I have about ten or twelve computers with a mixture of mostly PCs but a few Macs, all supposedly connected on the network. Some of them even network together! I Have a mixture of mainly notebooks but a few desktops (with internal NICs or USB devices). Netgear, Buffalo, Linksys, D-Link, etc NICs. All seem reasonably easily configurable or if not, the Technical Support departments know their hardware's quirks and can tell you what is wrong. (except possibly Netgear whose MA401 is very quirky and while it does work with 98 or XP, it is only really happy with Linux: But their MA301 and MA111 work fine)
But I am having a problem with a 3com PC card, a 3crwe62092A with a curious flat spring-out aerial. It has a gigantic 32 megabyte install exe file which doesn't seem to comprise a configurable scanner. But the card installs, and shows up in device manager without any exclamation marks. The card is always properly recognised on boot and flashes pleasingly to show it is working. It's extraordinarily limited utility usually even shows the strength of the link and link quality. And you can even switch between networks. But it is the only card I have never managed to get to connect to the Internet. And it has an internal diagnostic utility which doesn't allow you to do much but which has never shown it working, even when it is showing a good link quality and signal strength!
On any computer I have ever installed it on. (I need hardly add that whenever I have had this problem, I have always connected some alternative NIC and they have inevitably worked immediately and without either problems or configuration issues)
There is also a 500 kb update to the file which device manager seems to think it doesn't need. Obviously when I can't get the card to work, I update the driver. On no computer has that ever made the slightest difference. There is also a firmware update which does nothing.
3Com seems to be the only NIC company which couldn't care less about supporting its products and has actively refused to assist. Has anyone else had these problems with either this company or this card OR found that uninstalling the whole shooting match and installing some generic scanner does the job if you can get the 3com card drivers themselves installed?