I am trying to set-up a wireless network in my home and am lost. I am forced to use dial-up for the internet due to nothing else being available in the rural area I live. I have a desktop computer running Windows XP Home SP2. It has a network card in it. I also have a laptop running Windows XP Home SP2. It is all set for wireless and I have used it where wireless is available so I know it works. I recently was given a D-link DI-524 wireless router to try to use. When I load the installation CD, it looks for a cable modem or LAN connection before it will proceed. I don't have either and can't get either. Is there some way that I can use this router with the modem in my desktop in order to share an internet connection with my laptop via dial-up? Thanks for any help you can offer!

No, there's no way you can do this with a router. You can try to share a dialup connection, but it won't be wireless. You can use ICS in windows xp.

Sure it can. The scheme would be:

Internet<--Desktop's dial-up modem(<-bridged via ICS->)Desktop's Ethernet card<--WAN Port of Router||Router's wireless connection<--Laptops' wireless connection

Actually, connecting the desktop's ethernet card to one of the LAN ports (instead of the WAN/Internet port) on the router is probably a less complicated configuration. Since that connection scheme would only be using the switch portion of the router, you shouldn't have to do anything in terms of configuring the router.