1. Home
  2. Wireless Networking
  3. Netgear WPN311 vs. Win 98SE

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.

Reply to
TomC
Loading thread data ...

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 :)

Reply to
Duane Arnold

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

Reply to
TomC

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:

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

formatting link
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.

Reply to
TomC

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.