I tried to connect this quite old Toshiba Notebook to my Router via a Xircom CardBus Ethernet II 10/100. There are no conflicts in the Device Manager and the service program "Xircom RealView" tells me, that a connection to the LAN exists and that I receive bytes and packages from the LAN, but the Ethernet-Card does not appear in the IP-Configuration (only the TC-Adapter does), I don't get any Internet-Connection and of the 2 LEDs of Xircom CardBus, the right one (Link) shines red and the other one (LAN activity) is black. Please help me, I am stumped. :(

From your post, it is difficult to determine your level of experience in networking. I gather you opened a dos prompt and typed "ipconfig /all" and only a TC-Adaptor was listed. What is the TC-Adaptor? Have you been to Control Panel - Networks - TCP/IP - properties and either set a valid IP address, or checked that it is set to obtain one automatically if using DHCP? Link lights are usually green for an active connection. It wouldn't hurt to try another network cable.

I wouldn't say that I'm a network-expert but I have at least some basic knowledge. Secondly, I'm not quite sure if I translated "TC-Adaptor" rightly (the system language is german and it is called "DFÜ-Adapter", the one you need for dial-up connections). When I start winipcfg.exe I only find the settings of the TC-Adaptor ("PPP-Adapter"). This is quite useless since I don't have any modem. When I type "ipconfig /all" I get something like "0 Ethernet Adapter :" and then the settings of the TC-Adaptor. I have already tried to manually set the IP-address, but that didn't change anything. The only place where changes in the TCP/IP-settings of the Ethernet-Adaptor do take effect is the service program of the Ethernet Adaptor. I tried lots of online tutorials, how to set up a LAN-connection with Win98, but with no result. I guess I have to switch the system from the standard TC-Adaptor to the Ethernet-Adaptor somehow, but I have no clue how to do that. In Win2k I can set up a LAN-Connection and choose the network device, I want to use, but I haven't figured out yet how to to that in Win98. P.S.: The network cable works perfectly with my Personal Computer.

Sorry for the lateness of my reply. I haven't been on this site for a while. To change the way that windows looks for the internet is to use the 'internet connection wizard' and tell it you wish to connect through a network and to detect settings automatically. You can check the network connection by using the ping command in a dos box. First find the ip address of another device in your network. I prefer to use the router as pcs sometimes have firewalls which block pings. The usage is simply "ping" space ip address enter. It should the return four messages. Hopefully these messages start with 'reply received'.