

Another thing is that after I get this error from this game the resolution of my screen drops and I can only see the shortcuts. If I try to run another game or try to change the screen resolution back to normal I get the illegal operations error again. However at that point the entire system hangs and I have to reset it, and so I can't get the details of the other error, but I'm hoping that the games are always enough

I took photos of the error so you can see for yourselves.

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UPDATE
Darklight conflict just gave me an illegal operations error too. The game boots up fine, but a bit into gameplay it crashes. So, I do feel the whole illegal operations error might be a broader problem

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UPDATE2
Tomb raider the last revelation gives an illegal operations error too in a specific resolution. Though initially it would just crash to desktop when choosing 1024x768 32bit resolution, when I chose 640x480 32 bit I got the error, and it was about RUNDLL32.

UPDATE3
Tested motocross madness 2. it gave me the error when I exited the game, but the game run. Also there are other games that seem unaffected. FS98, Tiberian sun, red alert, age of empires 1&2, all seem to have no issues.

The Salvaged parts Rig that cost me nothing.
-QDI advanced 10t
-Pentium III 1000mhz
-????????????
-SoundBlaster Live! Value 5.1 CT4830
-WD800 80gb HDD
-TwinMOS 256MB of RAM
-Windows 98 SE

Reply 1 of 9, by swaaye

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Yeah those crashes are common with Win9x (and WinME). Something is causing memory corruption and since Win9x has limited memory protection it usually kills the OS. Other things like NoCD cracks and Daemon Tools cause similar problems on Win9x. Run an older NVIdia driver like 45.23. Limit yourself to DirectX 7.0a. You can use DirectX Buster to remove the current DirectX if you're already beyond 7.0a.

Another way to vastly improve system stability is to run Win2K or XP instead. Especially if you want to run DirectX 8/9 games. As you may know, these are far more robust OSs. XP is heavier but it comes with a lot more Win9x game compatibility fixes than Win2K.

Reply 2 of 9, by AlexZ

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It is for this reason you should be using Windows 98 only for games that cannot run on Windows XP. In Windows XP I enabled DEP for all programs and just added exceptions for those that fail.

Usually the reason is too new NVidia driver (use 45.23), directx 9, ripped games instead of originals.

Pentium III 900E, ECS P6BXT-A+, 384MB RAM, GeForce FX 5600 128MB, Voodoo 2 12MB, Yamaha SM718 ISA
Athlon 64 3400+, Gigabyte GA-K8NE, 2GB RAM, GeForce GTX 275 896MB, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Phenom II X6 1100, Asus 990FX, 32GB RAM, GeForce GTX 980 Ti

Reply 3 of 9, by Shagittarius

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I think it's likely that there are still some old video drivers causing issues. If I changed video boards I would perform a complete reinstall of the os. I run dx9 on win98 and don't have any problems, it's the only version I've ever installed, don't let any other dx drivers install after if they try to.

Reply 4 of 9, by bertrammatrix

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I second too new of a driver. Had similar issues with that game and going with something in the 45.x range fixed it iirc.

Reply 5 of 9, by DaveDDS

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I hate to break it to you ... software has bugs, ALL software has bugs - even old/shipped/worked-ok stuff.
How they affect the OS depends on the OS and the exact nature of the bug.

I can only think of one program that I would be convinced has no bugs.. a simple MS-DOS .COM:

  ORG  0100h
  RET

I remember at university when a guy was claiming that bug-free programs did exist.
We challanged him - the next day he brough in a 10 line .ASM program he'd written overnight.
and said "there - bug free"! On close examination we found a subtle bug in it!

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

Reply 6 of 9, by flightjunkie

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swaaye wrote on 2025-08-04, 15:02:

Yeah those crashes are common with Win9x (and WinME). Something is causing memory corruption and since Win9x has limited memory protection it usually kills the OS. Other things like NoCD cracks and Daemon Tools cause similar problems on Win9x. Run an older NVIdia driver like 45.23. Limit yourself to DirectX 7.0a. You can use DirectX Buster to remove the current DirectX if you're already beyond 7.0a.

Another way to vastly improve system stability is to run Win2K or XP instead. Especially if you want to run DirectX 8/9 games. As you may know, these are far more robust OSs. XP is heavier but it comes with a lot more Win9x game compatibility fixes than Win2K.

Shagittarius wrote on 2025-08-05, 14:38:

I think it's likely that there are still some old video drivers causing issues. If I changed video boards I would perform a complete reinstall of the os. I run dx9 on win98 and don't have any problems, it's the only version I've ever installed, don't let any other dx drivers install after if they try to.

Right. Went with the suggestion to format and the 45.23, but now I find myself in a bit of a pickle. The driver does not detect the FX5500. I thought I might try to install and MSI MX400 variant called MXR, to see if it works with that, but I thought I should ask first, maybe I can get it to work with that. Since everyone is right about XP, and the games I mentioned here work on XP, I thought I might go with a lower graphics card anyway, I just wanted to see if I can get the FX5500 working first(also in case the MXR is not recognized either and fo through the trouble swapping the cards for nothing)

The Salvaged parts Rig that cost me nothing.
-QDI advanced 10t
-Pentium III 1000mhz
-????????????
-SoundBlaster Live! Value 5.1 CT4830
-WD800 80gb HDD
-TwinMOS 256MB of RAM
-Windows 98 SE

Reply 7 of 9, by AlexZ

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45.23 definitely supports FX5500.

Pentium III 900E, ECS P6BXT-A+, 384MB RAM, GeForce FX 5600 128MB, Voodoo 2 12MB, Yamaha SM718 ISA
Athlon 64 3400+, Gigabyte GA-K8NE, 2GB RAM, GeForce GTX 275 896MB, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Phenom II X6 1100, Asus 990FX, 32GB RAM, GeForce GTX 980 Ti

Reply 8 of 9, by flightjunkie

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AlexZ wrote on Yesterday, 11:33:

45.23 definitely supports FX5500.

Yeah, but I get an error that says "set up was unable to locate any Nvidia graphics chips on this system. The installation will be terminated" when I try to install the driver.

The Salvaged parts Rig that cost me nothing.
-QDI advanced 10t
-Pentium III 1000mhz
-????????????
-SoundBlaster Live! Value 5.1 CT4830
-WD800 80gb HDD
-TwinMOS 256MB of RAM
-Windows 98 SE

Reply 9 of 9, by swaaye

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You can probably manually add/edit a string in the driver's main INF to get it to install. It just needs to recognize your card's device ID. 5500 is based on 5200 so the driver should work fine. Or you could just move up to a 5x.xx series driver but you might run into visual issues with some DirectX 7 and older games.

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