others have tried in the past, so do a forum and or google search.   you're not going to have a lot of luck though getting it to "normal."  a lot of people have problems even getting 2k to work at 100% on the newer inspiron systems, much less 98.

it might be easier to look at what you have that needs win98.  can compatibility mode help?

Thanks, but I've already Googled myself stupid.  But hey, trying new drivers is fun.....!

And thanks for the suggestion, but this isn't really about compatibility; I take care of a lot of apartment building resident managers with little or no experience with computers.  Most of them have older (cheaper) Win98 machines provided to them in order to do certain reports for us.  Lately there have been some specialized software programs "show up" (usually thanks to HUD or the owner of the property) that has to make our lives miserable for a while, until I can come up with specific instructions or work-arounds for these Managers, many of whom still don't know that theTaskbar is.  I got tired of wasting my time going out to a site with something I thought would work, only to find that it would not (I have XP Pro SP2).  But ya know, I guess even 98 as I have it on my partition is better than nothing! 

it depends upon what you need from that partition of course.  if you need a realtime operating system to look at while you give directions, what you have will probably work fine.  if you need something that will run win98 apps and perform to win98 specs, you may have a few problems.

you might honestly consider a very cheap desktop with basic (read old) hardware to solve your problems.  around 5 years ago I built a machine for well under 1000 to run with windows ME.  such a machine (or at least the parts) is probably selling on ebay now for under 100 (for instance a video card I payed $190 for I recently bought for $7).  consider investing a little to buy a system that will have no problems with win98 if it is important to your work -- it won't be a big expense.

Aloha Rod,

THANK YOU!  That's what I was looking for!  If the registry entry doesn't work, I'll just start over and use the "/p i" switch when installing again (and yes, it was 98SE!).

I'll let you know what happens, and again, thank you SO much!

Lois (the Birdymama)

Well, the news is, nothing worked.  I fully formatted the partition 3 times, even deleted the partition and started over; no matter how I installed 98SE, the switch "/p i" seemed to make no difference... and neither did the registry entry.  I installed 98Se from the hard drive, from the CD, you name it, it didn't work.  Further, I am positive I have the correct chipset .exe from Intel, so I know that's not it.