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My solution to problems with Realtek '97 drivers and USB devices/drivers as well.
Here is an account of my own experiences with Realtek '97 drivers that you might want to try:
I too had upgraded my motherboard with an on board Realtek '97 sound card and then did a reinstall of Windows 98SE. For the longest time, I couldn't get the sound card to work on it, no matter how many times I uninstalled and re-installed the drivers for it and the operating system. I had given up trying to get it to work then one day after I had my computer lock up on bootup, I booted up in safe mode and was looking in the device manager, I happened to click on "Sound, Video and Game Controllers" and there were several drivers listed there (most of them were listed as Microsoft devices) that hadn't shown up in the device manager when Windows was running in normal mode, of course you cannot see the status of a device when running safe mode, but I decided to delete all of them, including the Realtek '97 driver, just to see what would happen and rebooted. Windows found the devices and installed the drivers and I almost got blasted out of my seat because the volume was on high. I haven't had a problem since. While I have no way to determine what was wrong before, I think it was because Windows had installed the other drivers before the Realtek '97 drivers.
After I finally got the sound card to work, I decided to check the Device Manager in safe mode again and I found several USB devices that may or may not have been installed on my computer in the past. These devices had not shown up in the Device Manager when running in normal mode. I deleted all of the USB devices including storage devices and a Type 80 Disk Drive. I did not delete the Type 47 because I know that is the standard IDE Disk Drive. This has now helped me with installing other USB devices that wouldn't install before.
One more thing that I discovered and have never seen mentioned anywhere is that because on my old Toshiba laptop had the Windows key on the upper right hand corner of the keyboard next to the Break key, I would accidently hit both at the same time and the System properties would pop up without having to go into the control panel and from there you can select the Device Manager. I have since found out that you can just hold down the Windows key, then press Break. I've check it out on other versions of Windows and it appears to work on them all including Windows XP Home, Pro and Media Center.
You just have to love Windows, so many things to go wrong and they usually do. I think Windows proves that Murphy's law is correct.
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