[ale] OT: Massive unexplained Win98 suckage!

[Joseph A Knapka]

Sorry, must vent:

About a week ago, my wife's Win98 box became unbootable - a
vital system file had apparently been deleted from the
c:\windows\system directory. "Well," I thought, "This is
a good opportunity to reinstall Windows and get rid of
accumulated cruft," so I pulled the HD, put it in a Linux
box, backed up the disk, put it back in the Win box,
and reformatted the disk in preparation for a reinstall.

Win98 installation went fine, until I tried to get the
machine to recognize the Netgear NIC that it had happily
been using for the past, I dunno, 3 years or so. Absolutely
NOTHING will entice Win98 to recognize the card. Even
if I install the driver by hand using "Net nbrhood->Properties->
Adapter->Add", after driver installation it says,
"This driver is for a PnP device; please install the
device and then reboot the computer." It's as if
it has no idea the hardware is installed.

OK, I've had weird problems with Netgear cards, so I
pull a D-Link 530TX+ out of a Linux box - where it's
working fine - and put it in the Win98 machine.

EXACTLY the same behavior. Win98 simply refuses to believe
there's a NIC in the machine. WTF? Reformat the disk, install
Slackware on the machine. Card comes up fine, I can ping
the whole world. Reformat the disk, install Win98.
Again, NOTHING will convince Win98 that the NIC is
present!!!

My stepdaughter suggests that Win98 has some built-in
time limit after which it will refuse to work properly,
thus forcing one to upgrade to Win2K. (I submit that
this limit is set at about 10 seconds after you
install it the first time...) Anyway, I'm really
going crazy here. If anyone has a spare clue, I'd
like to hear it. It would SERIOUSLY IRK ME to
have to go out and buy a Win2K upgrade just to get
this machine that's been running Win98 fine for three
years to run Windows again.

Goddammit.

-- Joe
# "This torch I bear is scorching me; Buffy's
   laughing, I've no doubt! I hope she fries,
   I'm free if that bitch dies... I'd better
   help her out." -- Spike, OMWF, BtVS

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