WiFi dongle not starting on laptop.

[Agile]

I have bought a USB dongle and it comes with a program CD.

When I try to run the CD it comes up with the error

Autorun.exe

linked to missing

OLEAUT 32, DLL : 173

The laptop is running Windows 95.

Anyone recognise whats wrong? Not being able to link to the web makes fixing these things more difficult!

Tony

[thescruff]

Is it suitable for win 95

I would have thought you need at least 98.

The guys will tell you when they wake up.

[gas4you]

All the dongles I have bought never have a cd, it has all been in the dongle itself and auto loads on insertion.

I would say win 95 is too old.

Why buy one when they are free from £5/month data bundle?

[Agile]

I am looking for a solution!

This is to enable this lap top to be used on the exisisting wlan an no extra monthly cost.

For a 17 y.o. spending too much time on facebook I am not into spending on a monthly basis.

Tony

[thescruff]

So like a wireless G card to enable the lappy to connect to the router.

[gas4you]

Ah, so not really a dongle then.

A wirless adaptor, make sure it covers g & n these days.

[Agile]

Surely there are computer nerds on here who can help and know what it is?

This is what the seller calls it:-

1 x Wireless LAN (Wi-Fi) (WLAN) "Mini" - USB 2.0 Dongle - 802.11g -

[thescruff]

Yes but you have to wait for them to log on.

[kellys_eye]

USB2 will not work on Win95 - in fact you'll struggle to get it working on Win98.

Two options available:

1. Fit a CAT5 cable connection to your router (but this means being hardwired)
2. Load Linux on the lappy and go from there.

What spec is the lappy? Does it have enough 'oomph' to run above Win98?

[scot-canuck]

Ok for start I'm a geek not a nerd

Can you post a link to where you got the wireless adapter from?
Can you also give me the specs for the laptop? Memory, type of processor (listed in control panel, system usually)
The main problem is getting drivers for windows 95, its been obsolete for so long there is virtually no kit still alive which runs on windows 95, worse still there are 2 versions of windows 95 and the earlier version does not even support USB, which might be the issue you are facing.

What do you use the laptop for? solely internet browsing? If so something like Xubuntu might be an option (lightweight linux distro which normally supports most hardware and can use windows wireless drivers and is still supported)

Thats if the laptop has the networking stack installed KE, a lot of windows 95 kit doesn't have TCP/IP installed (I know as I had to migrate an office full of windows 95 machines onto new machines which ran XP, ended up removing the hard drives from the old machines and copying the files over as I could not get windows 95 to talk to the ethernet network and the new machines. (Kept crashing)

[scot-canuck]

USB2 will not work on Win95 - in fact you'll struggle to get it working on Win98.

Two options available:

1. Fit a CAT5 cable connection to your router (but this means being hardwired)
2. Load Linux on the lappy and go from there.

What spec is the lappy? Does it have enough 'oomph' to run above Win98?

USB2 will default to USB 1.1 speeds if there is no USB 2 controller present, its a design feature to ensure backwards compatibility.
However 95 doesn't support USB very well, 98 can, but 98 and 98Se are flaky and tend to crash due to most drivers suffering various flaws which can and do crash the entire machine. I don't even want to mention the horror which is Windows Me.

[thescruff]

I have a Linksys 3G card for my 98se lappy and it works very well.

I also have an HP pavilion lappy with 98se that has an inbuilt wireless card, in fact I use that 99% of the time.

The 98se desk top when it works I hard wire as the base unit.

[Agile]

At last a genuine computer geek who seems to know the kind of things I need!

Its "designed for Windows 95" but its actually running Windows 98 now so must have been upgraded at some stage.

I will need more time to find out what may be inside it.

The dongle is from Seven day Shop at £5.99.

Doesn't the error message help you?

Tony

[thescruff]

At last a genuine computer geek who seems to know the kind of things I need!

Tony

Very flattering Tony.

If you were on here all the time you could answer a few question in the heating forum that's been waiting for ages.

Some people have jobs and a life to get on with as well as spending free time on internet forums.

[scot-canuck]

Means the file it is looking for is out of date.
http://www.d-a-l.com/help/windows-98-98 ... erous.html << that article might solve the issues you are experiencing.
Will look back in later as cabinet building at the moment.