Why the hell can't I get a wireless network card to work?

I built a gaming PC for a friend of mine and he piggybacks off a neighbors wireless.  So I need to install a wireless nic.  I had 2 USB ones , a wireless g and wireless n, on hand neither of which have drivers available for win7.

Went out yesterday and bought a netgear wn311b wireless PCI card for it and while being assured it should just plug and play in win 7, it doesn't.  I have tried several different workarounds.  The driver from windows update installs but doesn't show any wireless networks available but indeed there are.  I tried the netgear driver and it worked kindof.  I could see and connect to my wireless network but not obtain an ip address.

I have been dicking with this for 5 hours and have yet to find a working solution.  I am annoyed.

64 bit, would need to mail it though....I'd like to find something I can get tomorrow so I can get this machine out of here lol.  But if I can't find anything local I'd be happy to paypal you postage for a known good wireless nic that actually works with win7 because obviously microsoft can't be trusted.

Oh my win7 laptops wireless works just fine, but using an older usb nic, even a wireless N nic which isn't that old is an act in frustration.  The adapter works fine in vista.

I did some research and found belkin is pretty good about windows 7 support and there are a couple available at a local electronics store that will work so I'm off to take care of it tomorrow.

I had a similar issue with a linksys card. The solution was to find drivers for the chipset of the card itself instead of the brand. For example, When getting a Linksys WMP110 card to work, I had to use drivers for Atheros AR5008 chipset. Worked right away.

So...Win 7 is wonderful?  Just the peripheral manufacturer's are not so wonderful.

Windows 7 makes Porn Better!

HAHAHA