how to setup wifi on windows 2000?

Question

I heard that the configuration of the WLAN(WIFI) is special to windows XP and doesn't exist in windows 2000, is it true? Did you know a small program who make that? Excuse me for my poor english, I'm French...

Solution 1

Windows XP has a special service called Wireless Zero Configuration (in English at least) that handles the various duties of scanning for networks and associating with them. This service, and the related GUI elements were never back ported to Windows 2000.

That being said, every wireless card I have ever used that had a Windows 2000 driver also came with a utility that would manage the connections as well. Almost all wireless cards are manufactured through Broadcom, Atheros, Intel and a handful of other vendors - it is quite possible that you could get a generic driver/connection manager working with almost any given card. You will have trouble finding a generic utility as the API for working with the card was not standardized prior to Windows XP and each driver can (in theory) behave differently.

Solution 2

Actually you'll just need to install the manufacture's Wifi driver and client software in order to get wifi to work under Windows 2000. Before you do that though, you'll have to upgrade the Windows Installer using the Windows Installer 3.1 redistribution or else the wifi installer will fail to work most likely. Actually quite a few software depends on this later Windows Installer to work. Just to give you an idea, I just made this posting from Windows 2000 Pro using Firefox 37 using an Intel wifi card. If you want to use later browsers, you'll need to apply some service packs and other fixes both official and unofficial.