My onboard NIC is screwed (common issue apparently - yay), and i've got a USB NIC that my Dad just gave me - except Windows has no drivers for it and it's generic.

I've tried installing the drivers on my PC (using Vista Home Premium x64 SP1), but it gives me an error about the drivers not working on x64 - Tried to tweak the .INF myself, but couldn't get it to work.

Could anyone help?

Drivers attached in a ZIP.

Windows calls it a "ST268 USB NIC" fwiw.

Pretty old USB NIC, so I think you're out of luck on that one. If you were running Vista x32 you should be able to load the XP drivers, but in x64 you of course need 64-bit drivers and they must be digitally signed.

Do you think it's the digital signing that's the issue (i.e. i can turn of digital signing via F8 boot menu) - it throws an error about not being x64 drivers.

Yeah, driver signing can be turned off (must do it on every boot though), but since the drivers you posted are 32-bit they simply won't work on 64-bit. I tried to do some searching on the net for x64 drivers, but no luck.

Can't help you with the driver, but can't you use anything else? USB Ethernet adapters are horrible. You won't get more than about 800KB/s and your ping time will be quite poor (15 ms is no exception).

Tried the drivers for your onboard NIC available here?

I don't really want to spend any money fixing Asus' mistake, but I don't really want my main PC to be without a mobo for weeks - I have PCI NIC's laying around but again none work with Vista.

my mobo is WiFi but i've lost the sodding antenna

EDIT - I will try, but the lights on the onboard NIC only come on every 3rd boot or so from cold - it's a common issue, and it occurs even outside of Windows

Use XP?

I really don't fancy re-installing my OS just to make one little thing work - it'd be easier to swap my 6600GT for something smaller and drop a NIC in there - but that will cost a little bit and will still be a PITA.

Installing XP on a second partition isn't hard and doesn't take THAT long.

Apparently there's support for that USB stick in Linux, so you could run kubuntu livecd or something until you get a NIC that works.

Jakg asks for a solution to a driver problem and people tell him to install completely different OS' lol
---
I don't know if it's the same you are using, but the former website says it works for Windows Vista 64 bits:
http://members.driverguide.com ... etail.php?driverid=749549
http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdr.php?id=250

Also, try running in compatibility mode and see if it works. As I can see from your file, compatibility mode should work.
If nothing else works, the last option I know is going to Control Panel and select "add or remove hardware"
Add new hardware, choose for windows to search for the new hardware, if it doesn't find it, select one from the list, and allow it to access windows update to download drivers. It works for many devices but I don't know until which extent it would work with this.
I hope this helps.

Quote from Jakg :

my mobo is WiFi but i've lost the sodding antenna

Just buy a new antenna then

You could also build a ghetto antenna, by fiddling a wire on the center pin of the antenna connector It should be about 6cm long.