xHCI98 v3.0.0.0 (by independent developer Yeo Kheng Meng), October 21, 2024. Allows using modern USB and Thunderbolt controllers on legacy Windows OS. Now you can plug USB 3.x/USB4/Thunderbolt 3/4 devices to Windows 98 SE/ME/2000/XP/Vista/7.
Independent developer Yeo Kheng Meng releases xHCI98 v3.0.0.0 to enable modern USB and Thunderbolt controllers on legacy Windows operating systems
This is important because you can use more modern hardware (which isn't natively supported by legacy OSes) on your older OSes in longer period of time. Several modules are linked into the driver for some advanced storages/expansion functionality:
xhciuas.sys – UAS storage (for drives) xhcicm.sys – compatible Thunderbolt 3, USB4 and NVMe enclosure. It gives you ability to connect and use more modern peripherals that your legacy OS couldn't use.
Tested on 2020 ThinkPad P14s Gen1 (Comet Lake CPU). No EHCI controller – xHCI only.
Developer was able to demonstrate hotplugging different USB devices (on this specific machine). This means it works properly on systems that don't have legacy USB 2.0 controller (without EHCI).
All the work was done with assistance of AI to create/check code: – Claude Fable 5.1 for planning – Claude Opus 5.5 for coding – Codex GPT 6 Astra for adversarial checking (Meng explicitly warned that since it was AI-assisted there might be some bugs. Be careful installing it.)
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