The Windows Setup Wizard

After physically inserting the card into the system, boot up your computer. Hopefully, Windows will detect the new hardware and launch the Add New Hardware Wizard. At this point, Windows will either ask for the Win98 CD or more commonly, ask for a driver disk from the manufacturer. When Windows asks if you have the driver files, insert the NIC installation disk into your floppy drive.

If Windows does not detect your new hardware, the card may be seated improperly, or you may not have a Plug'n'Play card. If you have a PCI NIC or know your card is plug and play, try switching slots. Many motherboards tend to assign different IRQ addresses to different slots, and if one of your PCI slots is designated a slave slot, your system may not recognize the card. In the event that your ISA network card isn't Plug'n'Play, you'll probably have to run a setup program from disk manually - check the instruction manual or disk that came with the card.

The NIC installation disk might also include a DOS setup utility that will allow you to test and configure your card. Once the installation is complete, Windows will ask to restart your system.

Potential Conflicts

After rebooting your system, check the Device Manager in the System window of the Control Panel. Make sure there isn't a yellow exclamation symbol next to your network card. If there is a symbol, there's probably a resource conflict between the NIC and another system component. Older non-PnP legacy cards tend to eat up valuable resource settings, and reduce the possible number of configuration options for your NIC. Try changing the resource settings of the NIC.

Double click the device and check the Device Status box in the General tab. Any system resource conflicts will be listed here. If you are experiencing a problem, click on the Resources tab and view the Conflicting device list. You should then be able to select the "Set Configuration Manually" button and choose a new I/O range or IRQ to free the conflict. Once done, you'll need to reboot; go back to Device Manager and confirm that the network card is recognized properly. Once Windows recognizes your NIC without any resource conflicts, you're ready to start selecting protocols.