Win98 Workstation won't log on

It doesn't seem to be driver problem, since you have re-installed your NIC. There are a few things which you would need to check.

Sorry accidentally posted without completing. As I was mentioning, a few things you need to check:-
1) Go to control Panel, double click on the System icon, click on Device Manager tab and make sure there is no exclaimation marks or question marks. If there are then you will need to look into these devices to see if there is some conflicts or driver is not right.

2) Since you have re-installed the NIC, was the configuration set up properly, ie, did you specify which domain to login? What about the TCP/IP, did you enter gateway, the static IP address if you are not using DHCP.

3) If all the above are set properly, then you should look at the hardware side. Look at the Hub/Switch to see if the light for this particular connection is on or off (note you just turn on the PC, even if you failed to logon to network, you should be able to see the lights are on). If it is off, then that might mean the cable is faulty or the particular port is faulty (if port is faulty, temp. switch to another empty p

I had this happen once on a Win95 workstation, so it might be the same thing on Win98. It sounds really dumb, but what had happened was that somehow a "." character had been added to the end of the domain name. Since the workgroup name was OK, theworkstation could operate normally and connect to all shares. But when you logged on, it said it couldn't find the domain controller - obviously because the domain name was wrong. Check to see if maybe something like a space or other character gotadded to the end of the domain name in error. Hope this helps!

Assuming that you've checked the settings out as above, and it still isn't falling into line, it could be a glitch with Client for MSN itself.

First, make sure your Primary Network Logon hasn't been switched to something other than Client.

The next thing I'd try is going into Control Panel|Add/remove Programs and pulling Communications itself, then rebooting and reinstalling it and reconfiguring. Takes about 5-10 minutes, and should clear the issue.

If it's still a no-go, and your install was pulled from cabfiles, rename the cab directory and reinstall Communications from a 98 CD.

If the install was from CD, go into the network control panel and pull the components, one at a time, then reboot, then remove/replace Comm. one more time. (Gets persistent reg keys that sometimes go a little glitchy)

HAVE YOU TRIED TO HIT CANCEL , AND REENTER PASSWORD AND CLICK OK, SEVERAL TIMES. wILL IT CONNECT 1 OUT OF TEN TIMES, IF SO SETUP WINS WITH THE PRIMARY DOMAIN CONTROLLER'S IP ADDRESS IN THE TCP/IP SETTINGS OF THE WORKSTATION. CAN YOU PING THE SERVERIN QUESTION. IS THE SPEED ON THE ADAPTER SET CORRECT IE... 100 FULL, 100 HALF,SPEED AUTO DETECT.

This may sound sort of crazzy, but sometimes the protocol stack becomes corrupted or your winsock.dll has a problem. This can sometimes be fixed by loading another sockets protocol. Try loading Microsoft 32bit DLC. This forces a complete rebuild of the IP protocol stack and the winsock.dll and will sometimes correct the problem.

Of course there should be another machine running the DLC protocol somewhere on your network just to test connections.