hey, i've got a dell inspiron 3800 laptop. i'm trying to get it hooked into a wireless network at my church. i am havning a lot of trouble. the wireless card is connecting to the network (or so it says) but i can't get internet explorer to work. i've got the correct ip address and gateway... are there any settings i may be missing?
thanks mark

 

And you are running 98se?!?!

 

open a command line window.
type winipcfg (press enter)
You should have an IP address, Subnet Mask, and a Gateway.
If all looks good, goto your control pnl
click on your network connections icon
right click your wireless connection, goto properties.
you should have an internet protocol (tcp/ip). If not, install it.
the properties will have among other things, your DNS servers. If you dont know your DNS servers, check on antoher computer at the church to find the ones used by the ISP for the church.

 

Most wireless in small business/home use (like a church) often use DHCP, you might want to try setting the PC to automatically obatin IP address.
Also, go to the command promp (ms-dos prompt in win98) and type ping google.com and see if you get a response or if it times out.

 

Does the laptop work at home or work, on either a wired or wireless network? That answer will let you know if its the computer or the church connection.

Is the church running encryption? If so, you may be SOL with that old computer and software. Do they have MAC filtering enabled? If they're running wide open, it should connect easy. All you need to know is the SSID. Not sure what you need IP address's for.

I wonder what version of IE you're running - you may find out that it is woefully inadequate these days for some sites.

 

yea i just reinstalled off the original recovery disk, so the software is from 2000. i will be trying an xp upgrade in a few days. i will try the suggestion, there are a few i haven't tried yet. just trying to limp it along till i can afford a newer computer.

 

LOL!

(sorry it is funny though)

 

Does Windows98 actually even support wireless networking?

 

Don't put XP on unless you have at least 128mb RAM and that is bare minimum

 

i have 192mb ram.... and only a 6 gig hard drive, like i said, this is a bandaid.

 

Yes it can. You may need to download an update for it though. Most wireless cards (at least the ones I've used) come with the necessary drivers to run on on 98SE.

 

I have several computers running 98se that perform just fine on my wireless network.I even have an old IBM 701c laptop that will work if you have the time to wait for a 486 to process the data.
I don't think that 6GB is large enough to load XP and 128Mb will really slow XP down.Win98se is a stable operating system and XP is a resource hog so keep that in mind,I would set a bare minimum of 512 Mb of ram for XP.
You should go to the support site of the manufacturer of your wireless card and they will walk you through the installation.
Just an interesting anecdote here,I was in a remote area about a year ago with my Dodge pickup and lost my brakes and my cell would not hold a signal long enough to make a call for help.I fired up my laptop since I was near some municiple buildings and with NetStumbler was able to get online and contacted my brother with ICQ and he came with his Dodge pickup and a trailer and hauled me home.I even got pictures of my truck on his trailer.)Ron G

 

Windows 2000 is the best you can hope for. Microsoft cancelled updates and support for 98 so 2000 is the oldest you can go for now. XP will crawl like no other on your laptop. Trust me, my woman has a dell with a 2ghz pentium4 with 128mb of memory and I can't stand using it. XP requires 256mb just to run. any program running will require more than 256. Even 512mb is kinda slow. 2000 is the way to go. Vista (the new windows) takes like a minimum of 768mb to run. Dell said that you will need at least 2gig to run smoothly (depending on the version). This stuff is getting frustrating at how much your pc has to have just to run new software.

Good luck, I'll shut up now....

 

hey, got the laptop working on the network. got a new network card that also had an update for IE so i no longer plan on atempting the XP install this computer will get me through until i can afford a new one. thanks for the help as always!