Connecting Win XP Home edition to wireless (1 Viewer)

Have an old Dell laptop that connected via wireless with no problems. Figured it was old enough that it wasn't worth spending the money on and bought a new HP laptop in July..
Hard drive croaked on the XP, but was able to reformat and reinstall. Problem is it was used for work with XP Pro with a wireless connection, my personal version is XP Home Edition which doesn't recognize the wireless hardware, won't even connect via ethernet to download drivers, updates, etc. Something must be working because with the ethernet cable plugged in, Microsoft sent me a code and it passed the test as a valid copy of XP.
Don't really need it, and would be nice to keep as a backup, but I'm at a dead end, no matter what I do, it's thinks I'm using a dial-up modem. XP is fading away, but any advice to get this thing working again?

After spending hours and hours working on this thing, finally took it to a recycle place. XP is done and good luck getting any support for it.
I even tried a direct connect to my new laptop with no luck. Didn't matter what I did, the wireless connection never showed.
Thought maybe I could install Windows 7 on it, but it had a whopping 384MB of RAM, basically just an antique in todays terms, so beyond help.
Maybe somebody can use it as a standalone to play very old games, but its time has come and gone.

Tend to agree with your assessment. A machine with 384Mb of RAM isn't good for much of anything. I'd damn near bet it's something like a D505 or D600

Took the battery out and put it in the recycle bin.
The rest of the machine went into the trash, nobody wanted it, couldn't even give it away. Six years old and of absolutely no use.