i bought a 4GB (that has geek squad logo on it) flash drive from bestbuy, it works fine on vista, but when i try to use it on my friends windows 98 it dose not get detected. the windows 98 dose not have internet, so i was wondering if there was a way to get the flash drive detected, maybe a program that i could download onto the drive that could get it to be detected by the 98... any help would be appreciated PS: i did not know the model number or processor type of the 98...

Win98 doesn't natively support flash drives. Remember that it's over 10 yrs old & flash drives weren't available back then. You can try going to the flash drive manufacturer's website to see if a Win98 driver is available. Your friend's system probably doesn't support USB 2.0 either.

You might want to look HERE.

You just use the term "flash drives" which is really a broad term. There are numerous types of flash drives which are accessed in different ways. However, responses so far have assumed you mean USB flash drives, often called pen drives, so I'll continue that assumption. I highly recommend using the generic driver provided here: http://toastytech.com/files/cruzerw... Use the w95usbflash11.zip version. It's small, simple, and works great. You just need to get the files in the zip file where the Windows 98 machine can read them, insert any USB pen drive into a USB slot, Windows will "found new hardware" and you just point to the .inf file and Windows will install the driver. From then on, Windows will use this driver for any USB pen drive put in the computer. So far, it's worked perfectly with every make/model I've tried. Also, all of the different flash drives I've used are all called USB 2.0, but they work fine with USB 1.1, which most Win98 machines will be. The manufactuer just emphasizes conforming to 2.0 because it works much faster and anyone with a newer computer wants that.

although I think the Maximum-Decim Native USB drivers for Win98se work better, pyrolitic. read here: http://www.msfn.org/board/Maximum-D... install these if using Win98 2nd edition v4.10.2222. And for those using Win98 FE (1st edition v4.10.1998), try out the Windows 98FE USB Mass Storage Device Drivers mentioned here: http://www.technical-assistance.co.... both of these drivers support a much wider range of usb flash devices than the one found at that toastytech site.