After some ado, I was able to get Win 98 4.10.2222 to access, read and write to my external USB Maxtor 160 GB drive. Initially, the problem was a missing USB mass storage device driver, which Seagate/Maxtor does not provide for Win 98. I found that solution at https://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/win98fe-usb-mass-storage-drivers.php

Next, I had to enable Win 98 to recognize a NTFS volume. Solution at https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-win98/.

Now, everything works perfectly, except ClamWin. The exact message I receive is "WARNING: f:\: Can't access file". F: appears in ClamWin's UI, and Scan with ClamWin appears in the right click menu on F: drive, but ClamWin cannot scan any F: file in either case. Any suggestions?

Try to scan the USB from Windows Explorer by right clicking on the drive. If that is what you have already done, then open ClamWin and click on the USB from the user interface.

Next-to-last suggestion: get Clam Sentinel and configure it to detect and monitor new drives and ask to scan new drives--see if that works. If it does, you will get real-time monitoring of the USB.

Last suggestion: why not join the ClamWin beta testers so you can spot problems like this next time? Win 98 is getting difficult to support, and it's about time Win 98 users took some responsibility for helping to spot stuff like this.

Regards,

Hello Bob, thank you for your suggestions but no joy. It's really odd that only ClamWin has a problem with the USB drive. Win 98, McAfee Stinger, Dr Web Cureit, Spybot S & D, AVZ AV, DataRecovery, Karen's Replicator (a backup program), Killbox, Free Download Manager, etcetera, can all scan/read/write to that drive flawlessly.

Regarding my beta run participation, I already apologized for my absence at https://forums.clamwin.com/viewtopic.php?t=3180. My XP box had just hopelessly died and I was frantic trying to get my only other system operational. Beta testing on a half baked system isn't prudent, either, don't you think?

Also, in that same thread you mentioned possibly running ClamWin/Clam Sentinel from the USB drive to save resources. I assume you mean as portable apps and not installed? When I looked at the ClamWin page at https://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/clamwin_portable, it indicates Win 2k as the oldest supported OS. Can you confirm that? Or, have they simply dropped Win 98 and Win ME from their documentation, as many sites have?

Also II, I believe I have solved my resource problem with a different browser, K-Meleon. It seems that Opera and Firefox were sucking the life out of my measly 400 MGHZ processor.

Thanks for your attention.

Sorry, I forgot about that beta forum post. I'm glad you found K-Meleon. Andrea Russo is thinking of running a OS extension that lets Win 98 run XP stuff.

Yes, I was previously referring to ClamWin Portable. I suspect that ClamWin Portable will work on Win 98 for the most part, since it is using ClamWin code, but I'm no expert. Try it and see.

Perhaps there is code related to USB scans that is particular to newer OSes. I have not had any problems scanning with Vista/Windows 7.

Regards,

Is that something Andrea is developing personally, or a third party app? I'm currently running KernelEx which seems to do a good job. Their homepage is https://kernelex.sourceforge.net and there's a large thread about it at https://www.msfn.org/board/topic/130936-kernelex-45-final.


OK I'll download it and see if it will fly. I found an old .96.1 installer on my external drive, so of course had to try it. Same result, unfortunately.


Possibly, ClamWin used to scan the same USB drive when I had it connected to the XP system.

Thanks, I'll let you know how the portable version works out.

I believe Andrea was going to use KernelEx to run XP programs on his Windows 98 computer. Alch has some instructions (in FAQ, I think) on making ClamWin portable, or you can use the official ClamWin Portable download. There are some instructions in the Sentinel Simple Guide on running Sentinel on USB.

Regards,

Well, there is a difference in messages depending on where the ClammWin Portable folder is located. Placed on the desktop, I get "WARNING: Can't access file" when scanning a F: file. Placed on the F: drive, I get "ERROR: Can't get file status" when scanning a F: file. Also, ClamWin Portable could not be updated from F:, either, with "Error: ...cannot open database file..." The installed version of ClamWin was completely removed while I did this. I don't know what it means, but there is some sort of difference.

Maybe during the next beta run Alch can figure it out. Or. I'll just have to live with it. I mainly use the external drive for back ups and it isn't usually connected otherwise. However, I was going to start using it for data storage to free up space from the small 10 GB internal drive.

PS I had seen the instructions to make ClamWin a portable app, but it specifies for XP or higher. https://www.clamwin.com/content/view/118/89/

Update: I solved this problem by reformatting the external hard drive to FAT32. ClamWin and ClamWin portable now access and scan the drive fine, so I'm a happy camper.