This “Retro Windows Techniques” series is not about the techniques that are already well known among users. If it is, why I need to write this? lol
All these techniques apply to the old versions of Windows, and they are not quite known by others. Well, I admit that I have some “nostalgia” feelings. :)
Some of you may know that, the USB support in Windows 95 can only be used in OEM Service Release 2.1 or 2.5 versions (in some regions, a lot of people called these versions “Windows 97″, even though this name also referred to the OEM Service Release 2 version, which does not support USB). You can search and read the following Microsoft knowledge base articles for more information:
- Availability of Universal Serial Bus Support in Windows 95
- Files Included with the USB Supplement in OSR2.1 and OSR2.5
Notes on 2024/02/28
The original Microsoft Support links are gone due to the purge of old contents Microsoft did a couple of years ago. Links are now replaced with BetaArchive Wiki ones. Hope it lasts for a while. x_x
The file name of the USB Supplement package is called “usbsupp.exe”, and it is a self-extracting installer. Originally the setup procedure is simple: double-click, agree to the license agreement, follow the prompts and here you go. But due to the unknown reason which Microsoft considered about, when you are installing this update, it will start Windows 95’s ScanDisk. Here’s the problem: This ScanDisk program is designed in a way that, if the hard drive has any write operations, the disk scanning will be restarted. In my virtual machine, even if I did not have anything installed, it will occasionally restarted the scanning process for no reason – Furthermore, the disks of virtual machines are impossible to have disk failure problems!
I searched on the Internet, and found that some other users also encountered the same problem – There is even an unlucky guy who got his scanning process restarted more than 10 times, and it was still going. Is there a way to bypass this extremely time-consuming disk scanning process?
Well, it always has a way. Really simple, though:
- Manually open the ScanDisk program without executing the update package.
- Let ScanDisk start the disk scanning process. Standard mode is fine.
- Run the update package, and follow the prompts.
You will surprisedly see that, the update package figures ScanDisk is working, so it just bypasses the disk scanning process and installs the update!