Dave-H

Thanks so much Sfor, that's brilliant! I had assumed that being an INF file it could be loaded through Device Manager, obviously not. It hadn't occurred to me to use the Network setup dialogue instead! I did what you said, and the driver apparently installed OK. When I rebooted, the "Intel Gigabit Network Connection" had appeared in Device Manager, but was disabled. I enabled it and rebooted again, and it stayed enabled. It says it's working normally, but there are no driver files loaded for it. It's not actually working of course. If I go into the Network setup again the adapter is not listed. No automatic modifications had been made to CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT. I tried manually adding the NET START command to AUTOEXEC.BAT, and then just got an error message on boot saying "Error 2183: The default network services have already been started." Any ideas? Cheers and thanks again, Dave.

Thanks again submix8c! That link is exactly where the driver I've got came from. You've certainly given me a lot more food for thought, I'll come back when I've digested it all and tried a few things! Cheers, Dave.

1096 is there in the INF section OK. E1000.DOS is indeed 64592 bytes, although it seems to be dated 14th March 2014. I got the driver directly from Intel's site. It was supposed to be the latest version (19.5), and the digital signature on the downloaded PRODOS.exe file is dated 28th October 2014.

@dencorso Thanks den, I looked at that thread, which seems to be mainly about graphics driver problems, but couldn't quite work out what had been done to get the DOS network driver to work. Sfor wasn't using an Intel driver of course. The Intel DOS driver seems to consist of just three files, E1000.DOS, which I assume is the actual driver, and PROTOCOL.INI and OEMSETUP.INF. The inf file does not seem to work in Windows as a normal inf file, I can't update the driver with it for instance as it just says there's no information about my hardware there. I tried loading E1000.DOS in CONFIG.SYS, and all that happened was that the system just rebooted when CONFIG.SYS loaded, even when booting to DOS! I had to go into XP to put the file back as it was before. Also, there is already a protocol.ini file in my Windows folder, so I'm not quite sure what to do with the one that Intel supplied. I don't want to end up with my existing plugin card network hardware not working! There are a couple of readme files with the driver, but none that say anything about how to actually use it!

OK, I'll try anything once! I'll let you know if I get any joy.

Thanks all, yes I looked at all that and it does seem that I'm onto a loser here. I did look at the DOS driver, and it's good that they made that available for system setup purposes, but it's wouldn't be any use under Windows of course. Oh well, it's always worth asking. If there was any solution at all, you can be sure that someone here would know it! Cheers, Dave.

Confirmed! Let's hope it lasts...............

Thanks Drugwash! That tallies with what I found when I tried to install those drivers. The INF files contained no information about my hardware, and if I manually added it the driver appeared to install but didn't work. I don't think there are any official Intel drivers that will work on Windows 98SE with that hardware, I was just clutching at straws a bit in the hope that maybe there was a generic or modified driver somewhere out there that would do the job, even if only at a basic level to get internet access on 98SE through that connection.

I assume it would have been e1000w9x.sys. There are e100bnt.sys and e100bnt5.sys files too, but I assume they are for Windows NT 4.0 and 2000/XP respectively. @submix8c Thanks! I think I have actually already tried that PRO1000 driver, and it didn't work, but I will have another go. I have never tried the "ProXGB" driver, whatever that is, so I will give that a try too.

Wow, thanks for the quick response! Unfortunately I think it's a bit more fundamental than that. When the driver supposedly installed, Device Manager said that the device couldn't start and to update the driver, and the ProSet Windows Control Panel Applet said that the driver was there but no card was detected!

My motherboard (Supermicro X7DAL-E) has two on-board Intel Ethernet connections. The hardware ID is PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1096. I was wondering if anyone knew of a driver for this that would work under 98SE. I have tried the last Windows 98 Intel ProSet drivers, and even if the necessary data is manually added to the INF file, the driver installs but doesn't actually work. Any suggestions for possible alternatives i could try would be gratefully received. I am using a PCI card for internet access under 98SE at the moment, but I would really like to free the slot for something else!

I installed the update with relative ease on my other machine. All that was needed was a run of SFC /scannow which restored the missing Start Menu folders. Why the update can't just restore the missing folders itself as part of its routine rather than just failing is quite beyond me! As I said before, if those folders are so essential, why does the system not stop you deleting or re-naming them? Surely if they are necessary system folders Windows File Protection should just restore them automatically as it does with other system files. The update also installed KB3014442 as a separate install, which I installed manually from the downloaded offline files on the other machine. What that is I have no idea, searching for information just takes you to the KB3000850 information. It's obviously part of it, but why it should be a separate download and history entry is strange. All sorted now anyway. I have simply hidden the Start Menu folders that the update needed, rather than deleting them, so hopefully everything will work OK straight away next time! Thanks for all your help everyone, and I hope this thread helps others in the same situation as I was. Cheers, Dave.

Well I finally got it installed! I did a bit more research, and found a forum post which said that running "DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup" before running "DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth" made the latter work OK. I ran "DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup" and got "Failed Error 5 Access is Denied". Tried again in a "clean boot" configuration, and it eventually worked OK. Tried "DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth" again, and it still failed on several attempts with the 80240021 time out error. Finally abandoned that and just ran "SFC /scannow" again, which this time found no errors to fix. Tried installing the update again, and finally it worked! Now I've just got to get it installed on the other machine. For goodness sake why does this have to be so hard?!

I tried SFC /scannow which seemed to repair the Start Menu folders. Tried the update install again, and again it failed, but with a different error this time 80070476. Then tried the DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth command, which also failed and said it had made no changes. Tried a second time with the same result. It returned error 80240021, which seems to be something to do with an operation timing out. Error 80070476 appears to be ERROR_TOO_MANY_LINKS ("An attempt was made to create more links on a file than the file system supports.") What's all that about? I've uploaded the logs to Dropbox. https://www.dropbox.com/s/ztsyoaydtqs0qn9/CBS.log?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/pp4vklco3b3pm9k/DISM.log?dl=0

Surely Microsoft haven't done this deliberately. The Windows Update site for Windows 98SE worked for a full five years after support for the OS ended. Anyway, automatic updates seem to still work, so there's absolutely no reason why the Microsoft Update site shouldn't! I think this is just an oversight, and once it's brought to their attention MS will fix it. After all, they do have corporate users paying them to still support Windows XP as far as I remember, so they will certainly want it working again!

Thanks MagicAndre1981, it sounds like you could well be on the right track here, as I have highly customised Start Menus on both machines. I have Classic Start Menu installed, and I don't know if that might be a factor. I've tried re-creating the folders you mention, although there seems to be a bit of confusion in the system as to whether the folder is called "Accessories" or "Windows Accessories". The names seem to be interchangeable and when you re-name using one name, sometimes you actually get the other! Unfortunately I've tried twice more with the folders re-added, and it's still failing. It's taking a lot longer than before, with much disk activity, and I was really hopeful, but at the end it's still showing "failed" with the same error number. Do you have a list of all the system default Start Menu folders anywhere? I couldn't find one on-line. I think if I can restore them all to as they were "out of the box" this might fix it. Not just the system ones, but the user ones too. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure that just temporarily uninstalling Classic Start Menu won't put the menus back to their defaults, as it actually edits the contents of the folders. Cheers, Dave.

Has anyone actually managed to install this update? I have two Windows 8.1 Pro installations, one 32 bit and the other 64 bit, and I cannot get this update to install on either machine. It downloads OK, and then spends ages apparently installing, then fails with error 80070002. I've tried with the anti-virus programmes disabled, no difference. Neither machine uses Avast, one has Trend Titanium Internet Security, the other just the Windows Defender. I've tried downloading the off-line installer packages and installing from them, again no difference. All my research as come to a blank. Most causes of error 80070002 seem to be due to corruption in the Windows Update store, but that mainly stops things downloading altogether, and I've tried clearing it and all the fixes Microsoft suggest, including the troubleshooters, all with no effect. All it does is lose all your update history, and doesn't fix the problem! On an off-topic but related subject, if you click on the "get help with this error" link, you just get "nothing found" which seems par for the course with almost all of the Microsoft help links in the Windows 8/8.1 GUI, which I think is an absolute disgrace considering how long Windows 8 has now been around!

Same for me as far as muweb.dll is concerned, but the "new" version of MicrosoftUpdateCatalogWebControl.dll is identical to the one I was already using, version 7.4.7057.248. Same from me @b3270791, welcome to MSFN! I was so pleased that the fix you gave actually worked that I forgot my manners! To have this happen does seem to have been a little careless on Microsoft's part! The trouble is that if they patch it no-one will be able to get the patch unless they have automatic updates switched on, as they obviously can't get it manually through the update site if it's not working!

Well, well, thank you so much, that has fixed it! Did that come from Microsoft?

The "cannot display site" message is back now for me. The "find solutions" link is also not working, "HTTP Error 404 - File or directory not found". The other links seem to be still OK. I successfully manually downloaded and installed KB3011780 using the automatic updates option, which I have set to inform me of updates but not to actually do anything until I tell it to, so that is still working as it should be.

I'm now getting 404 - File or directory not foundon the IE8 Microsoft Update link, with the Windows Update address in the address bar, so it looks as if it can't re-direct. I was getting this earlier yesterday too, but it then went to the "cannot display the site" message.

My two Windows XP machines have all the latest POS Ready updates too, and Microsoft Update is broken on both of them! It was working after the updates were installed, so I don't think that one of them has broken it, but I would like to know which update you now have to install to fix it!

I used VBEMP for a while on my Windows 98 installation, again as there were no 98 drivers for the AMD HD range card I was using. I also found that anything that opened a DOS command prompt box ("attrib" for instance) produced a blank screen, apparently because it was crashing to a resolution setting that my monitor couldn't display properly. Strangely, full screen DOS "boxes" seemed to work OK, it was just windowed ones that didn't! I also found that the very slow updating when moving windows or scrolling was very annoying. I had to hack the VGA mode table on the card to get 1920x1080 for my widescreen monitor, which worked fine but only on the DVI output, not on the VGA output, where it was slightly zoomed in with broken up text rendering. I eventually changed the card for a Radeon X850, which there are Windows 98 drivers for.

Well I've installed all the offered POSReady updates since XP EOS, including the Cumulative Security Updates for IE8 and have had no problems with IE8. Whether it's actually any more secure with them is impossible to tell of course, but if the updates don't cause any issues why not install them anyway?

Thanks Den, yes the price did seem to be a bit too good to be true, but it worked OK! Whether it's a dodgy key of some sort I haven't dared look to find out, but all OK so far. I activated Windows 8 and then did the free upgrade to Windows 8.1. Seems perfectly happy with the hardware, the only thing i had to manually download and install a driver for was the Adaptec SCSI card, but that's fine now and I can see all my drives fine. I will look into Grub4DOS and see what it can do. BTW, the nice man at Supermicro gave me a link to the files to re-flash the GLAN hardware on the motherboard, and re-flashing completely fixed the problem with them, and they're now working fine. I can't find any drivers for them that will work in Windows 98SE unfortunately, but I will keep looking as I'd dearly love to be able to get rid of the plug-in Ethernet card that's taking up a slot. It's really annoying to have to use that when I've now got two on-board Ethernet connections working, just to get Internet access on Windows 98! Cheers, Dave.