Windows 98 Compatibility Problems

Windows 98 Compatibility Problems

This question was answered on June 15, 1999. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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Okay.., so you've upgraded to Windows 98, but some of your equipment is not being seen by the so called "cream of the crop" operating system You dig and dig for some ray of hope, either by reading every word in the manual, or waiting on hold for 2 hours only to hear, " You Got Us Stumped!" Well, maybe your solution is this simple On a few systems, the WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI files become read only keeping the offending driver from automatically being removed and replaced by the updated one during the upgrade Read this quick little scenario and see if it applies to your situation.

This might fix a lot of problems I found this tip while searching for help on the Hewlett Packard Web site for my printer I was having a zillion problems with hardware drivers and software apps after upgrading to Win98 I was advised to check the properties of my SYSTEM.INI and WIN.INI files to see if either or both were checked as "read only." My WIN.INI file was! I unchecked it, removed my problem devices and shut down Then I physically removed all but one device and started the computer The Find New Hardware Wizard ran, found the device and installed the drivers for it And it ran perfectly! I repeated this for the rest of my devices .. printer, mouse, scanner, modem, external hard drive (SparQ) and sound card All are running great! I then uninstalled and reinstalled all the software apps that had been acting weird .. they all now run without a glitch! I have no idea why these files might be setup as read only .. maybe a little bug in the Win98 setup?? I dunno .. but my computer is running great and I'm not going to question that too much!! :)

I hadn't heard of this problem, and it certainly seems odd that either of those files ever should be marked read-only Everyone who experiences unusual system problems with Windows 98 should follow Lissa's cue, starting with this two-minute check:

How to Tell If a File Is Marked Read-only:

Click Start, choose Find, and select Files or Folders....

When the Find dialog box appears, type system.ini (or win.ini) in the Named field and click the Find Now button.

You'll probably find those files in the Windows directory (although copies may exist in your Backup folder) Click once on the file (in the Windows folder) to select it.

Right-click on the filename, and choose Properties from the menu

Look in the Attributes section for the Read-only check box If it's checked, that file is marked as read-only Click the check box to deactivate it Then click OK to close the properties dialog box

If you've been having problems with a specific device, try removing and reinstalling it Hopefully, the New Hardware Wizard will make it easy for you to get your system running smoothly again

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Posted by Ken Colburn of Data Doctors on June 15, 1999

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