Trouble w/ WNC USB300 and Netgear AP.

I'm having two problems with my WNC USB300 WI-FI NIC. I don't think they're related; any assistance with either issue would be great.

First, I have a Netgear MR814 v2 802.11b AP. It's fresh out of the box and the network is wide-open. No WEP, no MAC access control, broadcasting its SSID for the world to hear, DHCP enabled with plenty of free IP's. My PC and another notebook, using D-link and Intel cards respectively, can find the AP and log on just fine. The D-link is using the software provided with it; the Intel card was configured manually. My 4780, which is sitting about 16" away from the AP, is pulling up nothing in the WNC software's site survey. Has anyone linked one of these WNC cards up with a Neatgear AP? Is there better software available anywhere? WNC's website has absolutely nothing.

Other problem: Everytime I reboot (but not shutdown), the WNC card is removed from its proper place in the device manager, and instead is listed as "USB Device" under "USB Controllers." It has a yellow exclamation point on it, with a warning stating, "The drivers for this device are not installed. (Code 28)." All attempts to re-install fail with the cryptic error, "The installation failed because a function driver was not specified for this instance." I've tried re-installing from Device Manager. Re-installing using the setup file from the CD, un-installing from Device Manager and Control Panel, then re-booting and re-installing, un-installing everything and manually deleting leftovers, etc.. I've been really thorough here because the MSKB states, "This message may be displayed when attempting to install the USB modem driver if an existing driver is already installed (or not yet removed) from Windows 2000. Remove the existing driver before attempting to install the new driver." I've removed all traces of the previous driver. The thing simply will not work until I completely power down. If ever I turn the computer off and then back on, even if it's immediate, everything is fine again (save the problem above). The device just cannot work after a reboot.

I'm running Windows 2000, SP4. Nothing has been installed here except, in order of installtion, Windows 2000, drivers off of the CD, Windows updates/service packs/hotfixes, and any updated things available from Sager's website.

And I do have the WLAN switch in the on position!

No go. I'm running 2000, so I don't have any built-in firewall. The connection wasn't bridged. The Intel card was in my girlfriend's Minote8080, and was able to connect. We're only having trouble with the WNC card in the Sager4780.

Today when I woke up and powered the Sager on, the WNC icon in the system tray was magically green, which is supposed to indicate "connected." Upon further inspection, however, I discovered that Windows had assigned the card an APIPA address of 169.254.whatever. Trying to renew the IP failed with, "The DHCP server is unavailable." The AP was definitely responding, because there were three other PC's connected to it. WNC's "site survey" still wasn't seeing (or is it hearing?) my AP's broadcasts. Windows' DHCP service was running and verfied working by physically connecting to the AP.

So I cold booted (because a reboot would certainly fail) and got a new error in the Device Manager, with a yellow exclamation point on the WNC card: "The device cannot start (error 10)." MS claims this occurs when you disconnect a USB hub from your computer, and the hub had devices attached to it. Well, whatever. I cold booted again and was back to square one. Nothing in the "site survey," a red "disconnected" icon in the system tray, and ipconfig giving me, "media disconnected."

I'm thinking the problem is USB related, but am unsure exactly what's going on. As I've stated, I've already installed SP4 and the USB2.0 software. Other internal USB devices (I've tested the camera/vid cap) seem to work ok.

Resolution: went to BestBuy and purchased a Netgear PC card. Installed the software, plugged it in, connected.