reapersaurus said:
2) You RE-installed 98? It's not supported anymore. You shouldn't be installing 98 on any machine anymore - upgrade to 2000 or XP if you're installing from scratch nowadays. I'm using 98 1st edition, and always would rather have XP.
*cough*bullcrap*cough*. He "shouldn't be installing it on any machine anymore"? Uh huh. Right.
I have an old laptop. I run 98 because it runs better on the laptop than any other version of windows. Or I run linux sometimes, but that's neither here nor there. Who cares if it's supported or not if it works?
reapersaurus said:
3) It's good that you tried Ad-Aware, but everyone should use Spybot Search & Destroy in addition to Ad-Aware.
Good luck. 98 just isn't working that well anymore.
Unless something has changed lately, the free version of spybot only tells you what is on your computer, it wont remove them. So it's useless to me. Ad-aware gets the data miners just fine, and the few pop-up ones it doesnt catch I can remove manualy after I find them.
Anyhow, on to the problem.
I've had problems in the past getting 98 (or ME) to recognize my 3Com network card as well. Like you, it would see it, but not be able to use it for anything. Unfortunatly, my solution isn't very palatable... I re-installed. For some reason that got it working. So if all else fails that is a potential option.
I'm not sure what 98 comes with in the way of bundled drivers, but have you tried detecting new hardware and using drivers that windows comes with?