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OK, thanks for the clarification. stuck

I cleaned up an old ME box by using the OEM system restore option. Having done so I thought I'd got to Windows Update and get all the patches but as the PC only has IE 5.5 on it Windows Update won't work. In fact it appears I'd need at least IE 8 if I wanted to do this but that's not ME compatible. Is there a way round this? stuck

No, .NET stuff has never been part of XP service packs, you need to download then and install them as required. Note too that .NET 2.0 does not supersede .NET 1.1, it is a whole new beastie. stuck

I run XP MCE fully patched and it runs GIMP & Paint.NET just fine. Why do you say your set p won't run these applications? Do the installations fail? If so what error messages do you get. If they install OK what happens when you try to use them? stuck

Bundled with my Netgear DG834g router was a WG111 Netgear wireless adapter. The software for the WG111 is 98SE compatible and it allows my ancient IBM ThinkPad 390 laptop to connect to my WPA encrypted home network. Does this help? stuck

I beg to differ about no one doing extended songs any more. it's nothing like Bob Dylan but try Porcupine Tree - Anesthetize, all 17:42 of it. On the album Fear of a Blank Planet stuck

Try reading this thread stuck

My main home PC is still 98FE and it still uses dial-up (56K) but I'm in the process of going ADSL with an XP box. As part of that process I bought a Netgear DG834G wireless router. Bundled with it was a W111 wireless USB thingy. I tried adding the wireless gizmo to the 98FE PC but it choked big time. However, when I installed it on an old IBM 390 Thinkpad laptop that runs 98SE it was perfectly happy and joined the home network that that router was providing to my XP box and two other laptops (one Vista Gold, the other XP). So, yes 98SE can do wireless networking and from what I've seen so far there is no reason why 98SE couldn't handle an ADSL connection to the internet. Perhaps when you say companies told you 98 isn't supported they meant the modems they supply as part of their ADSL package won't work. In which case don't take the modem they offer. Go shopping and find one that is 98SE compatible. My experience is the Netgear DG834G works with 98SE but your mileage may vary. stuck

I'm sorry but you don't seem to have read the bit where I said: >(no, it's not as simple as the router is not broadcasting the network name) That's the whole point, the 'broadcast SSID is ticked'. The network 'disappeared' when I changed only one setting on the router, namely selecting WPA. No matter, it is working now. I wish I could give a clear explanation of what I did to correct the problem but it involved: a) on the laptop, with wireless turned off - clearing out every reference to any network I could find - rebooting several times - then turning on the wierless asking it to find and connect to the router, unsecured - disconnecting - clearing out every ref to any network - rebooting - asking it to connect to the network, WPA secured B) on the router, performing a 'hard' reset every time I rebooted the laptop Eventually, the laptop found the network. Connecting was then trivial, I just gave it the WPA key and away it went. What ever was at fault, it was definitely something to do with the HP laptop because throughout all of this messing around an Acer laptop running Vista would connect to the network every time. stuck edited: Hmm, the forum software insists on replacing the letter b followed by a ) with a smilie

I have inherited a HP 510 notebook PC. It's only ever been connected to the web via dial-up so its OS has never been patched but it declares itself to be XP SP2, which MS tells me is WPA compatible. The wireless in it is an Intel PRO 2200bg, that to is supposed to be WPA compatible. Device manager says the driver is provide by intel, v9.0.4.17. Intel's website says the latest is v9.0.4.39. That doesn't strike me as very big difference or at least not one suggesting the latest version adds WPA. If I set my Netgear 834g router to completely open. The laptop happily finds an unsecured network. If I choose WEP, the laptop sees a secured network. If I select WPA or WP2 or WPA/WPA2 mixed mode the laptop tells me there is no network at all (no, it's not as simple as the router is not broadcasting the network name). Any ideas why the network vanishes when I choose WPA/WPA2 when I apparently have WPA compatible hardware, driver and OS? (beyond the obvious answer that clearly one of these three components is not WPA ready ) stuck