What might have happened is it needed to get an updated driver from the Advanced
section of Windows Updates. When I use my USB-to-Cat5 adapter, when I work on
re-doing computers with no NIC drivers for the no-board NICs in WinXP, I see
there is an update for it, too.

Yes, you are so right, drivers can be a headache on Windows. In fact, those with
Vista or Win7 just hate hearing there are no XP drivers, or the hard drive has
gone bad and only Linux can use it until you decide what to do.