Okay, my father has a Linksys network adapter card installed in his ancient Gateway PC that’s running Windows ME. The drivers for ME for the card are incomplete (as ME says that it needs a couple of files that it can’t find). In going to the Linksys page for the network adapter card there are no WinME drivers to download. There’s 95, 98, NT 4 and that’s it. I’ve tried searching the net for info, but haven’t come up with anything. So, will the 95 or 98 drivers work? Or does anyone know of a site where I can download the correct drivers?
Use the 98 drivers. If (and that’s a big IF) there is a compatibility issue, you can always tell it to run the program in 98 emulation mode. But 99.999% sure you won’t need to do anything else.
I run 98 drivers in XP all the time.
There are two main Windows “types” now. 16/32 bit and 32 bit pure (there is a 64 bit version now but it’s infrequently used).
The 16/32 bit versions are Windows 95/98/Me. The 32 bit pure versions are NT, 2000, XP and 2003. As long as you are using drivers from within your “type” you should be ok. Generally you should try to use a driver that was designed for your version, but if it’s not available you should aim for the nearest predecessor (using the list above).
The reason you shouldn’t try to use drivers between “types” is two-fold. One, the driver interfaces changed significantly between the 16/32 and 32 bit versions. It is possible that functions which the driver requires are non-existent or missing or that the driver tries to access the hardware directly - this is a no-no in 32bit windows.
Secondly, if you use a old tech driver in a new release then Windows may have to perform something called Thunking. As thunking is a translation layer this introduces an extra overhead.
Oh, and Windows is so stuffed full of compatibility kludges, twiddles and pixie-dust that anything you can do to help is going to make your day so much better 
Well, I managed to get the card working, but I can’t get the browser to find the net when the firewall’s up and running. No clue as to why that is, since all the settings for the firewall (I tried 2 different ones and ended up in the same situation) and IE were such that IE should have been able to surf the net. Don’t suggest swapping browsers, since getting my dad to agree to use a computer took my step-mother ages to accomplish and he’s a crankier bastard than I am when it comes to learning new things.
Switch browsers? Nah. The answer, of course, is that you need to buy a Mac, or install Linux or something. 
Seriously though - what firewall are you using? I expect it’s just blocking one of the components, protocols or ports that IE needs.
I have no idea (not being at the PC at the moment). I tried ZoneAlarm, but it doesn’t work on IE, so I just started randomly downloading free firewalls I could find on download.com that were ME compatible.