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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