I am posting this here in the hopes that it helps someone who is trying to get WPA working on Windows 98SE if you have a Netgear WG511T. I tried for many hours to get this set up and finally found the answer in a post on alt.internet.wireless which was titled "HOWTO: enable WPA-PSK in Windows for SMC2802W V.2 PCI card" by Adriaan I tried Netgear technical support and to say the least, they either are clueless or don't want to deal with the problem. I may never buy Netgear again after this experience even though I have used their products for years.
Supposedly the WG511T client software supports WPA using driver version 3.6 and above but I found that this is not the case. During the install of the driver, you will get a GPF for Drinst.exe but you will still be able to complete the install and reboot. (NOTE: the failure of Drinst.exe is important! more on that below) Everything will go fine after the reboot and after inserting your WG511T it will be detected and you have to put the Windows 98SE disk in to install files. You will then pick the region you live in and you can configure the client for WEP and it works fine.
WPA problems! When you try to enable WPA you will get this message after you click apply:
" the supplicant support has not been installed correctly. you need to run setup again to fix this problem. if instead you need to continue, 802.1x and wpa will be disabled. (1) "
Which means the Windows 98SE supplicant did not get installed correctly. Note: Windows 98SE apparently does not have kernal support for 802.1x and this is why the client software needs to install a supplicant for WPA. Reinstalling the software will just crash at the Drinst.exe everytime so that is no help. There is apparently a bug in the install program for the client and the Drinst.exe file is the part of the install that is supposed to install the Aegis protocol to allow for WPA.
Since you cannot get the supplicant installed with the Netgear client you have to find an alternate way to get the protocol installed. There are two alternatives to purchase software that will enable WPA, Funk Software Odyssey client or Aegis but you have to pay! for those after you paid for a client that supposedly already supports it.
That didn't sit well with me but thanks to Adriaans post I found that the Dlink WPA supplicant works with the Netgear card! So in the end I installed Dlinks Aegis protocol. Its located here: ftp://ftp.dlink.com/Wireless/dwlg520/Apps/dwlg520_WPAsupplicant_236.zip
Unzip the D-Link ZIP file and run AegisI2.exe, once that is done you will see a confirmation message showing which files were installed that includes the Drinst that failed with Netgears software!! and then you need to reboot. Once you reboot you should then be able to set WPA up in the Netgear client and no more error messages! Obviously you know which vendor I will be using for my routers in the future and its not Netgear. In the end using Dlinks software to fix Netgears flawed install is very telling!
I hope this helps someone else out there!
Jim