Windows 98 First Edition crashing on login

[IPalindromeI]

I recently got an old USB 1.1 WiFI adapter (D-Link DWL-122, Prism3 chipset) and hooked it up. I installed the config utility and the drivers, but now whenever I reboot, it crashes. It's this weird process that immediately is not responsive and locks up the system to the point only double three finger salutes (to force a reboot) and cursor movement works. If I kill it before it locks up the system, I log in normally, but it seems to hard reboot with ScanDisk running after it wakes up from its sudden halt. I only go to log in once though, so I'm not sure about this.

Any help? The adapter works fine on another PC.

Edited September 13, 2011 by IPalindromeI

[submix8c]

What OS is on the other PC?

What are the specs of this PC?

[IPalindromeI]

Windows XP; I installed the config utiliuty and the XP version of the drivers.

The problematic one has a Cyrix 6x86, 28 MB RAM, and a SiS USB chip.

[Tripredacus]

The problematic one has a Cyrix 6x86, 28 MB RAM, and a SiS USB chip.

Are you sure that your USB on this PC (SiS) is a 1.1 controller? Does a USB key work on it doing a read and a write?

[IPalindromeI]

This is the second USB device I tried. I used a wireless mouse and keyboard, which seemed to work fine. (using PS/2 though.)

It might be a 1.0 controller, i think it's 1.1 though. Does 1997-1998 sound like the time of 1.1 or 1.0?

(after accidentally starting this as new topic, shame on me)

[Tripredacus]

That time frame it would defiantely be a 1.0 controller. USB 1.1 controllers came out shortly before the USB Zip 100 drive to give a time frame. The reason I know this is because I worked for Iomega at that time and MANY people (in the year 2000) had computers with USB 1.0 controllers. The behaviour of a USB Zip 100 on a 1.0 controller was either:

1. Didn't work at all

2. Was really slow or data corruption

3. BSOD/Lockups

The reasons for this is that USB 1.0 only supported unidirectional data transfer. So things like keyboards, mice, microphones, webcams... these were fine for the most part. Even those legendary Altec Lansing speakers (being the first ever USB device to have drivers built into a version of Windows) would probably be fine. Any devices that needed to send and receive data would have a heck of a time on a USB 1.0! However USB 1.1 solved this problem as it allowed data to be sent and received.

Many of the early controllers got a bad rap just because they were 1.0 and people didn't know until they tried to use a 1.1 device on it. Some notable ones were SiS, VIA and ALI, all of which usually used the term "Open Host Controller" in Device Manager. As for how to specifically tell if you have a 1.0 or 1.1, you'd need to test out another confirmed (send/receive) USB 1.1 device. It wouldn't have to be a Zip 100, you could use a USB Floppy drive.

But even then, it may not mean so much, since WiFi USB adapters, especially on older USB controllers (even 1.1) can be flakey. I had similar problems with getting USB WiFi to work on my Win98 (and PCI WiFi also) with either BSOD, Windows Protection Errors or plain not working. And my motherboard has USB 2.0 ports in it!

If all else fails, you can try to find a USB 2.0 PCI card if your PC has a slot available for it.

[IPalindromeI]

I was thinking of giving it a shot, but it doesn't seem to actually be even doing anything remotely intensive with the device - this process named WZCBDL9X locks up hard on startup. The worst it could be doing is scanning for points.