Some of what is listed in Safe Mode in your Device Manager are 
components of Microsoft's Internet Connection Sharing, and other 
"enhancements" they have made to the TCP/IP stack, the set of protocols 
that enable your computer to talk to the Internet. No need to remove 
those. As for your connectivity one machine to another, you need to 
insure that both machines are in the same workgroup, that each machine 
has a unique name within the workgroup, and that the firewalls on both 
machines are allowing two-way communications between the machines. The 
firewall that comes as part of Windows XP SP2 should not present much 
reconfiguring problems, but others like ZoneAlarm will need you to add 
some entries into the "trusted networks" area, or something named 
similarly. Windows 98SE will be more difficult to configure because of 
its age. Make sure the workgroup name and each computer name are 9 
characters or shorter in length and do not use punctuation, just to be 
sure that Win98 will like them. Hope this helps some.

Venkat Viswanathan wrote:
> in an attempt to network a vintage (10 year old) p3 HP laptop(through a cross over cable) with a pc i seem to have messed up things.
>
> (1)the lap top (win98se) didn't have a rj45 port and so i got hold of a usb to lan adapter called dm9601 (cheap chinese make).it installed but did't work.so got hold of a d-link pcmcia lan adapter and got it installed.
>
>
> (2)th pc (winxp pro) has an onboard SIS lan adapter through which i have a adsl connection through a simple router. since i needed another lan port for the home network i installed the dm9601( which failed in the lap top). it did'nt work here either.  so went in for a d-link PCI TO LAN ADAPTER and installed it
>
>
> (3) the net result of all this is that i now have at least 10 items listed under "network adapters" in device manager in safe mode in th PC.
>
> NAMES ARE-- direct parallel,dm9601,linksys, wan miniport, dlink packet sceduler
> #1, 2,3, someting called miniport etc etc.
>
>
> (4) the problem is win xp is not allowing uninstall OF ANY OF THESE, EVEN IN SAFE MODE, WITH A CRYPT MSG THAT IT IS NEEDED FOR BOOTING THE COMPUTER!!!!!
>
> (5) possibly because of these multiple entries the "network wizard " utility in xp just goes through the grapphical motion of connecting both the lap top and pc but at the end it is blank when i go to "my network places."
>
> (6)in the laptop it seems to have worked because in network neighbourhood (win98) i can see both the icons. the one for the pc called R1 and the one for the laptop called VV.
>
> (7)BUT HEREAGAIN IF I CLICK R1 TO ACCESS THE PC IT SAYS I DON'T HAVE PERMISSION TO ACCESS THIS RESOURCE.
>
> there is no administrator password set in the PC since i am the only user. i even tried by enabling guest user but no luck.
>
> shall appreciate all help in un installing the umpteen network adapters listed in the PC.
>
> or is a clean reload of xp the only option--no data problem but time is the constraint.
>
> TKS IN ADVANCE---Venkat
>
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