Using built-in NIC and wireless card on a laptop running Win98se

I'm having some trouble getting my laptop's wireless card (SMC2635W)
to talk to my wireless router (Belkin F5D6231-4 v2.00) under Win98se
with another built-in NIC installed.

The laptop has a built-in NIC that's using IRQ 11. When I plug in the
wireless card it also uses IRQ 11. There is no setting in BIOS for
changing the IRQ of the built-in NIC, and there's no way to change the
IRQ assignments through the OS (that I know of) without disabling the
advanced power management. I can use the built-in NIC without problems
with or without the wireless card installed, but not vice versa.

I have downloaded and installed the newest drivers for the wireless
card. The wireless card gets 100% signal strength and can receive
packets but not transmit, except for answering pings. Other computers
on the network can ping the laptop with the wireless card running, but
the laptop cannot ping the router or the other computers when using
the wireless card.

If I disable the built-in NIC through a seperate hardware profile the
wireless card works fine without any other changes, so I know it's not
an IP addressing problem or a problem with the router itself. I don't
really want a seperate hardware profile as the solution if I can avoid
it, as having two undocked hardware profiles makes Win98se ask me
twice upon boot what profile I want, once through a "real mode" menu,
once a through Blue Screen of Death "Dock Change" screen.

Does anyone know of a way to be able to use these two NICs together in
the same profile? Is the fact that they are both on IRQ 11 the
problem? If so, how to change that?

I did search the newsgroups for two days before posting, but could
find nothing except a reference to a Microsoft hotfix for the BSOD
dock change screen, which, since they don't support Win98se anymore,
is not available as a download and only through pay ($19.95) support.

Thanks in advance for all replies,

Mac

Do you have the cards on different subnets? The computer may be confused
which card to try if both are enabled and on the same subnet. I had the same
issue and found the disable method the easiest solution. Since both my
wireless and wired NICS were sharing IRQ 9, which is meant to be shared, I'm
not sure the IRQ is your problem, although it certainly could be since IRQ9,
not 11, is OS designed for sharing.

"Charles McCall" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) om...
> I'm having some trouble getting my laptop's wireless card (SMC2635W)
> to talk to my wireless router (Belkin F5D6231-4 v2.00) under Win98se
> with another built-in NIC installed.
>
> The laptop has a built-in NIC that's using IRQ 11. When I plug in the
> wireless card it also uses IRQ 11. There is no setting in BIOS for
> changing the IRQ of the built-in NIC, and there's no way to change the
> IRQ assignments through the OS (that I know of) without disabling the
> advanced power management. I can use the built-in NIC without problems
> with or without the wireless card installed, but not vice versa.
>
> I have downloaded and installed the newest drivers for the wireless
> card. The wireless card gets 100% signal strength and can receive
> packets but not transmit, except for answering pings. Other computers
> on the network can ping the laptop with the wireless card running, but
> the laptop cannot ping the router or the other computers when using
> the wireless card.
>
> If I disable the built-in NIC through a seperate hardware profile the
> wireless card works fine without any other changes, so I know it's not
> an IP addressing problem or a problem with the router itself. I don't
> really want a seperate hardware profile as the solution if I can avoid
> it, as having two undocked hardware profiles makes Win98se ask me
> twice upon boot what profile I want, once through a "real mode" menu,
> once a through Blue Screen of Death "Dock Change" screen.
>
> Does anyone know of a way to be able to use these two NICs together in
> the same profile? Is the fact that they are both on IRQ 11 the
> problem? If so, how to change that?
>
> I did search the newsgroups for two days before posting, but could
> find nothing except a reference to a Microsoft hotfix for the BSOD
> dock change screen, which, since they don't support Win98se anymore,
> is not available as a download and only through pay ($19.95) support.
>
> Thanks in advance for all replies,
>
> Mac

John wrote:
> Do you have the cards on different subnets? The computer may be
> confused which card to try if both are enabled and on the same
> subnet. I had the same issue and found the disable method the easiest
> solution. Since both my wireless and wired NICS were sharing IRQ 9,
> which is meant to be shared, I'm not sure the IRQ is your problem,
> although it certainly could be since IRQ9, not 11, is OS designed for
> sharing.
>
> "Charles McCall" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed) om...
>> I'm having some trouble getting my laptop's wireless card (SMC2635W)
>> to talk to my wireless router (Belkin F5D6231-4 v2.00) under Win98se
>> with another built-in NIC installed.
>>
>> The laptop has a built-in NIC that's using IRQ 11. When I plug in the
>> wireless card it also uses IRQ 11. There is no setting in BIOS for
>> changing the IRQ of the built-in NIC, and there's no way to change
>> the IRQ assignments through the OS (that I know of) without
>> disabling the advanced power management. I can use the built-in NIC
>> without problems with or without the wireless card installed, but
>> not vice versa.
>>
>> I have downloaded and installed the newest drivers for the wireless
>> card. The wireless card gets 100% signal strength and can receive
>> packets but not transmit, except for answering pings. Other computers
>> on the network can ping the laptop with the wireless card running,
>> but the laptop cannot ping the router or the other computers when
>> using
>> the wireless card.
>>
>> If I disable the built-in NIC through a seperate hardware profile the
>> wireless card works fine without any other changes, so I know it's
>> not
>> an IP addressing problem or a problem with the router itself. I don't
>> really want a seperate hardware profile as the solution if I can
>> avoid it, as having two undocked hardware profiles makes Win98se ask
>> me
>> twice upon boot what profile I want, once through a "real mode" menu,
>> once a through Blue Screen of Death "Dock Change" screen.
>>
>> Does anyone know of a way to be able to use these two NICs together
>> in the same profile? Is the fact that they are both on IRQ 11 the
>> problem? If so, how to change that?
>>
>> I did search the newsgroups for two days before posting, but could
>> find nothing except a reference to a Microsoft hotfix for the BSOD
>> dock change screen, which, since they don't support Win98se anymore,
>> is not available as a download and only through pay ($19.95) support.
>>
>> Thanks in advance for all replies,
>>
>> Mac

I second the Disable the onboard NIC in Device Manager option.

Q

Thanks for the replies guys. They aren't on diff subnets, so that's
not the problem. Everything's really vanilla with this setup, as it's
a small home network.

For right now I am disabling the built-in NIC using the device manager
when I want to use the wireless card. It works, but it's not the most
elegant solution. I'm hoping someone out there who had this problem
found a better solution than the one I'm using now.

Thanks again for the replies,

Mac

Charles McCall wrote:
> Thanks for the replies guys. They aren't on diff subnets, so that's
> not the problem. Everything's really vanilla with this setup, as it's
> a small home network.
>
> For right now I am disabling the built-in NIC using the device manager
> when I want to use the wireless card. It works, but it's not the most
> elegant solution. I'm hoping someone out there who had this problem
> found a better solution than the one I'm using now.
>
> Thanks again for the replies,
>
> Mac

I have the same problem with Win9x, and disabling the onboard is the
only workable solution I have found, but then I had no need to ever use
it again anyway. You might try setting up a custom hardware profile
which can be done, but I do not recall if it requires a reboot between
profile changes and no longer have a Win9x to play with.

This site has some words on profiles for just the situation you have:
http://www.teknoids.net/tekarchive/msg00266.html

Q

"Quaoar" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed)>...
> I have the same problem with Win9x, and disabling the onboard is the
> only workable solution I have found, but then I had no need to ever use
> it again anyway. You might try setting up a custom hardware profile
> which can be done, but I do not recall if it requires a reboot between
> profile changes and no longer have a Win9x to play with.
>
> This site has some words on profiles for just the situation you have:
> http://www.teknoids.net/tekarchive/msg00266.html

Just wanted to thank everyone again for their suggestions, both here
and through email, and post a followup.

Following the advice of Quaoar above I created two hardware profiles,
one with the built-in network card enabled and the wireless card not
installed (not just disabled but not listed in device manager at all)
and one with the reverse. The idea being that upon boot Windows will
know which profile to use without user intervention by either
detecting or not detecting the wireless card in the PCMCIA slot.

Upon booting, either with or without the wireless card in a PCMCIA
slot, the laptop presents the two profile menus, one multiple choice
menu when the computer boots followed by the Blue Screen of Death
"dock change" screen. So it seems that in Win98SE having two undocked
hardware profiles, even in this configuration, will still generate
these two menus.

If I'm able to come up with a solution other than disableing the
built-in NIC through Device Manager I'll post a followup.