i just checked my drivers, ive got a 478, 865 board, and the only drivers i have dont mention 95 only 98se, i know ive had 95 osr2.5 running on that board so must have used the 98se driver, the vga driver for 845-865 mentions installing DCOM95 if installing on windows95 so that may be a requirement also for the chipset drivers, if the driver fails to install i'd extract the driver's .exe to a folder with winrar, then direct the device to the folder.

or id use lonecrusaders chipset files, by copying the correct machine .infs for your board overwriting the original win95 versions. then reboot and it should detect everything, you may have to remove any yellow checked devices in device manager before rebooting. lonecrusaders files cover a lot of chipsets so its a good option if the official intel drivers are giving issues.

Honest question. Why would you upgrade instantly to 98se or me on a board with this kind of potention? Is it a proof of concept? Or do you really intend to use it this way long time?

You probably have your best chance with shady industrial board manufacturers.

DudeFace wrote on 2025-09-10, 20:22:

if the driver fails to install i'd extract the driver's .exe to a folder with winrar, then direct the device to the folder.

Thanks, I'll give this a try. The issue I did run into is the executable for the Intel drivers aborts the installation with a message that the OS isn't supported. I'll see if there is a way to brute-force the installation by extracting the files.

or id use lonecrusaders chipset files, by copying the correct machine .infs for your board overwriting the original win95 versions. then reboot and it should detect everything, you may have to remove any yellow checked devices in device manager before rebooting. lonecrusaders files cover a lot of chipsets so its a good option if the official intel drivers are giving issues.

I took a look at that package of INF files, but it states they are for Win 98SE. I wonder if they would also work on Windows 95?

waterbeesje wrote on 2025-09-10, 20:26:

Is it a proof of concept? Or do you really intend to use it this way long time?

Both.

The main usage of this machine is for DOS, Win 98SE and Win XP. But I also installed various other operating systems to see what works and how challenges (such as what I describe in the OP) can be overcome.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-09-10, 19:53:

For the earliest chipset drivers that support the 865 chipset (5.02), the earliest supported OS is Windows 98SE. Even the preceding 4.10 version which doesn't support 865 only supports 98SE as the earliest OS.

I found chipset driver V5.00.1012 on the Asus website (P4P800-VM drivers - select "Windows 9x"), but not sure about Windows 95 support.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-09-10, 19:53:

The earliest drivers I have found that do support Windows 95 is 3.40, but those only support up to the Intel 845 chipset.

Good to know! I have a motherboard on 845 chipset, so I'm interested in comparing the system stability of 95OSR2/98SE.

ott wrote on 2025-09-11, 06:20:

I found chipset driver V5.00.1012 on the Asus website (P4P800-VM drivers - select "Windows 9x"), but not sure about Windows 95 support.

Unfortunately it doesn't support Windows 95. I'm finding drivers chipset drivers are often listed under "Windows 9x" when in reality they only support 98SE.

Couple of things to note. Extended support for Win95 ended in late 2001. After that point, hardware manufacturers probably didn't care much about providing drivers for it. Also, Win98 (first edition) introduced the concept of Windows Driver Model (WDM). Win98SE and WinME improved that functionality further, and then WDM became mandatory under Win2K/XP.

Now, I'm not saying those Intel chipset drivers are WDM based (I never checked, so I don't know). But if they are, then they probably can't be used under Win95.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-09-11, 10:50:

Couple of things to note. Extended support for Win95 ended in late 2001. After that point, hardware manufacturers probably didn't care much about providing drivers for it.

Fun fact, Intel Extreme Graphics driver (865G chipset) officially supports Win95, driver is dated April 2003 (found in ASUS P4P800-VM drivers).

Probably at that time Intel could have released non-public drivers for corporate clients with legacy software.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-09-11, 10:50:

Couple of things to note. Extended support for Win95 ended in late 2001. After that point, hardware manufacturers probably didn't care much about providing drivers for it. Also, Win98 (first edition) introduced the concept of Windows Driver Model (WDM). Win98SE and WinME improved that functionality further, and then WDM became mandatory under Win2K/XP.

Now, I'm not saying those Intel chipset drivers are WDM based (I never checked, so I don't know). But if they are, then they probably can't be used under Win95.

From looking at it once, when I was curious about the possibility to shoehorn the 98SE Silicon Image SATA drivers onto 95, I believe the USB supplement for Win95B/C adds a very early version of WDM. But it is missing a ton of exports so you can't just throw Windows 98 drivers at it.

As you mention, Win95 support ended before P4 era took off, and Toastytech aside, Win98SE would have been the sensible 9x OS for these machines. Remember there was no retail distributed Win95B/C either and without FAT32, who would want to run Win95A on a P4.