General Install Question

[saturndude]

Terribly sorry to trouble you all, but I am having a very hard time setting up wireless networking (D-link DWL-G520 PCI wireless, rev. B3, and a D-link DI-524 wired [and wireless] router, Rev. E).

The manual says to run an .EXE file (CD-ROM supplied with wireless card) then shut the computer down. Only then do you install the card and then you turn the PC back on. Then you follow more instructions on the booklet that was in the box. Well, as you can guess, things are not well. Win98 (and I) have some complaints (and some ranting):

1. In Control Panel --> System --> Device Manager --> Wireless card, Windows indicates a problem with NDIS.VXD and NTKERN.VXD (or a service they provide). Basically, "Code 2 -- reinstall drivers". But when I try to do this, I can't. Because two files can't be found on the disc. When I download the driver off the company website, I unzip and find a couple of .CAB files (among other files), but Win98's EXTRACT command says these are not cabinet files at all. The files are A3AB9x.sys and DWLNdi.dll. Presumably these files are referenced by the .INF file, but I simply don't have the files, and I can't just produce them out of thin air! Where am I supposed to get them, D-Link?

2. The manufacturer disc DID install the software that lets me change the wireless channel, turn on WEP / WPA, type the key, etc. But when I click on it, it says that no wireless cards are installed. Well, yes, one is installed. Why isn't it detected? Probably because Device Manager says it has a problem. It is a problem I cannot fix. Does anyone have a solution?

3. Any idea what's wrong here and how to fix it?

4. Why do I need to do this (installing software BEFORE hardware) to "trick" Windows 98 into installing something that couldn't be done the "normal" way?

IIRC, the ATI All-In-Wonder TV card tells me to install SW before HW also (the secret there is to get the files off the net, there will be 3 or 4 .EXE files and they won't be dependent on the AUTORUN of the CD in the box, so you can gain control of the install routine. Install the .EXE with "wdm" in the name first, then when you put the card in, 98 will recognize it and install the rest of the stuff smoothly. It is off topic, but it took about 5 tries and MANY hours before I learned this, I hope it will save someone from having problems in the future).

5. Could manufacturers PLEASE list all the files and their locations, along with .INI settings and registry entries needed for a complete installation? IIRC, the old 4-meg PCI Matrox Millenium video card did this, so any install routine that got corrupted (if there was a power outage or something) could be quickly fixed by anyone with relatively simple commands (UNZIP and COPY commands, and basic INI editing and REGEDIT use). Is it really that difficult? Today's complex install routines (designed to be id***-proof) aren't worth a dime in my opinion -- they fail often. MILLIONS of people who CAN unzip and copy and use regedit are inconvenienced, losing COUNTLESS hours in trouble and frustration, just to protect a few people who might mess up their machines because they aren't familiar with files and directories or are bad at typing things EXACTLY.

A year ago I tried to install my wireless stuff, and it was terrible, simply dreadful. The wireless connection would die randomly after 30 seconds to 60 minutes of uptime and both the PC and the router had to be rebooted. Last night, I discovered there was a firmware upgrade for my router, so I got the stuff out of the boxes again. I got an XP machine 10 months ago, I figured MS probably designed XP for easy hardware setup, so I tried it first. XP was working in minutes. And after a couple of hours, no lockups / reboots. It continues to be stable. Sweet indeed!

But the 98 box is being difficult. Thanks in advance for all your help.

Edited March 4, 2007 by saturndude

[saturndude]

Okay, I found ftp.dlink.com. The version 3.18 files (for revision B3, which I have) do not include the A3AB9x.sys file. So I went with the version 3.17, for generic "revision B" DWL-G520 cards. It won't connect, but at least I've got the right files. I'm using:

SSID broadcast: enabled, "Mikes-Network"

128-bit WEP key (26 hex characters, I wrote them down)

Key: shared (not open)

This is how things are set up on the XP box (and the DI-524) and things work perfectly. (The XP machine and the 98SE box are never on at the same time.)

If I click on the icon ('AirPlus Extreme G') in Control Panel, it still says "no card installed" and does nothing. This might be because the "Extreme G" feature is only available in XP (at least I think it is). If I click on the desktop icon in 98SE, I can set up the card (still won't work, though).

Any idea why 98SE isn't working? All suggestions are encouraged and welcome.

P.S. When I tried wireless a year ago, I was using a PCI card with a Realtek 8180 chip (EDIT: RTL8185 chip). Except for randomly locking up all the time, it *_almost_* worked in Linux (after 10-20 hours of work) (ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net ran the chip as if the card were actually in Windows). The D-link PCI uses the Atheros AR5212 chip. We'll see how well this works (ndiswrapper, madwifi).

Edited March 5, 2007 by saturndude