Many installation and i/o card problems stem from the nightmare that is Microsoft’s Plug-n-Play specification — a huge kludge designed to handle a situation that BeOS already handles well enough on its own.
If you have problems getting network or sound cards to operate, disable their PnP functionality. You can usually do this either by using a software-based configuraton utility that came with the card or by changing a jumper. Check the card’s documentation for details.
On many systems, you can also disable PnP at the motherboard level by digging around in your BIOS setup. Look around in your BIOS for a setting labeled „Plug and Play OS“ or similar and disable it. If you have supported hardware that’s not working in BeOS for some reason, this is probably your best bet.
Note that if you’re also running a Microsoft operating system, you’ll have to set up all of your devices manually after disabling PnP.