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What does this do?<br><br>I have a friend who spilled soda in her laptop and now the thing will only boot into Safe Mode. My suspicion was that something internal was damaged and every time Win98 would try to load the drivers for it, it would crap out and stop. By booting into Safe Mode I removed the PCI to USB bus device through Device Manager and now the system boots fine. Everything <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><i> seems</i><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> to work fine. I even installed a Netgear PCMCIA ethernet card and it's working great.<br><br>Device Manager does show, however, that there is no USB controller in the system. This is obviously because of the device that I removed, which means that she will not be able to use any USB devices. Any other side effects that anyone can think of? If this is the only thing, then I'm sure that she'll just live with it the way that it is because, as a college student, she doesn't have the money to get it fixed. <p><BR><table style='Filter: Shadow(Color=#0000FF,Direction=225)'><tr><td><span class=''usertitle'><img src=http://www.xmenclan.org/avatars/porsche2.jpg align=left><BR>XMENPorsche[DTM]<BR>Semi-retired Leader of the XMEN<BR>Leader - Dragon Talon Mercenaries<BR>Citizen of New Fenecia<BR>Eater of Chicken Fried Steak<BR><br>"You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take." - Wayne Gretzky<br><br>"One of the hallmarks of a disciple of Christ is that he always leaves things better than he found it." - Chip Ingram</span></td></tr></table></p><i></i>

The USB devices have to communicate with the system somehow, and this is managed by a USB controller that is connected like a PCI card. <br><br>Yes, the only effect of what you've done will be the disabling of any USB device.<br><br>(If you really need one you could probably get a PCMCIA card that had a USB connecter. I've not seen them, but then I don't shop for PCMCIA cards either.) <p><img height=150 width=115 src=http://www.xmenclan.org/xmengambit.gif border=0 align=left>XMEN member<br>Card-carrying DTM<br>OKL Fish-napper<br><br><br>Though a program be but three lines long,<br> someday it will have to be maintained.<br> <i>- The Tao of Programming</i><br>Life is complex; it consists of real and imaginary parts.</p><i></i>