PnP NIC woes

Factual Questions
1

Okay, I’m going to try to explain this as concisely as possible.

For two years, my Acer NIC worked great. I used it with my cable modem and had no problems. A few months back, it stopped working. I wasn’t sure whether the problem was with the NIC or the modem, so I had the cable people swap out the modem. Still nothing. Around this time, I got a laptop and a PCMCIA NIC. I plugged it into the modem and it worked.

Naturally, I figured there must be some problem with my Acer NIC. A friend sent me a Kingston NIC he had laying around. I completely removed (physically, and through device manager) the Acer NIC and installed the Kingston. PnP recognized it and everything seemed good.

So I opened WinIPcfg to set the IP address for the modem, and found that the only NIC that showed up in the dropdown box was the old Acer. SONUVA@*#$@(!!!

Well, if it wants the Acer, it’s going to get the Acer, I figured. I removed the Kingston and put the Acer back in. I booted up and was greeted to a friendly PnP screen that advised me that Windows 98 was searching for the drivers for my Kingston network card! WTF?! That card was sitting in a box across the room!

I canceled out of the PnP setup and removed the debris from the partially installed NIC. I then proceeded to set the card up manually, through Add/Remove Hardware. Everything went fine until right as I was finishing the setup. At that point PnP buts its buggy head in and tells me that it found the Kingston card! Canceling out of that yielded only a half-installed Kingston card and no trace of the Acer card that was actually in there. GRRRRR!

Well, if it wants the Kingston, it’s going to get the Kingston, I figured. (I really need to stop figuring). I installed the Kingston again, but of course, WinIPcfg didn’t like that. It will obtain and release an IP under the incorrect NIC label, but the NIC doesn’t seem to connect to the modem. It won’t make it dial (it’s a hybrid cable modem), and if I do get the modem to connect with my laptop, then hook it up to the desktop while it’s still connected, the desktop won’t recognize the connection. Both NIC and modem show a link light, meaning that the cable between them is not bad.

I have been fighting with this headache since September. He who can figure this out will become my personal hero! :slight_smile:

2

If you haven’t already tried it, maybe you should remove the drivers for the NICs through device manager, physically remove the card, then allow Win98 to boot without any NIC in there at all. Make sure there are no drivers for a NIC loaded, then try to install a NIC.

3

You might also try to install the Kingston card into a different PCI slot than your Acer card was in if you have room on your motherboard and case. Some NICs don’t do well in shared PCI/ISA slots, too.

4

You may just need to disable PNP from your Bios settings. This should stop it from trying to recognize the cards each time you boot. If you dont want to do this then you’ll need to remove all your internal cards and flash your BIOs.

5

I recently had a similar problem. I had tried everything to get a PnP NIC to install including manually editing the registry and startup files. No dice.

In a fit of rage I removed the “PCI Bus” item (under System Devices in device manager and re-booted.

After restarting, The Add Hardware Wizard re-installed the PCI Bus support and then re-installed everything on the bus(including an integrated sound card I didn’t know about).

It’s been two weeks now, and no bugs so far.

YMMV