Install Ethernet PC Card

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Win98 on a Toshiba laptop… I’ve decided to give my old laptop to my daughter. It was hanging pretty regularly before I bought a replacement so the other day I formatted the hard drive and re-installed the original software, using the Recovery CD. The only additional thing I need to install is the Ethernet PC Card that I had been using with it. I have a floppy disk that contains the driver files that I downloaded several years ago. I plugged in the card and told the wizard to get the driver from the floppy but it didn’t find it there. Then I mistakenly clicked the Next button anyway and that apparently installs the card without a driver. I have two questions:

1) Is there some way to uninstall the card so it will be detected as New Hardware and prompt for a driver when I plug it in — it doesn’t to that any more? I haven’t been able to find any way to do that! I know I can go through the Replace Driver or Update Driver procedures. I’ve tried the Replace Driver procedure too without success; is that also a valid way to install a driver for this device at this point?

2) Can you give me general guidelines as to how to install the driver for this card? I followed the instructions in the little manual that came with the card and that didn’t work. I’ve tried all kinds of things, like pointing the wizard to the A: drive and pointing it to the A:Win98 folder, and downloading the latest driver for this card and putting that on a floppy and going through those steps with it and the wizard always says that a driver for this PC Card could not be found.

Thanks,
Bill

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1) Right-click My Computer and choose Properties. Click on the Device Manager tab, and click the + next to Network Adapters. You should see an entry in the list relating to your Ethernet card. Click that entry and click Remove. Restart the computer and it should recognize the card as new hardware once again.

2) What kind of files are on the disk? Perhaps you have an EXE file that decompresses the driver files to a location on your hard drive. Perhaps you could download new drivers from the PC card manufacturer’s web site.

Good luck!

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OK, it worked this time! I had tried that before and it wasn’t listed in the Device Manager so this time I plugged it in and rebooted and then looked and it was there in the Other category — I guess with no driver the system didn’t know what to do with it.

I actually have several sets of files that I have tried. Two different disks came with the Hawking Technologies Ethernet PC Card and I have one that I made, apparently from a download of the latest driver several years ago. The latest disk is one I made a couple of days ago when I downloaded the latest driver. I did have to upzip the downloaded file and the result is 14 folders and 13 files in the root directory. The folders have names like Client32, Diagnost, Enabler, Mslanman.dos, Ndis2, Pktdrv plus several OS system names including Win98. Does all of that sound reasonable?

I tried pointing the wizard at the root directory and at the Client32 folder and at the Win98 folder and it said that a driver could not be found in each case.

Thanks,
Bill

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What model is your Ethernet card? I’d like to download the drivers for myself and take a look at the files that are included in the download.

You’ve probably already tried this, but I thought I’d mention it anyway: if there is any sort of ReadMe, DOC or TXT file on the diskette, you might want to see what it has to say. Could contain directions for how to install the card/drivers.

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My card is a Hawking Technologies 10/100 Dual Speed Fast Ethernet PC Card (Model No. PN650TX). I downloaded the Fe1500.exe file. I’m going to try the Fe1200.exe now and see if the results are any different. In the Fe1500.exe there is a Readme.txt file in the root as well as in the Win98 folder. I just tried again, following exactly the directions in the Readme.txt in the Win98 folder and it failed to find a driver in step (5). I tried again but set the search location to A:Win98 and it failed again. I’ve read that the driver for this PC Card is a file named Le100nds.sys and there is a file by that name in the Win98 folder! Does this procedure sound like a reasonable way to install a PC Card driver?

I tried calling Hawking yesterday and on 2 occasions I waited on hold for about 20 minutes and then the line was disconnected! I also sent email to them twice yesterday and both times the message failed, apparently due to the addressee’s mail box being full! I sent the email again a while ago and it hasn’t come back yet so maybe it got through this time.

Thanks for your help. Bill

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My card is a Hawking Technologies 10/100 Dual Speed Fast Ethernet PC Card (Model No. PN650TX). I downloaded the Fe1500.exe file. I’m going to try the Fe1200.exe now and see if the results are any different. In the Fe1500.exe there is a Readme.txt file in the root as well as in the Win98 folder. I just tried again, following exactly the directions in the Readme.txt in the Win98 folder and it failed to find a driver in step (5). I tried again but set the search location to A:Win98 and it failed again. I’ve read that the driver for this PC Card is a file named Le100nds.sys and there is a file by that name in the Win98 folder! Does this procedure sound like a reasonable way to install a PC Card driver?

I tried calling Hawking yesterday and on 2 occasions I waited on hold for about 20 minutes and then the line was disconnected! I also sent email to them twice yesterday and both times the message failed, apparently due to the addressee’s mail box being full! I sent the email again a while ago and it hasn’t come back yet so maybe it got through this time.

Thanks for your help. Bill

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I just downloaded the Fe1200.exe driver file and got the same failed results during the install.

Bill

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I just downloaded the fe1200.exe file. Saw numerous directories and a handful of files, just like you said.
Let’s assume you’ve extracted all of the files to a diskette. What happens if you insert the diskette in your computer and run the INSTALL.EXE file?

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I’ve finally tried your suggestion. When I run Install.exe a ‘DOS’ window opens up and a message is displayed. The title of the message box is “PCMCIA Fast Ethernet Installation Program V 1.05”. The message is “Please follow the installation steps described in readme.txt or manual. It is not necessary to run this program under Win95, Win98, or NT environment.”

I remember that I had a LOT of trouble getting this PC Card installed originally, back in 1999. I even sent it back for a replacement and I received new driver info attached to an email and talking to their Technical Support finally got me over the last hurdle. However, I believe most of my problems back then were in later steps in the installation process. I know that the final one was that the computer poped up a message to insert the OS disk in the drive and that never worked. Their technician finally told me on the phone to insert their driver disk again at that point! That litle correction is now in the documentation! They questioned all kinds of things about my computer back then so I went out and bought another vendor’s Ethernet PC Card and it installed without a hitch! I took it back after Hawking refused to take back their PC Card.

I’m curious. How does the driver installation wizard know what file to look for on the floppy disk? I would certainly think that different vendors use names for their driver files.

Thanks, Bill

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I’m not sure how the Add New Hardware wizard knows for sure what driver it’s looking for.

I’m a little confused – you purchased a different card (that worked), but took it back because Hawking wouldn’t take their card back?

I’m going to try to do some more research tonight, and will see if I can come up with anything.

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Well, my fast PC Card is finally installed! Late yesterday I finally received an email reply to the one I sent to Hawking early last week and it had three files attached to it. Their message simply said “the attached file is the latest driver”. I put those files on a floppy and tried the install again and it worked! This time the wizard displayed a message that it was looking for a file named Net100.inf and one of the downloaded files had that name. When I pointed to the floppy again it proceeded to install the driver. There is a file by that name on the floppy I tried to install from last week too! I don’t know why this one worked and the other one did not. I haven’t tried to examine the differences in those two .inf files.

Yes, I returned the Ethernet PC Card that installed easily back in 1999 after Hawking sent me driver files and instructions and I finally did get their card installed back then. These cards cost well over $100 each back then and I didn’t want to just throw away the Hawking card and lose that money.

Thanks for all your all your effort in trying to help me get this thing going.

Bill

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Glad to hear you’re up and running!

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Glad to hear you’re up and running!

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Well, my fast PC Card is finally installed! Late yesterday I finally received an email reply to the one I sent to Hawking early last week and it had three files attached to it. Their message simply said “the attached file is the latest driver”. I put those files on a floppy and tried the install again and it worked! This time the wizard displayed a message that it was looking for a file named Net100.inf and one of the downloaded files had that name. When I pointed to the floppy again it proceeded to install the driver. There is a file by that name on the floppy I tried to install from last week too! I don’t know why this one worked and the other one did not. I haven’t tried to examine the differences in those two .inf files.

Yes, I returned the Ethernet PC Card that installed easily back in 1999 after Hawking sent me driver files and instructions and I finally did get their card installed back then. These cards cost well over $100 each back then and I didn’t want to just throw away the Hawking card and lose that money.

Thanks for all your all your effort in trying to help me get this thing going.

Bill

Reply | Quote

I’m not sure how the Add New Hardware wizard knows for sure what driver it’s looking for.

I’m a little confused – you purchased a different card (that worked), but took it back because Hawking wouldn’t take their card back?

I’m going to try to do some more research tonight, and will see if I can come up with anything.

Reply | Quote

I’ve finally tried your suggestion. When I run Install.exe a ‘DOS’ window opens up and a message is displayed. The title of the message box is “PCMCIA Fast Ethernet Installation Program V 1.05”. The message is “Please follow the installation steps described in readme.txt or manual. It is not necessary to run this program under Win95, Win98, or NT environment.”

I remember that I had a LOT of trouble getting this PC Card installed originally, back in 1999. I even sent it back for a replacement and I received new driver info attached to an email and talking to their Technical Support finally got me over the last hurdle. However, I believe most of my problems back then were in later steps in the installation process. I know that the final one was that the computer poped up a message to insert the OS disk in the drive and that never worked. Their technician finally told me on the phone to insert their driver disk again at that point! That litle correction is now in the documentation! They questioned all kinds of things about my computer back then so I went out and bought another vendor’s Ethernet PC Card and it installed without a hitch! I took it back after Hawking refused to take back their PC Card.

I’m curious. How does the driver installation wizard know what file to look for on the floppy disk? I would certainly think that different vendors use names for their driver files.

Thanks, Bill

Reply | Quote

I just downloaded the fe1200.exe file. Saw numerous directories and a handful of files, just like you said.
Let’s assume you’ve extracted all of the files to a diskette. What happens if you insert the diskette in your computer and run the INSTALL.EXE file?

Reply | Quote

I just downloaded the Fe1200.exe driver file and got the same failed results during the install.

Bill

Reply | Quote

What model is your Ethernet card? I’d like to download the drivers for myself and take a look at the files that are included in the download.

You’ve probably already tried this, but I thought I’d mention it anyway: if there is any sort of ReadMe, DOC or TXT file on the diskette, you might want to see what it has to say. Could contain directions for how to install the card/drivers.

Reply | Quote

OK, it worked this time! I had tried that before and it wasn’t listed in the Device Manager so this time I plugged it in and rebooted and then looked and it was there in the Other category — I guess with no driver the system didn’t know what to do with it.

I actually have several sets of files that I have tried. Two different disks came with the Hawking Technologies Ethernet PC Card and I have one that I made, apparently from a download of the latest driver several years ago. The latest disk is one I made a couple of days ago when I downloaded the latest driver. I did have to upzip the downloaded file and the result is 14 folders and 13 files in the root directory. The folders have names like Client32, Diagnost, Enabler, Mslanman.dos, Ndis2, Pktdrv plus several OS system names including Win98. Does all of that sound reasonable?

I tried pointing the wizard at the root directory and at the Client32 folder and at the Win98 folder and it said that a driver could not be found in each case.

Thanks,
Bill

Reply | Quote

1) Right-click My Computer and choose Properties. Click on the Device Manager tab, and click the + next to Network Adapters. You should see an entry in the list relating to your Ethernet card. Click that entry and click Remove. Restart the computer and it should recognize the card as new hardware once again.

2) What kind of files are on the disk? Perhaps you have an EXE file that decompresses the driver files to a location on your hard drive. Perhaps you could download new drivers from the PC card manufacturer’s web site.

Good luck!

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