This document may be of help if you are ever faced with the situation described above. After successfully installing the drivers for the USB/Ethernet adapter the next step is often checking the IP address. This particular problem is especially common with Windows 98/ME machines. When you type “WINIPCFG” in the Run box the adapter will not appear to be present, even though you can verify that it is correctly installed in the Device manager. The screen-shot below is an example of this.

As you can see there is only the PPP Adapter present, even after checking the drop down button (circled).

This indicates that there is a problem with the installation of the adapter. To rectify this problem there are a few things that should be checked.

Check if TCP/IP is present for the adapter.

It can often happen that the Adapter loads in the Network control panel without TCP/IP bound to it. Go into Control Panel.

From there, go into the Network Control panel.

Now take a close look at the contents of the Network components box above. There are three different components. There are Clients, Adapters and Protocols. Client for Microsoft Networks and Microsoft family logon are Clients. The dial up adapter and the EZ connect adapter are Adapters. TCP/IP >Dial up adapter is a Protocol.

If you haven’t already spotted the problem above, TCP/IP for the EZ Connect is missing. In this case this would explain why the adapter was not showing up when we ran the “WINIPCFG” command. Let’s rectify this problem.

Click on ADD

From the resulting box, select Protocol by clicking once on it. Now click ADD once more.

A new box will open up, Click on Microsoft. The list on the right hand side will change, select TCP/IP and click OK.

At this point you may be prompted for the Windows disk. If you have it, insert it in the CD drive. If the cab files are on the hard drive, point to them instead. (If you are unsure what this means please refer to the “missing files” document included in this set, it explains cab files fully). You may also be prompted to restart the computer.

Your Network should now be complete as my screenshot shows. You can see that the EZ connect adapter now has TCP/IP assigned to it.

Other causes

From the information supplied above you can see that three key component types make up the Network; Clients, Adapters and Protocols. Windows does have certain limitations on the amount of TCP connections it will allow to be configured.

Windows 98 and SE: Six connections (Some earlier versions of 98 would only allow 4)

Windows ME supports twelve connections, which should be adequate for most situations.

As you can see, if a Network already has six connections configured, the new USB which was just installed would be ignored. This too would be a possible cause of why the adapter will not show when “WINIPCFG” is ran. This can happen where AOL was previously installed as the AOL setup significantly adds to the configuration of TCP connections. In this situation, some ADAPTERS may need removing. To do this selectively highlight the adapter you wish to remove and click Remove.