Windows 98 network drivers.

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TheCorsairMalack

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I have a notebook laptop-I got it used-that's running windows 98 and has no removable media bays and does not have the drivers for any USB media. I need to know if windows 98 comes with basic 10/100 3com ethernet drivers installed. (So I can use a home network to load files onto it.)

Thank you.
 
If it doesn't already detect your card, then no. The easiest thing I can think of is to get a 2.5" to 3.5" HDD adapter (it's about $5 online) that lets you plug a laptop hard drive into a desktop computer. Then pull out the laptop's drive, plug it in your desktop, boot it up (if it won't boot to the right OS, use a Linux live CD like Puppy Linux, Ubuntu, or DSL), and copy the drivers from the desktop to the laptop HDD. Then pull the laptop HDD out of the desktop and put it back in the laptop. Boot up, and have fun :)
 
As said above there is no way there will be drivers. Most of the wireless cards came out with XP. They all had drivers written for XP. Very few if any will have any type of drivers for 98.

If anything maybe you could install Windows 2000 on the laptop.
 
My wireless card works fine in 2000. Look online to see if there's a 98 driver for your particular card. If there is, then download it, use the hard drive swap method to copy it to the laptop. If there isn't, you still have to swap out the drive to install a new OS. Windows 2000 is pretty good (it came on my [used as well] IBM Thinkpad A21p with Pentium 3 850MHz 512MB [I upgraded, came with 128, but still worked well]), I installed it as well on my old Celeron 500 desktop with 256MB RAM, and it worked fine.

You could also think about using Linux on it, but wireless cards (especially Broadcom-based ones) are a pain to set up (possible, I'm using one now, but it was quite a challenge to set up).

Remember that you're probably going to have to install the OS from a desktop, so be sure to download all the drivers for the laptop's hardware and copy them to the drive before you return it to the laptop. Once it's in the laptop, you'll have all the drivers you need to install the rest of the system.
 
My wireless card works fine in 2000. Look online to see if there's a 98 driver for your particular card. If there is, then download it, use the hard drive swap method to copy it to the laptop. If there isn't, you still have to swap out the drive to install a new OS. Windows 2000 is pretty good (it came on my [used as well] IBM Thinkpad A21p with Pentium 3 850MHz 512MB [I upgraded, came with 128, but still worked well]), I installed it as well on my old Celeron 500 desktop with 256MB RAM, and it worked fine.

You could also think about using Linux on it, but wireless cards (especially Broadcom-based ones) are a pain to set up (possible, I'm using one now, but it was quite a challenge to set up).

Remember that you're probably going to have to install the OS from a desktop, so be sure to download all the drivers for the laptop's hardware and copy them to the drive before you return it to the laptop. Once it's in the laptop, you'll have all the drivers you need to install the rest of the system.

try these. these are win98 drivers for usb hdd. it make usb work for 98. I use it all of the time for people with this issue

Sendspace File Name: Win98.zip
 
Thanks. I have seen the adapters that let you put laptop drives in desktops, but I hadn't thought of using one. It sounds a lot more likely to work. Thanks again.
 
It's for an ethernet NIC.

I tried the hard drive adapter. I get a "VFAT cannot continue loading..." error whenever I tried to boot from it. Also, I booted from a win98 CD to command prompt with CD-ROM support. The culprit drive was set to slave and the other (another 98) was the master. When I accessed drive C: I always viewed the contents of the Sony drive. My machine wouldn't detect the other drive at all. It was like it manhandled the settings so it was always a single drive.

I'm confused. I know I had the settings right, I tested the master/slave settings with a third drive to replace the Sony one. It could then access both.

Anyone know what's happening more than me???

I have the impression that it's something Sony put on the hard drive that interacts with something on the motherboard to test whether it's in a Sony PC, and prevent it from working if it isn't.

Next, I'm trying a Firewire CD-ROM drive. I think this may work. The computer has the drivers for both the port and for a CD-ROM drive. Wish me luck.

As for the networking question... I added a nonexistent 3com 10/100 card using the hardware wizard. It couldn't find any drivers for it, so that won't work...
 
It's for an ethernet NIC.

I tried the hard drive adapter. I get a "VFAT cannot continue loading..." error whenever I tried to boot from it. Also, I booted from a win98 CD to command prompt with CD-ROM support. The culprit drive was set to slave and the other (another 98) was the master. When I accessed drive C: I always viewed the contents of the Sony drive. My machine wouldn't detect the other drive at all. It was like it manhandled the settings so it was always a single drive.

I'm confused. I know I had the settings right, I tested the master/slave settings with a third drive to replace the Sony one. It could then access both.

Anyone know what's happening more than me???

I have the impression that it's something Sony put on the hard drive that interacts with something on the motherboard to test whether it's in a Sony PC, and prevent it from working if it isn't.

Next, I'm trying a Firewire CD-ROM drive. I think this may work. The computer has the drivers for both the port and for a CD-ROM drive. Wish me luck.

As for the networking question... I added a nonexistent 3com 10/100 card using the hardware wizard. It couldn't find any drivers for it, so that won't work...


you can't boot from it. you are suppose to copy files over to it. I would have download my drivers for usb so that my usb would at least work, so I could have use a pen drive, usb cd rom drive or usbhdd to put files on that computer as that seemed to be the free option
 
If I were you, I'd get a LiveCD Linux distribution such as Knoppix, Puppy Linux, **** Small Linux, or Ubuntu. I recommend Ubuntu because it's most like Windows, but it's also a full fledged distribution, so it takes the longest to load. You can boot from the above CD's without any installation.

If you want, remove your desktop's hard drive and just connect the laptop one. Boot from the Ubuntu CD. Once you're at the Ubuntu Linux desktop, click the Places tab, then select Computer. You should see an icon of the laptop's hard drive. Click that to open the contents. Now you can go to Firefox, download the drivers to the Ubuntu desktop (in RAM), then copy the drivers to your laptop hard drive. Shut down the PC, remove the hard drive, put back in the laptop, boot up. Look for the NAME, not the letter, as Linux does not use drive letters like Windows does (it uses /dev/hda, b, c, d, etc for drives, hda1, 2, 3 for partitions).
 
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