PCMCIA wireless Adapter for WinME

[kelly]

I installed a Linksys PCMCIA wireless adapter in a WinME laptop. Doesn't want to work - keeps saying the adapter is inactive. Looks good in Device Manager.

Called Linksys who told me that although this adapter should work on ME, sometimes it doesn't. They wanted me to return this 'G' adapter and try an older 'B' adapter. That's not a route I want to take even if I could find an older adapter.

Anyone have a suggestion for a PCMCIA wireless adapter that will work on WinME? or should I go to Staples and buy one from each manufacturer until I find one?

[Dudeking]

From googling there are very few 'G's that will work on me. But this one claims to, whether it will or not is another matter :) http://www.amazon.com/Linksys-WPC54G-Wireless-G-Notebook-Adapter/dp/B00007KDVK

[kelly]

That's the one that didn't work (even though it said it would)

[Dudeking]

Humm, that's the only one I could find that said it supported ME.
Looks like you might have to stick with 'B', is 11mp/s that bad? Your internet connection won't be that fast. Or looks like an upgrade from me.

[qldit]

Good Afternoon kelly, when you have these kinds of problems you don't really know if the problem is really the device with an odd problem or the system with an incompatibility.

To ease the head scratching, I found using a live Linux bootable program running from a CD was very useful. Typically the more recent Puppy Linux versions will load quite easily (this system runs entirely in memory as Ramdrive) in most cases and the newer versions have excellent wireless compatibility.
This does not require to load anything onto the hard drive, and if it's networking wizard is run from it's desktop is very useful for problem determination.
Definitely worth a try.
Cheers, qldit.

[kelly]

Thanks - but the device needs to run on this machine which is running WinME. Thinking that there's a problem with the OS, I'm trying to reload the OS. Thanks for your response to that thread in the ME forum. I'm working it today.

[mylanta]

Tony.
I would bet it is the OS in me. As i remember Me had myriad of problems with networking and dialups everywhere unless the OS was "pristine".
You do realize that what Lawrence was suggesting in using Linux, would prove the problem is not hardware though.

[kelly]

The hardware is new. Linksys says this happens sometimes, although the box says it supports ME. i fdisk/formatted the drive, reinstalled ME. At this point, I would think the system is 'pristine'.

Loaded the Linksys disk, went thru the setup and got the same error.

I'm going to try another manufacturer.

[mylanta]

You know Tony, this is one of the reasons I no longer work on 98 or Me. All it was starting to mean to me was a ton of unbillable hours. Why not simply insist the client update to XP or give it back to them.