Windows 98 SE S.M.A.R.T not working despite SMARTVSD.VXD being present

[sk9392]

Hi all, I'm trying to enable viewing of SMART info for SSDs in my PC. The motherboard is a GA-EX58-UD4, and I've tried SIV (System Information Viewer), Hard Disk Sentinel and speedfan. When I start HDS, it just gives a message that:

"Hard disk not found. The SMART driver is missing from the current Win9x/ME system. Do you want to automatically update the configuration and restart the computer now?"

Even if I click Yes and restart, I get the same message when starting up HDS next time. I can confirm that I have SweetLow's patched smartvsd.vxd in both C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM and C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS. SIV detects the volumes but isn't able to give any SMART info on any of them, and speedfan straight up doesn't detect any hard disks.

The SSD connections are as follows: SSD on SATA channels 0 master/slave and on channel 1 master. A SATA DVD drive on channel 1 slave. One CD drive on IDE master channel. I'm sure I'm missing something, so if anyone has an idea on how I can enable these utilities to detect the hard drives and return their SMART info?

[SweetLow]

22 hours ago, sk9392 said:

I can confirm that I have SweetLow's patched smartvsd.vxd in both C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM and C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS

0. Use the newest versions of ESDI_506.DPR & AHCI.PDR too.

1. C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM is not need, of course.

2. Literally few days ago when I solved problem of executing ATA commands (like setting PATA transfer mode for PATA device on SATA Host - PATA Device bridge) I made the dumper of IDENTIFY info without using smartvsd.vxd interface too, so for the first take:

https://github.com/LordOfMice/Tools/blob/master/atainfo.zip

unzip content and run DumpIDENTIFY.exe.

You should get 3 .DAT files and no errors or warnings.

3. If success on step 2 then try to use SMARTInfo - this is the same thing as DumpIDENTIFY but with smartvsd.vxd interface using. You have to get IDENTIFY.DAT dumps too and no errors.

 

[sk9392]

On 5/7/2026 at 3:20 AM, SweetLow said:

0. Use the newest versions of ESDI_506.DPR & AHCI.PDR too.

1. C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM is not need, of course.

2. Literally few days ago when I solved problem of executing ATA commands (like setting PATA transfer mode for PATA device on SATA Host - PATA Device bridge) I made the dumper of IDENTIFY info without using smartvsd.vxd interface too, so for the first take:

https://github.com/LordOfMice/Tools/blob/master/atainfo.zip

unzip content and run DumpIDENTIFY.exe.

You should get 3 .DAT files and no errors or warnings.

3. If success on step 2 then try to use SMARTInfo - this is the same thing as DumpIDENTIFY but with smartvsd.vxd interface using. You have to get IDENTIFY.DAT dumps too and no errors.

 

You are amazing! Thank you so much. The S.M.A.R.T reporting now works properly on my Win98 system