Laptop Too Old for Secure Wireless?

The internal wireless might support WEP. The issue with the new card not working either, though, suggests that the real culprit is the operating system

If it's an early XP the inbuilt wireless security is all over the place.

Best bet (short of updating OS or installing a new OS) is a wireless card with its own user interface software (Netgear comes to mind).

Thank you fihart. I appreciate your thoughts.

I know this is an older post, but recently came across this same issue, and wanted to post the fix in case someone else came across this. Just re-setup a Netgear wireless access point with 2 netgear repeaters. The configuration required me to use WEP. After setting it up, everyone else was able to get on except one laptop - a Lenovo running XP Pro. Was getting a wierd Certificate error. I knew it was bogus, so I went in and made sure the old SSID profile was gone (Control Panel - Networking - Wireless Properties - Wireless Networks Tab, then remove the SSID). Then I set it up MANUALLY. After that it worked. For some reason, trying to select it from the list of available wireless networks doesn't seem to work.