Windows 2000 Wireless Connection Manager

[Genralkidd]

I have an Intel Wifi card installed in my laptop, the drivers all installed fine. However there's no wireless connection manager available. The driver software did come with Intel ProSet/Wireless software for the connection manager, however I've been unable to install it due to some kind of XML support issue in Windows 2000. If anyone has a solution to that, that'd be great. Otherwise, are their any generic wifi connection managers for Windows 2000 that I could use?

 

[smorizio]

if the card shows up in windows device manager. then go under networks to the wifi device that named there. you see when you right click it bring up the windows wifi manager and it will list all networks within range. when it comes up there be a tab to have it show up on the task bar. when it does you should have a wifi icon on the lower right of the taskbar.

 

[Genralkidd]

if the card shows up in windows device manager. then go under networks to the wifi device that named there. you see when you right click it bring up the windows wifi manager and it will list all networks within range. when it comes up there be a tab to have it show up on the task bar. when it does you should have a wifi icon on the lower right of the taskbar.

I can't install the wifi manager provided by Intel though. I keep getting an XML support error during installation and it never installs. There's currently no wifi manager installed at all. I was hoping there was some kind of generic 3rd party wifi manager I could use instead.

 

[Alabalcho]

Windows 2000 should support WiFi connections out of the box, however you could have problems connecting to WPA/PSK-protected WiFi networks.

 

[boosted1g]

First of all, don't make duplicate posts, just make one.

There is no native windows 2000 wifi manager and no generic 3rd party ones, it has to be the OEM supplied manager with the card.

You will either need to find a card that directly supported windows 2000 or change OS to windows XP or Linux.
You cant expect things to support 16 year old operating systems, especially when what you are wanting to support barley existed during the time of the operating system.

 

[Genralkidd]

First of all, don't make duplicate posts, just make one.

There is no native windows 2000 wifi manager and no generic 3rd party ones, it has to be the OEM supplied manager with the card.

You will either need to find a card that directly supported windows 2000 or change OS to windows XP or Linux.
You cant expect things to support 16 year old operating systems, especially when what you are wanting to support barley existed during the time of the operating system.

Sorry, after I posted the first time I realized that this forum was probably a better one to post the question in but I wasn't able to move or delete my previous post.

The Wifi card does support Windows 2000 and the drivers provided by Intel support Windows 2000 as well. The laptop itself is relatively old one, Lenovo ThinkPad T61. It does officially support Windows 2000, but as I mentioned above, while the drivers install fine, the connection manager fails to install due to an XML issue even though it should be supported by Windows 2000.

 

[boosted1g]

I see.

Have you gone to SP4 for your windows 2000 machine?
Is this the original wifi card that came with the T61 and did 2000 come on the T61 or a different OS?

 

[Genralkidd]

I see.

Have you gone to SP4 for your windows 2000 machine?
Is this the original wifi card that came with the T61 and did 2000 come on the T61 or a different OS?

Yes, it was a clean install with SP4 already included. This is the original wifi card that came with the T61 and I got the T61 without any OS pre-installed. It is for the most part, a very new install of Windows 2000. All the drivers were downloaded from the Lenovo driver downloads site.

 

[boosted1g]

Ugh, well you have done everything right.

Could be that something changed in SP4 that made it not compatible or who knows. Unfortunately it is 10 years past the point of anyone caring enough to put funding into trying to fix it.

At this point a USB wireless N adapter would probably be better then whatever came in that T61 if you can find one that supports win 2000.
Otherwise like I said earlier, I would try to go to windows XP or Linux. If there was not specific windows applications you were wanting to use then Linux would likely have more support.

 

[Genralkidd]

Ugh, well you have done everything right.

Could be that something changed in SP4 that made it not compatible or who knows. Unfortunately it is 10 years past the point of anyone caring enough to put funding into trying to fix it.

At this point a USB wireless N adapter would probably be better then whatever came in that T61 if you can find one that supports win 2000.
Otherwise like I said earlier, I would try to go to windows XP or Linux. If there was not specific windows applications you were wanting to use then Linux would likely have more support.

I'll see if I can hunt down every Windows 2000 update out there and see if that fixes the installer issue. Otherwise I guess I will just use a usb or express card wifi adapter. The main reason I need to use Windows 2000 is because there's some legacy applications and hardware that I need access to again. Not all of them have Windows XP drivers either. Windows 2000 is basically the newest OS I can use to ensure compatibility while also having somewhat of a modern computing experience.

 

[Genralkidd]

I got it working! One of the other posters was correct. All I had to do was go to device manager and through the driver settings, I could manually connect to a Wifi network as long as I know the ssid and password. However, through this method, I'm only able to connect to WEP networks. Currently that's ok, but eventually I'll need to use this laptop on networks with WPA2 and so on so I'll probably just end up buying a Wifi ExpressCard for this laptop anyways which should come with wireless connection software too. After installing all the updates I could find for Windows 2000, I'm still unable to figure out why the Intel PROSet software has an XML issue during setup and fails to install. But at least I'm able to connect to the internet now.