how do you "force" win98 to see network adapter?

Two weeks ago I installed a Dlink wireless adapter into the only 98 machine
on a company's wireless network. I had a difficult time making the old Dell
machine use the wireless adapter. Eventually I got it to hook up. Today I
removed the wireless adapter and installed an Accton ethernet adapter to use
the wired network connection I installed in the office. The card installed
okay, but the machine would not use the adapter. It saw it in device
manager and said it was working properly, and it was listed in the nework
settings, but it would not properly display the ip settings when I did an
ipconfig. I removed all the Dlink s/w and removed the adapter from the
network settings, but it still would not use the Accton. Only after moving
the Accton into another PCI slot did it finally connect using that card.

What did I do wrong to require so much trial and error after the fact?

jm