Older machine refusing to accept NIC

I recently tried to install a NIC on an older machine at my dad's office.

Windows detects the card, does it's typical "detecting your hardware" nonsense, I tell it where to install the drivers from, it finishes and says "your new hardware is installed and ready to use" blah blah and makes me reboot.

When I reboot and have a look in device manager there's a "!" next to the card, and it tells me its not working properly in its properties.

I've tried reinstalling the drivers a bazillion times, no worky. I've even tried different cards (Taimag HE-012D, 3Com 3C509C-TX) in different slots and have gotten the same results. It's driving me crazy.. somehow I think Win98 is responsible (am I the only one that ALWAYS had problems installing new hardware in my windows 98 machines?)

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm tempted to just put XP on the thing - but I then risk compatablity issues with the installed software and I dont wanna eff witht that.

The Specs are:
Tbird 1GHZ
Abit KT-7
Geforce 2 Ultra
128 PC 133
Windows 98 Second Edition :\

 

Some NICs like to have their own drivers (not the drivers provided by Windows) installed before the card itself is physically installed. The 3Com card is one of them, if I recall correctly. You might be able to check that out in 3Com's KnowledgeBase. Sometimes it's necessary to run a pre-install routine as well.