Can't get w98se onto the internet

[Coyote]

A friend of mine gave me an old Compaq Presario 5441 that I would like to connect to my home network but I'm running into a brick wall and hope you kind folks can help me.

I have two Ibuiltit computers connected to a Linksys BEFSR41 router and the router connected to a Linksys BEFCMU10 cable modem. Both of these computers connect to the internet just fine.

I did a reinstall of w98se on the Compaq and added a SMC USB 10/100Mbps Fast Ethernet Adapter. The install went smooth. No problems in device manager. I can ping the router successfully. I ran the internet connection wizard but can't get on the net. So I set it up manually, using the TCP/IP properties section. I assigned an IP address and entered the subnet mask I use on the other two computers. I added the IP address of the router as the gateway.

I have Internet Explorer and FireFox installed and get a "page cannot be displayed" message when I run IE and a "server cannot be found" message when I run FF.

What is it that keeps me from getting to the internet?

[glc]

Get rid of that USB adapter and put a proper PCI NIC in there, they are less than 20 bucks. Win98 and USB is nothing but headaches.

[Coyote]

Thanks for the response glc. I originally installed a Linksys 10/100 EtherFast PCI Adapter with the same results. Thinking the card might be bad, I tried the SMC adapter. Still the same problem.

[glc]

This is a fresh reformat and Windows reinstall?

[Coyote]

Yes sir, it is.

[glc]

Okay - when you created the static IP and used the router's IP as the gateway, you have to enable DNS. Use anything for host name - doesn't matter - but use the actual ISP-assigned DNS from the WAN status page in the router. On the DNS page, a host name is required, no more, no suffixes or any of that stuff.

[Coyote]

Thank you glc. That fixed it!

I really appreciate your help.

[toomyg]

Originally Posted by glc Get rid of that USB adapter and put a proper PCI NIC in there, they are less than 20 bucks. Win98 and USB is nothing but headaches.

The usb adapters work fine on two of my 98 se pc's I had to automatically detect settings in the LAN settings under the connections tab and one of the pc's used to be win95

[toomyg]

Originally Posted by Coyote Thank you glc. That fixed it! I really appreciate your help.

How did you fix it????

[glc]

Probably by enabling DNS like I suggested.

[Coyote]

How did you fix it????

By following glc's instructions, of course...

Okay - when you created the static IP and used the router's IP as the gateway, you have to enable DNS. Use anything for host name - doesn't matter - but use the actual ISP-assigned DNS from the WAN status page in the router. On the DNS page, a host name is required, no more, no suffixes or any of that stuff.

[Coyote]

Hehe... posted at the same time. I put the name "william" in as the host name and that did the trick.

I didn't know that a host name was required.