Need help connecting old PC to wireless LAN

[Glaive]

Hey guys, I'm in need of some help here.

My roommate's very old Gateway started crashing all over the place, could only boot into safe mode (and even then only half the time) and had a host of other problems. I took out his hard drive, connected it to my computer, and ran a bunch of scans and diagnostics. The drive seemed to be good, but I removed tons of spyware and adware. Hooked it back up, and it still wouldn't run, so he agreed to just reformat and reinstall the OS.

So I reformatted the drive using FDISK and reinstalled the OS from his Windows 98SE disk. He did not have any other disks that came with his computer, so I had to search around the net and find drivers for his motherboard chipset, video card, sound card, etc.

Everything's totally great now, except that we can't seem to get his computer back on our wireless network. I know the hardware inside a computer case pretty well, and have built several systems, but I know very little about networking.

Me and my two roommates share a broadband connection. I have the modem in my room connected to a Linksys Wireless 802.11g router. My two roommates each connect wirelessly.

The PC in question was using a Speedstream wireless usb unit to connect to the network, and I installed the software off the disk that came with it, but I can't seem to figure out a way to get it to look for a wireless network connection.

I ran Windows Update and downloaded everything I could, thinking that perhaps he was missing some sort of networking patch or something, but still nothing.

Any ideas on what I could try? I have very little experience working with Windows 98, so I'm kinda fumbling in the dark here. My other roommate knows networks much better than me, and he was the one who originally got this computer onto the wireless network before it crashed, but he can't remember exactly what he did, and he agreed with me that it's almost like some sort of software is missing, but we don't know what it is.

Any help would be appreciated, and if you need more info, such as system specs, I'll be glad to post them when I get home.

[glc]

If you properly installed the wireless adapter and software, there will be a utility running in the systray that you open and configure for your wireless network.

[Glaive]

That's exactly what I figured, but no matter how many times I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the Wireless USB module, using both the software on the CD and from the manufacturer's website, and once it is installed nothing seems to be different. There's now a little shortcut in the Start Menu, but if I click on it it just says "Wireless Utility is already running," even though I can find nothing anywhere to indicate where the heck this utility is, what it's doing, or how I can uitilize it.

[glc]

Look carefully at the systray icons.

[Glaive]

I checked again, and there's nothing there, just the one for the Antivirus software (AVG) and the one for AOL (yes yes, I know). Nothing for Speedstream, or anything else wireless or network related.

I'm fairly stumped.

[Glaive]

Apparently so is everyone else. My other roommate was the one who originally got this computer connected to our wireless network, and he went through and tried to do everything he did before, installing the software and drivers for the Wireless USB device and so forth, and he just can't get it to work. It just seems like something is missing somewhere. It's not that it's trying to connect and failing, we can't even find any place to get it to look for a wireless network period.

At this point my roommate is just wanting to buy a new computer.

[glc]

I'd put a Linksys WMP54G PCI card in it before giving up. USB networking is nasty.