I have a DLink 713P router with a cabled WinXP, cabled Win2000, and a Win98 laptop that I either plug in using a Xircom RealPort2 R2BE-100 or DLink 650 DWL-650 wireless card. The Win98 has occasionally lost the connection to the router and I reboot the router, remove and reinstall the NIC, or switch to wireless (or viceversa) and that has always reconnected it. No, I can't say there was a common problem. Now I can't get any connection - Win98 doesn't ping 192.168.0.1, although it pings 192.168.0.140 (itself) and 127.0.0.1 That is, until I release/renew, and then the IP is 169.254.xxx.xxx and the 192.168.0.1 is unreachable. Other PCs can't see the Win98 on the network. Because I like the speed of the cable connection, I bought a Linksys USB110M network adapter and upon installation, it worked fine for a few hours, then it dropped the connection and nothing I've done previously corrects it. I've removed adapters, rebooted, reinstalled automatically, they get assigned an IP, but can't get internet or LAN. And when I release/renew or course it's gone more stupid. I've switched cables between the Win2000 and Win98, no help. Since it affects both PCI cards and a USB device, I guess it's not my aging laptop, but where in the chain of links to look is now beyond me. Thanks in advance, all you guys.

Either setup an acceptable range of IP addys for DHCP to assign to the clients on your router and make sure your 98 machine and router are in the correct subnet mask, which should be 255.255.255.0 or turn off DHCP in the router and assign static IP's to the clients, with the same subnet mask and make sure they are all in the same workgroup name.

Solved - bad cable. When I bought a USB network adapter, it worked for a bit, then laptop wouldn't connect to anything. I must have twisted the wire some more and it stopped making contact. Switched to another cable, fine. Put bad cable on good PC, and no good. Needless to say, I've learned a lot. So far, the few times the wireless card stopped working, I'm attributing to the router, since rebooting usually fixed it.