Netgear WPN311 vs. Win 98SE

This new "MIMO" wireless card is supposed to work with 98SE. The card
appears to install, and "The device is working properly" is displayed in
Device Manager, no exclamation points. However, the Netgear WPN311 Wireless
Assistant configuration utility will not start. The hourglass runs for a few
seconds, then stops without a window opening and without an error message.

System is a Soyo K7VTA Pro with Athlon XP1800+, 256 MB ram, and plenty of
hard disk space. The system has no viruses or spyware and runs well. If I
use a standard NIC and ethernet cable, Internet access works fine.

To test the card, I tried it in an XP Pro system. It installed and worked
perfectly, so the problem is not the card itself.

In my attempts to get the card to work on the 98SE system, I tried removing
all the other PCI cards, removing both the Netgear card & software and
reinstalling, using several different PCI slots, using the driver downloaded
from Netgear instead of the driver on their, installing in safe mode,
running in safe mode, stopping everything else from loading using msconfig.

I spent about an hour with Netgear's "HELP ME LEARN ENGLISH! (TM)" tech
support. By the end I think that my student learned the meaning of
"gigahertz," but I could easily be wrong about that. One of her more
interesting suggestions was that I change CPUs, because the installation
utility or the drivers might not be compatible with the Athlon XP. Right.

Any suggestions welcome.

> Any suggestions welcome.

Well at the Device Manager on Win 9'x can't you right-click/Properties and
install the driver and configure the card there too, like on a NT based
O/S? If you cannot configure the card that way for the wireless, then dump
Win 9'x for maybe Win 2K pro. ;-)

Duane

Duane;

Thanks for the instant response.

No, the card's "Properties" in 98SE Device Manager can't be used to
configure the card. "Properties" just shows the names of the driver files,
IRQ and memory range used, and power management settings. Netgear Tech
Support, for what it's worth, confirmed that I would have to run the
configuration utility in Win 98, though it was not necessary in XP.

I chose this card because Netgear claimed that it worked with Win 98. The
card isn't for my computer, I am installing it as a favor for a friend. She
is not going to want to hear that she needs a new OS, and I don't want to be
stuck with installing her new OS for free. Either it works or it goes back.

Tom


"Duane Arnold" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:Xns964FC5CB96280notmenotmecom@63.240.76.16...
>
>> Any suggestions welcome.
>
> Well at the Device Manager on Win 9'x can't you right-click/Properties and
> install the driver and configure the card there too, like on a NT based
> O/S? If you cannot configure the card that way for the wireless, then dump
> Win 9'x for maybe Win 2K pro. ;-)
>
> Duane
>
>

After about eight hours of trying everything I could think of, I have given
up. While it might just be a problem with this specific system, I really
wonder if _anyone_ has been able to get this card to work with Windows 98.

Netgear claims that the adapter is compatible with Win98:

http://kbserver.netgear.com/datashee...ds_02Feb05.pdf

However, Netgear's installation guide for the WPN311 doesn't even mention
Win98, just XP and 2000:

http://kbserver.netgear.com/pdf/wpn3...er_id=60739170

It would have helped if Netgear had included better error handling in the
configuration utility installation program, so the program at least produced
an error message instead of just running an hourglass for a few seconds and
stopping. Their phone tech support was not helpful.

Over the years I have had good results with Netgear's products, but my
opinion of them has dropped a few notches.