Networking/Internet problems

[Ai Haibara]

Are there any networking settings which could possibly cause a system to appear to hang?

Well, I guess I should provide a little background. I've got a Win98 tower in a bedroom, which was working fine with a wireless/Internet PC card-and-PC card adapter combo. Had no problem with the system, going online or accessing the home wireless network.

Unfortunately, the adapter is no more. (Please, don't ask. Wasn't my fault, though. ) So, I rigged another connection using a Linksys WGA54G 'game adapter,' connecting to the tower through Ethernet. It seems to work (even considering I probably made a rather foolish mistake in letting Windows set up the networking options ) ; I can connect to the Internet (haven't tried accessing the home network, yet), but there are two issues:

1) I have to open winipcfg every time I turn on the computer and point it to the connection. Didn't have to do that with the previous setup. Not really a big deal.

2) This one's the real problem. At some random point (IF the adapter is connected; the computer works normally and without problems if it isn't), the system will appear to freeze. I can move the mouse pointer, but do nothing else, and everything is frozen. It doesn't unfreeze if I wait or remove the adapter.

I'm not ruling out a hardware issue, of course, but everything I've seen so far tends to imply that there's an incorrect networking setting, somewhere. I've been experimenting with the settings, but so far, no luck.

[aedipuss]

long dead ghost hunting..... win98 networking, flukey at best. somewhere in the settings you have to tell it to automatically acquire an ip through dhcp.

http://www.sdb.k12.wi.us/technology/MANUALS/DHCP_Win98.htm

that way it should connect with the 53g router.

[Ai Haibara]

Hmm... I think DHCP is already enabled, but I'll check.

Edit: Yeah, it's enabled. The settings mentioned by the page you linked to are the same as on my Win98 system.

[Ai Haibara]

Nobody knows of any network settings which could ideally cause this 'freeze?'

[Soopafresh]

It's the hardware. That's an ethernet - wireless device, right? Had nothing but grief with Linksys external Wifi devices.

Try to upgrade the firmware.

[INFRATOM]

Win 98 does not recover like XP or others if it looses connection with the hardware the driver will hang the OS, you need to restart the computer. Win98 might also get corrupted if you remove or disconnect the hardware from it.

[Ai Haibara]

It's the hardware. That's an ethernet - wireless device, right? Had nothing but grief with Linksys external Wifi devices.

Try to upgrade the firmware.

I was afraid someone was going to suggest that. After running a few websearches yesterday, though, people seem to be recommending NOT to update the firmware on the thing to the only newer version out there... it may cause more problems. Nothing much seems to be different in the firmware, so I don't know.

Unfortunately, though, the adapter (yeah, it's an ethernet-connected wireless antenna, more or less) wants you to connect to its online configuration page to change ANY of the more advanced settings or update the firmware. I've only been able to connect to it ONCE, and that was when I was using a Mac laptop to set it up for the very first time. Never able to get it to come up again, even on the same laptop or no matter how many times I did a full reset of the adapter. And those searches I did yesterday indicated a few settings I want to experiment with, too.

Would a PCI antenna card be a much better idea? (though I've no idea if I could get a new one off-the-shelf to work with Win98, at the very least in the driver sense...)

Win 98 does not recover like XP or others if it looses connection with the hardware the driver will hang the OS, you need to restart the computer. Win98 might also get corrupted if you remove or disconnect the hardware from it.

Yeah. It's rather annoying to go from a wireless card with no problems to hardware that keeps finding new and vague ways to cause hair-pulling stress, though.

[Ai Haibara]

Slight update: I've been experimenting with a Knoppix liveCD on the system, and - of course - the hardware and antenna have no problems there whatsoever, that I can see. So, it's probably just either a driver or settings problem.

If I had a spare large HD, I'd probably consider just using it as the main drive with a Linux build on it (not sure which one, though) and stick with that. I've jury-rigged Win98 setups to work so many times over the years that I'm likely thoroughly tired of it, finally.