Question about installing on G31 Chipset

[tyou634]

Almost all of the drivers for G31 chipset installed okay, except for PCI System Management Bus. And because of that, I can't install audio and video card driver. I was wondering if it's possible to make it work, since I see people using W98QI with much more modern hardware.

In the registry it shows as VEN8086/DEV27DA

[oerg866]

Hello, the SMBus driver is irrelevant to GPU device installation and there is no driver for it ultimately...

Can you describe in what way GPU and audio driver install fails?

[tyou634]

Well, since my GPU isn't supported by W98, i'm just trying luck with the unofficial driver, so let's omit that.
But the SB0100 acts weirdly. First time I tried to install the driver it appeared ok, and after reboot it just showed Code 11 and never worked. But this time it showed BS and same Code 11 after reboot. From what I gather, these drivers should be working on W98 and even on DOS.

[oerg866]

Well to be honest I don't know what to tell you other than play around with a few different vxd and wdm driver versions

I can't really help here :(

[tyou634]

Okay, no problem. Not sure what playing around with vxd and wdm driver means. I assume the ones in the Windows folder.
Thanks for the answers anyway. Guess it's better to just build an appropriate hardware supported by W98.

[andrew-hoffman]

Please list your full system specs when asking for support.

Also, unfortunately QuickInstall does not fix all compatibility problems with Win98 on hardware much newer than it was designed for and DOS compatible sound support is particularly complicated.

The Sound Blaster Live doesn't like sharing an IRQ with any other device especially when using the VxD drivers (which are the 95/98 DOS compatible ones, the WDM drivers are 98se and newer and only have the windows standard DOS compatibility which doesn't do the FM synthesis). You may be able to move your sound card to a different PCI slot or reserve an interrupt for it in the BIOS.

The best PCI sound cards for compatibility on newer chipsets seem to be the ESS Solo-1 and the CMI8738. There is an alpha driver for the onboard HD Audio that you could try but it won't have DOS compatibility either.

[oerg866]

Yes, and please use the bug report form, it's there for a reason :)

…

On Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 21:10 Drew Hoffman ***@***.***> wrote: *andrew-hoffman* left a comment (oerg866/win98-quickinstall#98) <#98 (comment)> Please list your full system specs when asking for support. Also, unfortunately QuickInstall does not fix all compatibility problems with Win98 on hardware much newer than it was designed for. The Sound Blaster Live doesn't like sharing an IRQ with any other device especially when using the VxD drivers (which are the 95/98 DOS compatible ones, the WDM drivers are 98se and newer and don't have the DOS compatibility). You may be able to move your sound card to a different PCI slot or reserve an interrupt for it in the BIOS. Please list your full system specs when asking for support. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#98 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAISOPNHLNIXUROWBOUFBI34QHB2VAVCNFSM6AAAAACWOAW3AOVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHM2DANBRHA4TQOJSGE> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[tyou634]

Sorry, I wasn't sure what type it should be, because I still think it's just my setup problem. I see bunch of videos and people using it on much modern systems.
Core 2 Duo E8400
GeForce9600 GSO
DG31PR MoBo
SB0100
3GB RAM
I'll try to find WDM drivers and try others. I hope if I buy and older GPU it will work. Otherwise I'll have to drop the idea of having PC with both XP and 98.
Different PCI slot didn't seem to work, and this MB's BIOS doesn't have an option for an interrupt.
Apologies for anything wrong from my side, it's my first time posting anything here and I'm not very knowledgable about all that stuff.

[mskrzynski]

There are no drivers for your GPU. You can only try universal SoftGPU or VBEMP drivers.
82.69 unofficial drivers pack claiming support for GeForce 8000/9000 series is a lie. Only works up to 7000 series. As for Radeon, anything up to the X850 series. (X1000 series doesn't work)
@oerg866 Perhaps make a GPU compatibility chart?
As for SB Live, I also had similar issues with installing drivers on 98SE with my SB0060 model, even on a period correct ASUS CUBX motherboard. Never had such issues with other sound cards.

[LordOfMice]

I don't know what to tell you other than play around with a few different vxd and wdm driver versions

No, Eric, you know this pretty well but do not realize this. Exactly as modern LLMs - they know all but understand none :)

This is IRQ sharing conflict problem of SB emulation from Creative and USB [EHCI] controller with very high probability. I mentioned this as the reference problem generator along with ATA Controllers IRQ sharing.

P.S. And I ready to bet that some of the USB controllers uses IRQ5 in this case.

[tyou634]

Yeah, I know there are not drivers for 9600, I was hoping that these 82.69 would work. but oh well.
Guess, I'm stuck at building another pc for that. Thanks for the help everyone!

[mskrzynski]

@tyou634 @LordOfMice I've managed to get my SB0060 card working with audigy_2_zs_drivers_for_sound_blaster_live_2.1 drivers from https://www.philscomputerlab.com/sound-blaster-live.html with my ASUS CUBX and ASRock Z77 Pro3 platforms but on both of those it wasn't a stable experience. Constant installation and system hangups, a bluescreen once, ASD system automatically being executed to prevent the VXD driver from loading, and even registry screwups causing my 7900 GTX gpu to not work all of a sudden forcing me to restore older registry via SCANREG. Even saw once BOOTLOG being stuck at initializing EHCI device but I'm pretty sure SB emulation wasn't installed at that time. Also didn't have better luck with WDM drivers as well.
Once again proving that SB Live is not a good card for Win9x - it is very much fine for Win2000 and newer, same card works in Win11 with the kx drivers!

[oerg866]

I'm closing this since it's not really a QuickInstall bug. Feel free to continue the discussion in the "discussions" tab or perhaps seek help in a discord server or forums perhaps?