bluetooth dongle

[moli]

hello, im on win 98 and ive just bought an MSI star key dongle for bluetooth, as its a hand-me-down pc i dont have the win 98 cd, so im having major trouble installing. it has asked for a couple of drivers which i downloaded seperately from random sites, but iot gets to a point where it tells me it cannot install blusettoth dial up network device. when complete it tells me no device is plugged in but it certainly is. any help?

p.s. i work for a BB isp and we recommend your site, (none officially of course) becasue its ace.keep up the good work.

[NHH]

Hi moli, first of all thanks for your support over at your ISP (judging by your IP... Carphone Warehouse Broadband?). Good to find out there are more ISP techs using the site for what it's designed for. Any update/link requests just post in the 'Site Requests' thread.

Anyway...

The first thing that shouts at me is Windows 98!!... new USB device!!... expect problems.
If it's Windows 98 Second Edition (SE) you've at least got a chance of getting it working, on NHH's fixes page the first Windows 98 fix is intended for the usual 98 USB detection problems (link here).
Also if that doesn't make a difference there is an unofficial service pack for Windows 98SE (SE Only) which contains all updates for 98SE (as they are no longer available from Microsoft).

Now if it's not 98SE give up now and install a later OS. Also Windows ME is not recommended, you'll spend just as much time rebooting it as using it.
You didn't specify the specs of this PC but if it's an oldun the amount of RAM is key to what you'll be able to install.
If you have a copy of XP, that will run OK with an old CPU + 128 MB RAM with the eye candy turned off...

Otherwise you may want to consider installing a Linux distribution which you can legitimately download for free.
The average Linux distro will perform better on an old PC than an upto date Windows version, you won't have to search around for drivers like you have to with Windows (the latest kernels just finds everything and works, unless the hardware is completely wierd) and the applications come included with thousands more packages freely available, worth it if you don't mind the initial learning curve.
Recommended Linux distros would be (depending on RAM) SuSE, Ubuntu, Debian, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS

Hope that helps.