Can I link wirelessly if the pc runs windows 98?

[neilpb]

Hi all, I'm very new to this and got my sky broadband on Monday, it all works fine and I am quite impressed so far.
Today I brought a USB Wireless Lan Plug in thingy and am having some problems connecting.

The Main PC is a 6 month old amd 64 with windows xp and the pc that I am trying to connect is a rather old jobbie running windows 98.

I have just spent some time on the phone with sky customer services trying to set up and they told me that sky BB is not compatiable with win98. I am a bit suspicious as I told the guy that 98 was involved at the start of the call and I feel that he is using this as a cop out because he can't sort out my problems.

I have managed to install the software on the win98 pc and it is detecting the sky signal, the strength is good but I can't get it to go on the web, When I open up IE, I get a message that says "detecting proxy settings" and after a minute or so I get the "Cannot find server" message.

When I was on the phone to Sky CS we generated a WEP key and that was about it.

Any help would be appreciated. Cheers, Neil.

[bravedan]

Well, maybe an apology to SKY is due..........

Windows 98............. NO

Windows 98SE......... Technically YES, but you might find it difficult.

Basic principle is to read the XP network wizard carefully and do what it says to copy it to floppy and run the install via the wizard on the 98SE computer.

I have four PCs connected on a network into NTL, (my SKY installation is one XP XP PC wired and a laptop sometimes on wireless.)

On NTL, of the four, two were on Win 98SE, one worked after quite a bit of tweaking, but the other, despite seeming the same, eventually I gave up on and installed XP!!

Regards,

Dave

[assos]

Originally Posted by neilpb

The Main PC is a 6 month old amd 64 with windows xp and the pc that I am trying to connect is a rather old jobbie running windows 98.

ahh; windows 98....

I have just spent some time on the phone with sky customer services trying to set up and they told me that sky BB is not compatiable with win98. I am a bit suspicious as I told the guy that 98 was involved at the start of the call and I feel that he is using this as a cop out because he can't sort out my problems.

I'm suprised he didn't say that at the start of the call tbh. Windows 98FE has very flaky USB support; many USB products need at least 98SE. It is sometimes possible to get stuff working; with a little convincing though.

I have managed to install the software on the win98 pc and it is detecting the sky signal, the strength is good but I can't get it to go on the web, When I open up IE, I get a message that says "detecting proxy settings" and after a minute or so I get the "Cannot find server" message.

That's a good sign. Are you able to actually connect to the network (IE does the software show it's connected or just that it's available but not connected?

If it is connected are you able to do anything on the network? Could you try pinging the router?

If you open up a command prompt and type:

ping 192.168.0.1

what happens?

I presume everything works ok on the other PC running XP? Is that connected wirelessly or with a cable?

[Tawakalna]

why are you still on '98? Unless you have a specific reason, such as DOS applications that absolutley demand full DOS mode or FAT structures, there's no justification for keeping 98 (even less for ME, the worst operating system ever) unless you actually like the B.S.O.D.

Although XP has minimal DOS functionality, DOSBox (downloadable from Sourceforge) is an excellent DOS emulator for XP and allows me to run stuff like my old DOS games from the early '90s in XP perfectly well.

However if you insist on living in the Dark Ages with 98, yes you can get your wireless adapter(s) working, but you must use the WLAN utility that came with your adapter, as you have no Wireless Zero Configuration to do it automatically for you. And not all manufacturer's WLAN utilities support 98 so again, it depends on the make and model of your adapter. You might well find that a USB adapter will never work, and has been stated already, if it's not 98SE that you're running, again you'll have great difficulty to nigh-on-impossible. Also if you just shoved it in the USB port then installed the drivers, that doesn't work on 98 either; you need to install the driver and utility first, power down the pc, attach the device and then reboot, and it should find the driver and launch the WMON utility which you can then configure. 98 is much less forgiving in this respect than XP or even W2K.

A PCI wireless card by a well-recognised manufacturer such as D-Link, Netgear, Linksys or Asus would have been a much better choice.