Generally speaking, the setup program that ships on the driver disk with a non-PNP NIC is used to choose from the various possible configurations supported by the card, and then to write the chosen selections as "active" on an EEPROM on the card. This is a "software" method used as an alternative to manually setting jumpers or switches on the card, and it serves the same purpose -- it configures the card to use the selected resources. Some NIC's also must be set there as to media tyupe -- UTP or coax.

After the configuration of the card itself is accomplished, the card must then be "set up" in Windows -- in other words, the device must be added to the hardware tree, and Windows must be told what resources the card is set to use, and the driver must be installed and bound.