Windows 2000, Linksys Wireless G 2.4 Ghz WPC54GS v2 2 days trouble installingand working

Holdit. Connecting to the internet is the LAST step in the process. Let's rewind and start from the beginning. Some rhetorical questions:

1. Did the software install correctly? Right click on My Computah and select Properties. Hardware -> Device Manager Is the WPC54GS listed? If not, uninstall, reboot, and reinstall, this time following the instruction where it says to shove in the card AFTER you load the software. (This is the most common error).
2. If the software appears to be installed correctly, does plug-n-pay recognize the card? Same test as above.
3. Is there an icon that vaguely looks like a wireless antenna in the system tray (lower right of screen)? If so, right click, and select "View available networks". See any SSID's? If yes, it's working. Try to connect.
4. If nothing is visible, are you broadcasting your SSID on your unspecified model access point? If not, turn it on and leave it on.
5. From this point on, you should be able to connect. If not, kindly describe your setup. If using WEP, use the Hex key, not the ASCII key. If possible switch to WPA for better security and no Hex hassles.

To the different points:

1. The software did download from the Linksys site and is the latest for this card. It did install correctly and the card was ONLY inserted after the SW was installed.
2. Device Manager does show the Linksys wireless connector, but with a yellow exclamation point because it did not find the drivers.
3. I have installed and un-installed probably 5 times (the proper way too) and it always is still looking for drivers. You would think that the Linksys SW would not install and asks you to finally insert the card, if it did not install the drivers too.
4. There is no wireless icon in the system tray.
5. The router is on all the time and works fine with other cards for my laptop.
6. No WEP or WPA at this time selected, since it does not yet connect.

BY the way, 2 night ago it did work fine for about 30 minutes. I tried different web sites, then made a normal shutdown went to bed. Next morning just turned on the laptop and nothing worked anymore for wireless.

I got this with some completely different hardware. Turned out that the crappy installer routine had fscked up the registry keys for the USB devices beyond recovery so that irrespective of which USB port I stuck the device into, it could not connect the card to the (installed) drivers.

I had to manually track down and delete the right registry keys in HKLM\\system\\current control set\\enum\\usb. Danger Will Robinson, this is VERY RISKY and might destroy your USB stack requiring a reinstall of Windows.

I agree. I've seen this once with some Linksys USB device (forgot model number). I had to use System Restore to put the registry back to the way it was before I started tinkering. As I vaguely recall, it would work with the older version of the driver from the CDROM that was included with the device, but not with the updated driver from the web pile. If I installed the downloaded driver initially, I would get a device not found error in the Device Manager. However, if I rolled it back to the before installing the driver, installed whatever was on the cdrom, and then updated with the downloaded driver, it would work. No clue what that was all about. However, that was with a USB device, not a PCMCIA. I don't know if it's the same issue. It won't hurt to roll back the registry with System Restore, and just try the older driver on the cdrom.

However, this is Windoze 2000, not XP, so there's no System Restore. I guess you'll have to hack the registry. Before attacking, I suggest you cover your posterior with a registry backup and restore utility. Download and install ERUNT.

If you mess up the registy, it will make it easy to recover.