Multibooter

I doubt the surface scan will be of much use. How about clearing the USB disk & then partitioning it into a single logical partition, 160GB is Ok on USB? My partitioning tool of choice for Win98/FAT32 is PartitionMagic 8.01, which can partition external USB drives.My next step would be try the shutdown/restart sequence with another make of external USB HDD. You could also check whether it's the fault of nusb, which I would doubt: 1) with your Acomdata USB drive connected, rename Windows\INF\USBSTOR.INF and USBSTOR.PNF to something like\Usbstor.inf.deactivated and usbstor.PNF.deactivated New devices will not be detected by nusb anymore 2) go into Control Panel -> System -> Device Manager select (probably under Disk Drives) the Acomdata USB drive -> click on Remove 3) reboot 4) install the Win98 driver from the Acomdata CD 5) reboot again, when your system is up again, plug in your Acomdata USB drive, Win98 should detect it Ok 6) shutdown/restart again, with the Acomdata drive connected: do you still have the same problem? To re-activate nusb for installing other devices: just rename the renamed USBSTOR.INF & USBSTOR.PNF to their original names.

The mule may surely help, even with ancient Hard Disk LED 1.1, which may be the only utility of its kind for Win98. Any other experiences or issues detected after testing for more than 30 minutes?

If I understand right, you have a shutdown problem when your Acomdata USB drive is connected. Have you tried ScanDisk on your USB drive?

Hi dencorso,I tried their latest version v1.09.0006 of 23-May-2008, its installer states that it's only for WinXP/2003 and Vista. It installs under Win98, but does not run. Any idea where there are older versions which run under Win98? v1.6.002 seems to have run under Win98 http://www.sharewareriver.com/product.php?id=8494 but its not there anymore.

I have experienced twice on my desktop some corruption of Windows Explorer after having installed Hard Disk LED, I never had this before: when I double-clicked on the StartUp folder, it didn't open, but another software loaded, the same happened when I clicked on some, but not all, desktop icons. After rebooting, this happened again after some time, but I haven't been able to repeat this corruption so far.When I play a movie from an external 1.5TB USB HDD on the fast desktop or on the slower old laptop (which has a modern 120GB HDD), the system tray icon of Hard Disk LED does not show any perceptible disk activity; the physical access lights of the Thermaltake USB enclosure do flicker slightly however. Maybe current disk access times are too fast for Hard Disk LED .

That's nice to hear, so there should be still some ways to increase the uptime of my mule, which is running on a 10-year-old USB 1.1 laptop and is connected via wireless LAN to the router. My router, with 3-5 computers connected, has itself an uptime of 30-60 days until it hangs.

My initial impression is that Hard Disk LED v1.1 of Feb.1997 seems to work fine under Win98SE on my old 750MHz Inspiron 7500 laptop (120GB internal PATA HDD) connected to a 1.5TB SATA HDD in an external Thermaltake USB enclosure. The read and write lights flash in the system tray when there is HDD read/write activity, regardless whether from accessing the USB HDD or the internal HDD. It works fine with ScanDisk and NDD, the activity lights are flashing while ScanDisk/NDD is accessing the internal or external HDD.On my desktop (2.2GHz dual core, GeForce 7800GS and a 750GB internal HDD) this utility had initially a display problem under Win98: The activity lights rarely flashed during disk activity. After setting the Priority on its system tray icon to "Lowest", the activity lights flashed much better, but still not as well as the actual LED on the computer case. One big gripe: the 2 activity lights in the system tray are miniscule, a magnifying glass could be handy. My initial impression is that Hard Disk LED v1.1 seems to work fine under Win98 with old hardware (e.g. my 10-year-old laptop), but has some issues with modern hardware (e.g. my desktop with a 2.2GHz dual core). Maybe somebody else could join me in testing this 12-year-old software on modern hardware, to make sure that there are no hidden issues.

The safely-remove-utility of nusb3.3 has a problem with multi-card readers: having to safely-remove 5 drives, one after the other, takes nearly as much time as a simple reboot. The manufacturer-provided driver by Genesys, for example, does this with a single removal selection from the system tray: "Stop Genesys USB Mass Storage Device J,K,L,M". Another issue of nusb3.3 with card readers with several drive letters is that nusb3.3 does not indicate in My Computer which drive-letter actually contains the inserted card. The manufacturer-provided driver by Genesys, on the other hand, has 2-state-icons in My Computer, red when the card is inserted, grey when no card is inserted; this also identifies in red which of the several drive-letters of the multi-card reader I should double-click to open. Also, the 4 drive icons of the multi-card reader in My Computer are marked CF, SM, SD and MS, according to card type. The discussion nusb vs. manufacturer-provided drivers is comparable to the discussion of printer etc drivers 10 years ago (compare p.812 in Minasi's Expert Guide to Windows 98, "Printer Drivers: Use the Manufacturer's or the Ones in Windows 98?") In general I don't like multi-card readers which assign a separate drive-letter to each slot, it's a waste and clutters My Computer. If you use the card reader constantly, maybe you might consider a single-card reader just for the specific card type you use. I do use one multi-card reader as a special-purpose device. I have a hama/EasyLine 55745 multi-card reader with a built-in hub, which I have been using as a dedicated eMule download station, without any problems, for 24-hours a day during the last 3 months. This eMule download station is similar to a solid-state drive (SSD), but with removable media (3 SDHC cards) so that I can remove the SDHC card containing the completed downloads, without the need to stop eMule. I have a 16GB SDHC card in a card-slot of the multi-card reader plus 2 single-slot SDHC card readers at the USB connectors of the built-in hub, altogether 48GB (3 SDHC cards) for eMule incoming+multiple temporary directories. Typical eMule uptime with this dedicated SDHC download station has increased under Win98SE by about 1 day over an internal HDD, to 3 days 10 hours +-2hours. So physical read-write issues of HDDs definitely contribute to eMule crashes under Win98SE. I haven't figured out yet why my eMule v0.49b under Win98 on the download station with SDHC cards crashes regularly after about 3 days 10 hours.

Not on my desktop with 2GB of RAM and Internet Explorer 5.5 installed

Hi Wolfgang,Windows Explorer under Win98Se has no major problems copying large amounts of data IF you have installed Internet Explorer 5.5 SP1. Internet Explorer 6 or higher, however, corrupts Win98SE, and makes file copying/moving a major headache. I have been using under Win98SE 1 ext.USB HDD enclosure with 1.5 TB SATA HDD and 2 enclosures with each 1TB SATA HDD, for about 2 months now. I have copied with Win98SE Explorer maybe 5TB and over a million files in these 2 months. When connected to my dual-core desktop with a modern motherboard (Asus P5PE-VM, 2GB of RAM) with IE 5.5, I did not encounter major file-copying problems with Win98SE Explorer, except: - Norton Disk Doctor has problems with files with names containing international characters, originally created under WinXP - when the ext.USB HDD is connected to the USB port of an eSATA/USB/IDE combo PCI card, instead of being connected to the onboard USB controller (I am still fiddling around with this problem): System freezes when copying large files (e.g. 700MB) but not small files (e.g. 10MB), maybe 5 seconds after starting to copy. Again, when the ext.HDD is connected to the onboard USB controller, even if this PCI card is in its slot, there is no such file-copying-problem. The onboard USB controller uses a special Intel ICH4-5 edition of the OrangeWare USB driver (v1.1.0.2). When connected to my 10-year-old Inspiron 7500 laptop (512MB RAM, USB 2.0 via PCCard only, buggy PCMCIA controller chip, BIOS is not LBA and in POST internal PATA drives >64GB are indicated as 65535MB) with IE 6.0 I did encounter major problems, like freezing during the file move with Win98 Explorer. Beyond Compare has been for years my tool of choice for file-moving and file-copying on the IE 6.0-tainted laptop, instead of Windows Explorer. But when I used Beyond Compare with this old laptop for file-moving to the 1.5TB ext.HDD, somehow the target and source partitions got corrupted. Unlike moving with Beyond Compare, copying with Win98 Explorer didn't corrupt the HDD and data on the source drive didn't get lost , it just caused a lot of lost clusters on the target drive when the system froze. After the Beyond-Compare-disaster (losing about 150GB of data) I eventually deleted the source and target partitions and created new ones in their place, good that I had a backup of all the files on another ext.HDD. Since then I try to write as little as possible with the old laptop to the 1+TB HDDs. Also, if you use a small ext.HDD, you may avoid some new problems. On the Asus P5PE-VM motherboard in my desktop, for example, Legacy USB Support works ok with an 80GB ext.USB HDD, but with a 300GB USB HDD connected under Legacy USB Support, the computer freezes at POST. I have Legacy USB Support disabled on the Asus P5PE-VM desktop, the old Inspiron 7500 laptop doesn't have this BIOS setting.

Hi dencorso, I tried to download the Texas Instruments PCI-1225 CardBus Controller 5.0.2183.1 from ZDNET http://downloads.zdnet.com/abstract.aspx?docid=458239 but ZDNET only passes the download request to Microsoft with MS Windows Update, and then I get the request "Install and run Windows Update signed on 8/26/03". I have my reservations about installing MS Windows Update - does it still work for Windows 98SE? Will I just install spyware, and then get a msg like: "Sorry, Win98 is not supported anymore"?

Hi Roman,Unfortunately this CPU is not on the compatibility list of my Asus P5PE-VM, the last BIOS update for this motherboard (for new CPUs) is v1501 of 25-Jan-2008. If it's not possible, let's make it possible.The S.A.D. Dualcore Tuner installs, but when I ran it under Win98SE I got 2 err msgs at startup: - dctuner.exe: A device attached to the system is not functioning; and - Error Starting program: The DCTUNER.EXE file is linked to missing export NTDLL.DLL:NtQuerySystemInformation The THG Task Assignment Manager http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/bang-d...g-buck,815.html runs under Win98SE, but under Win98SE only CPU0 is selectable in the window Set Affinity, the other 31 CPUs are greyed out; when selecting an application to be assigned to CPU0 the error msg "This function is only valid in Win32 mode" pops up. Do run this little program, it opens up a whole new perspective. SMP Seesaw http://www.mlin.net/SMPSeesaw.shtml is open source, maybe it can be made to work under Win98 + a couple of WinXP dlls. Maybe Tihiy could help and give a definite answer on whether it could be done, I would be available for testing.

I have been using Win98SE on a dual core for about a year now. But unfortunately your hardware is not Win98 compatible. I am using an Asus P5PE-VM motherboard, which also has an Intel 775 socket, with an Intel Core 2 Duo E4500. Your E8500 is not on the CPU compatibility list of my P5PE-VM, and I doubt it is on the CPU compatibility list of any other motherboard which works under Win98. So in addition to a graphic card and a motherboard which are not Win98-compatible, you may also have a CPU which does not work in Win98-compatible motherboards. It is quite time-consuming to find modern hardware which works with Win98SE. Basically you have to custom-build your computer, and you have to spend a lot of time on each piece of hardware in it. Also, finding Win98-compatible components in Croatia may be very difficult, maybe at ebay.de Another possibility would be to buy at ebay a used computer which has a Win98-compatible motherboard which works with a dual-core CPU. Dencorso's list of working configurations http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=118097 is an excellent starting point for custom-building a modern Win98-compatible computer. When I decided a year ago on which motherboard to get, the 2 main criteria were Win98 compatibility (as stated by the manufacturer in the user manual) and a dual-core CPU. Very few motherboard models fit this requirement. I plan to replace in the next few months the E4500 CPU with an X6800 CPU, which should make my custom-build one of the faster Win98 computers around. Another project would be to find a way to use both cores under Win98, maybe there is Win98-compatible software to manually assign programs to specific cores.

System.ini on my desktop, which has a relatively recent installation of US Win98SE, confirms that vgaoem.fon is an indicator of the US code page. Here some lines from system.ini of this desktop computer:oemfonts.fon=vgaoem.fon oemansi.bin= aspect=100,96,96 woafont=dosapp.fon On my laptop, however, which reflects an installation of Win98SE of originally maybe 9 years ago, I have the folling lines in System.ini: oemfonts.fon=8514oem.fon oemansi.bin=xlat850.bin aspect=100,120,120 woafont=app850.fon On the laptop I have selected the Windows setting of large screen fonts [large (120 DPI) display], which seems to have replaced whatever original setting there was with 8514oem.fon http://www.psc-consulting.ca/fenske/publish.htm The other entries in system.ini look like I have code page 850 installed on the laptop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_850 but I have no idea whether this would indicate the code page used during the original installation of Win98SE.

Thanks Drugwash, your suggestion looks like it will produce the right results, if one knows Regular Expressions. But learning Regular Expressions looks quite time-consuming, I would only need it for multi-renames of eMule downloads.I looked at Beyond Compare, which I have installed, and it also supports Regular Expressions.

Thanks Ninho. I don't remember under which code page I installed Win98SE originally on my laptops many years ago. I have been using several Inspiron 7500 laptops with different built-in national keyboards, with the corresponding code page set or remmed out in config.sys. I am using on my main laptop a US keyboard, with the US International keyboard set in Windows.Is there a way to find out under which code page Win98SE was originally installed? I always use ASCII characters when I enter the name of a file to be saved, or for renaming, which has kept me out of mischief, until I started to use eMule. eMule downloads have created this file name problem on my computer, under Win98 at least, because many files downloaded with eMule have names containing non-ASCII characters: a ) eMule downloads sometimes have finished downloading, but then are stuck at "completing" because their filenames contain e.g. Chinese characters. The solution is to select the file stuck at Completing in the Transfer window of eMule -> right-click Details -> Name tab -> click on Cleanup button ->Ok. This will remove the '?' (=Chinese, etc characters) from the filename. Then select in the Transfer window the file with the cleaned up name -> right-click Resume and the download will be completed ok b ) eMule under Win98 sometimes creates download files which cannot be renamed etc under Win98, only under WinXP, probably because of something in the filename. c) and now this ScanDisk/NDD problem, when I access eMule downloads having filenames with international characters, stored on an external USB HDD. Under ScanDisk I can select at least -> Advanced -> de-select "Invalid file names", but under Norton Disk Doctor I have to select "ignore" for each "erroneous" filename with international characters (the default selection of NDD is "delete"[the file!!], not "ignore"). Ninho, I guess you are using the French code page, which already contains ' í ' with an accent, so the file name "María' might be Ok for you, but do you get the same error as I do with María, when you create a file named 'Niñoß¿" (ñ with a tilde, German ß, Spanish punctuation mark ¿)?

Part #2 of bug puzzle: Why did ScanDisk on computer #1 detect file name errors, but not ScanDisk on computer#2? 2nd reproduceable example a ) on computer#1, with the USB drive containing the file María.txt connected, run ScanDisk and select Repair in the small window displaying "... ScanDisk repairs the error.... b ) rerun ScanDisk: no more error msg c ) after "successfully" repairing the error, connect the USB drive containing María.txt, to computer#2 and re-run ScanDisk. Lo und behold: the file name error with María.txt is reported again! Apparently repairing the file with ScanDisk didn't do anything to the USB HDD containing María.txt. But why did ScanDisk not report a file name error anymore on computer #1, after the repair? Possibly because ScanDisk wrote somewhere in \Windows\ or in \Program Files\ a list of "repaired" files for which ScanDisk/Windows should not report file name error messages, and María.txt was not yet on such a hypothetical list on computer #2. And such a hypothetical file list, if it exists at all, where could it be? In the cloaked files named Index.dat, or in \Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5, which cannot be readily accessed, or in the registry? A special feat of this "repair" is that a file name error, once it has been repaired by ScanDisk, is not reported anymore by Norton Disk Doctor either - except if you connect the USB HDD to another computer and run Norton Disk Doctor from that other computer, which results in the "repaired" error being displayed again by NDD. Re: File name cleanup The only utility for filename conversions I have seen under Google is convmv under Linux http://www.linux.com/feature/58689 but convmv seems to be made for converting to UTF-8/Linux. Again: Does anybody know of Win98/WinXP utilities which convert filenames with Western international characters to plain ASCII file names?

Here the most likely cause of the file name errors messages: They are not phoney messages, they are real errors as seen by Win98. Win98 cannot properly read all file names of files created under WinXP FAT32. Or in other words: WinXP FAT32 filenames are NOT backward compatible to Win98 when they contain international characters. I originally got into the mess because of the sluggish file delete problem under Win98 on my laptop, caused by the installation of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 on the laptop. As a workaround I did most copying/moving/deleting/renaming not under Win98 anymore, but under WinXP, which does not have this sluggish file delete problem. So when I process my eMule downloads, which contain a lot of files with international characters in their names, I boot from Win98 into WinXP, and move the eMule downloads under WinXP, from the internal HDD to an external USB HDD. But WinXP uses UTF-16 encoding of international characters, while Win98 uses UCF-2 encoding for international characters. WinXP apparently can read UCF-2 and UTF-16 encoded characters, but can only write file names with UTF-16 encoded characters. Win98 apparently can only read and write UCF-2 encoded characters. So by moving Win98-created-files under WinXP to the USB HDD, the international characters in their file names get converted to UTF-16, and Win98 has problems it. Here a reproduceable example: 1) create a file named María.txt (with an accent over the i) under WinXP. WinXP creates a UTF-16 encoded file. 2) boot into Win98. ScanDisk will display a file name error for María.txt, because Win98 wants UCF-2 encoded filenames. Here some info: "UTF-8 is, however, currently used primarily on AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, and Linux... UCS-2 encoding is a fixed two-byte encoding sequence and is a method for transforming Unicode values into byte sequences for Microsoft Windows platforms. It is the standard for Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, and Windows NT... UTF-16 is a superset of UCS-2, with the addition of some special characters in surrogate pairs. UTF-16 is the standard encoding for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003" http://www.datadirect.com/developer/odbc/u...round/index.ssp "UTF-8 [e.g. of Linux]... is able to represent any character in the Unicode standard, yet the initial encoding of byte codes and character assignments for UTF-8 is backwards compatible with ASCII. For these reasons, it is steadily becoming the preferred encoding for e-mail, web pages,[1] and other places where characters are stored or streamed" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8 File name cleanup When you manipulate files with international characters in their file names under WinXP, you create problems under Win98 (and probably also under Linux). The easiest workaround would be to use only ASCII characters in file names. Are there any Win98/WinXP utilities which convert filenames with Western international characters to plain ASCII file names? (e.g. remove accents in filenames + language specific changes in file names, such as ß->ss, ä->ae, ë->e, ñ->n, etc)

When I scan an external USB HDD (750GB, one partition 239GB, another partition 126GB) under Win98SE from my old Inspiron 7500 laptop with Norton Disk Doctor or MS ScanDisk, everything is Ok. When I scan the same external USB HDD from my recent Desktop computer under Win98SE, both Norton Disk Doctor and ScanDisk display phoney long file name error messages. This long file name error is detected in files whose names contain international characters (e.g. characters with accents, like "María" instead of "Maria"). Windows Explorer works ok, and after I replace in the file name the international character with a standard US character (e.g. í -> i), no more phoney error message under NDD and ScanDisk. NDD displays the following phoney error message: "Long File Name Error on Drive x The xxx folder contains one or more long filenames that are no longer associated with files. NDD will correct these errors by deleting these entries." Bye-bye eMule downloads if I don't watch out. ScanDisk displays the following phoney error message: "The xxx folder contains incorrect information about the file or folder whose MS-DOS name is <DOS 8.3 filename>. The file or folders's long name <...> is either stored incorrectly on your disk or is incompletely associated with <DOS 8.3 filename>." On the desktop, which does display LFN error messages, I have installed pure Internet Explorer 5.5 SP1 (v5.50.4522.1800), no updates, to avoid sluggish file deletes. On the laptop, which displays no phoney LFN error messages, I have installed Internet Explorer 6.0 (v6.00.2600.0000). On both computers I have ScanDisk v4.90.3000 (WinME) and MS Layer for Unicode v1.1.3790.0. This phoney error message is possibly caused by a Win98 DLL, not by NDD or ScanDisk, since the LFN error msg occurs under both NDD and ScanDisk. My old laptop without this error message contains a lot of software with many updates, while the Desktop with the error messages has a relatively recent installation of Win98SE, with most DLLs in \Windows\System\ much closer to the condition after installing Win98SE. I have already run NDD with both the ANSI and the Unicode versions of ATL.DLL, but this didn't help. I have updated \Windows\System\ with all the MS system files contained on the Norton System Works 2004 CD in \Support\Msredist\, it didn't help either. BTW, the NSW 2004 CD contains in \Msie\ MS Internet Explorer 6.00.2800.1106; I don't have the box of NSW 2004 anymore, but the NSW 2005 box lists as system requirement "MS Internet Explorer 5.5 or later" and Windows 98 (NOT Win95). When I originally installed Internet Explorer 5.5 SP1, in section Multi-Language Support I selected Language Auto-Selection, but I did not select any specific language. Any other ideas about how to get rid of these false and annoying error messages? With ScanDisk it is possible at least to de-select long file name checking, but not with NDD.

Thanks chromatic47

Do you get the problem when copying from/to an external USB HDD? If so, do you get the same problem when you use the USB 1.1 connection or a different USB cable?

My personal experience has been that about 1 out of every 10 USB cables is bad/low quality.My Thermaltake enclosures, which can take both PATA and SATA HDDs up to 2TB and have switchable USB/eSATA connectors plus a Win98 driver, seem to be particularly susceptible to low quality USB cables, maybe because of the additional circuitry inside (in contrast to my Adaptec ACS-100 enclosures, which only take PATA HDDs and have only a USB connector). About 2 months ago I was fiddling around for hours, trying to identify why copying a partition on a 750GB HDD in a Thermaltake was not finished under WinXP after 10 hours, and why WinXP gave a message that I should use a faster USB connection, even if the enclosure was connected to a USB 2.0 Cardbus card. Replacing the apparently bad USB cable with another one fixed the problem and restored copying speed. Since then I have looked at gold-plated USB cables, but I haven't decided yet, they are quite expensive.

I am using NVidia v77.72, which does not have a shutdown problem under Win98, together with a bfg Geforce 7800 GS OC video card (AGP, 256MB), a 20" ViewSonic VP2030b LCD monitor (max.resolution: 1600x1200), an E4500 dual core and 2GB of RAM. Unfortunately, the widescreen resolution 1440x900 is not on the nVidia Screen Resolution menu of v77.72, confirming your statement. Most new LCD monitors, however, have the widescreen resolutions 1920x1200, 1680x1050 or 1440x900. I cannot use nVidia v82.69 because its shutdown problem erratically blacks out, on the Viewsonic under DVI, POST-info and the System Commander boot menu for the selection of operating systems. Is there a fix for the v77.72 driver to support under Win98 newer widescreen resolutions? If not, this would be a major limitation on the usability of Win98 with modern hardware, like widescreen LCD monitors. The 16:10 widescreen resolution 1280x800 is actually displayed among the currently possible resolutions of v77.72. On another older desktop with the same ViewSonic VP2030b LCD monitor and the same bfg Geforce 7800 GS OC video card, but with Nvidia v82.16 (not v82.69) the widescreen resolution 1440x900 is not displayed on the Screen resolution menu, and cannot be set to 1440x900 via Add Custom resolution. Is this due to the Nvidia driver or due to the ViewSonic monitor? I.e. if I upgrade from Nvidia v82.16 to v82.69, will 1440x900 appear in the Screen resolutions menu for the Viewsonic? BTW this desktop has shutdown problems because of v82.16. I am about to buy a monitor for building a 2nd Win98-compatible desktop with modern hardware, and would like to get a widescreen LCD monitor for it, so your ideas are highly appreciated. The importance of this matter would even warrant a new topic, like "Running Win9x/ME with a widescreen LCD monitor" BTW, your ReadMe also lists 1600x1200 as widescreen, is that a typo or really widescreen?

I just made a search with Win98 Find -> Containing text in \Windows\ with the 9 digit registry key name. This 9-digit string occurs only in the registry file System.dat and its backups, but a couple of bytes after its occurence the hexeditor displays the following: CryptographyQ.......Q...........Machine Settings............CatRootE:\USWIN98\SYSTEM\CatRoot\....................Providers....................Trust"......."...........Initialization{.......{...&.......{D41E4F1D-A407-11D1-8BC9-00C04FA30A41}............$DLLSOFTPUB.DLL The registry has 2 entries under the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Cryptography\Providers\Trust\CertCheck\{D41E4F1D-A407-11D1-8BC9-00C04FA30A41}: SOFTPUB.DLL and SoftpubCheckCert So it's possibly an encryption key, but what might Microsoft want to encrypt differently for each installed instance of Windows? Or is it just the encrypted Product Key (cd key) used to install Windows, saved in the registry?

Do you use the US version of Win98? Does your IE have 128-bit encryption?