I'm trying to set up a small home network for a friend (the usual, I got drafted to help....sigh...). Their main PC is a new winxp machine that connects to the net via dsl, and has their printer attached to it. Their older PC is a gateway essential 450, circa 1999, with win98SE. They want to be able to network this PC so as to be able to use DSL and share the printer. Unfortunately, it doesn't have an ethernet port built in, so I have to add one.
Being lazy, I try a USB ethernet port, not wanting to bother opening up the case and such..I just want to set up the network and be on my way! Of course, inserting the USB ethernet adapter causes windows to crash when doing the "new hardware found" work. Tried in both USB ports, same results. Tried adapter in another PC, works fine. Well, I think to myself, for whatever reason this PC has a flaky USB setup, which might not be surprising on this generation PC.
No big deal, just haul out a cheap ethernet LAN NIC card, since I know they have free PCI slots. Get the card, a belkin FD500, open up the case, slide in the card, boot up the PC..and it crashes during the new hardware found sequence. Win98 just won't finish with the adapter in. So, I take it out, it boots perfectly. Put it back in, in another slot, and same result - crashes during initialization. I remove the PCI modem, since they don't use dial-up anymore, wanting to use a "known good" PCI slot, and thinking maybe i've freed up an IRQ or something that might help. Install the ethernet lan card, boot up..and it crashes again.
So, given my lack of interst in spending a lot of time (and certainly not money) on this project, anyone have any suggestions for things to try to get it not to die when eithr th USB or PCI ethernet adapter is in? Failing that, other networking options? I"m thinking a parallel cable would work. Thanks for any help!
Being lazy, I try a USB ethernet port, not wanting to bother opening up the case and such..I just want to set up the network and be on my way! Of course, inserting the USB ethernet adapter causes windows to crash when doing the "new hardware found" work. Tried in both USB ports, same results. Tried adapter in another PC, works fine. Well, I think to myself, for whatever reason this PC has a flaky USB setup, which might not be surprising on this generation PC.
No big deal, just haul out a cheap ethernet LAN NIC card, since I know they have free PCI slots. Get the card, a belkin FD500, open up the case, slide in the card, boot up the PC..and it crashes during the new hardware found sequence. Win98 just won't finish with the adapter in. So, I take it out, it boots perfectly. Put it back in, in another slot, and same result - crashes during initialization. I remove the PCI modem, since they don't use dial-up anymore, wanting to use a "known good" PCI slot, and thinking maybe i've freed up an IRQ or something that might help. Install the ethernet lan card, boot up..and it crashes again.
So, given my lack of interst in spending a lot of time (and certainly not money) on this project, anyone have any suggestions for things to try to get it not to die when eithr th USB or PCI ethernet adapter is in? Failing that, other networking options? I"m thinking a parallel cable would work. Thanks for any help!
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