Less than Positive Experience installing Linksys WPC54G/WRT54G on Win2K SP4.

Don't you love the Tech Support Gurus from Bangledesh!!!!

Will we ever see good old American tech support again? We have just switched over to an outsource group in Bagalore at Honeywell, and it is Customer Service HELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They're the only people on the planet that can tolerate the job. Burnout rate for domestic tech support people was about 18 months average and about 12 months median (half the people quit within 12 months).

Probably not. Think of it as a subtle hint to learn the programs, operating system, hardware, and RTFM to be able to support your own job function or system. This way you won't need to deal with Bangalore support. There is some hope as Dell is fighting the trend:

(Hint: I buy and recommend LOTS of Dell hardware).

No, I think you mean internal support hell. Customer Service is for paying customers, not employees.

This is for ISP's, not wireless hardware vendors, but there are quite a few domestic outsourced support companies.

that doesn't come close to the number of such companies in India: reading the "Outsourcing Times" should ruin your day:

Hoping this will help someone else that's in Linksys Techsupport Hell

(if you've called them you know what I mean).

I bought the router and wireless adapter from BestBuy. Had no trouble

installing the router at all but the adapter was a problem. Following

the instructions and installing with the wizard resulted in the

following error:

Installation Failed

ErrorCode=-3

ErrorDesc=Required data not found or disk space not enough.

After spending a day and a half running around with Linksys techsupport

(their final analysis was some registry lock problem and that I had to

call MicroSoft), I struck out to surf the various forums I could find.

I found that I was not the only one with this problem as was implied

by Linksys TS's lack of insight. I had even gone so far as to buy a

separate WPC11 Linksys adapter (one of their suggestions) and try that

but had the same result. I was able to have my laptop (Dell C600)

recognize the WRT54G adapter without any problems and it seemed to

install the drivers automatically but it wouldn't connect to the router

and I had no monitor program due to the above error. When I did the

same with the WPC11 adapter I had bought, it installed the drivers and

amazingly it connected to the router!! Of course I still had no

monitor to view signal strength but I figured if that could connect

with the WPC11 then there was no reason I couldn't get the WRT54G

adapter working.

I started from scratch and tried installing from the

'

' files

instead of the CD and still had the same problem. So after about a

million reboots and more than twice as many curses, I realized that the

downloaded stuff (and probably the stuff on the CD) had ./Autostart and

./Utility directories. So I double-clicked on the Setup.exe in the

./Utility directory. This launched a less fancy (ie. more useful)

installation wizard. It worked fine with the exception of a "Severe"

error popup referring to a problem reading a key from the registry (but

it didn't specify which key). After clicking to the popup, the

installation wizard continued fine. When all was said and done the

wireless monitor was working finally.

I still didn't have a wireless connection though. The monitor gave an

inaccurate status saying I was connected to the router but the router

was not connected to the internet. If I plugged in a wired connection

to the router then I had connectivity (obviously) and the monitor was

happy. I went into the Network and Dial-up Connections portion of the

Control Panel and disabled the Local Area Network connection. After

waiting a few minutes, the wireless adapter suddenly connected to the

router and now seems to work fine.

Anyway, I plan on sending this back to Linksys with my rather low opion

of their Techsupport service and would advise everyone else who had

problems to do the same. Hopefully if they get enough negative

feedback they might actually improve things (but I'm not holding my

breath).

mike

There is plenty of good old *american* tech support available at your local full service computer store. Just look in the yellow pages. When you decide to be cheap and buy discount at BestBuy you are agreeing to solve your issues yourself. I doubt that there is anything wrong with the equipment. Sounds like it is some type of issue with your computer.

I received the same error code reported by Snowdog512 on a windows 98 se

compaq presario 1685. While the comment made by another reply stated

that the problem may be that the registry is being to by another

program could be true, I encountered the problem shortly after

formatting the entired hard drive and starting from scratch, meaning

that this problem is not due to spyware. Attempted installation in

safe mode produced the same error. I installed AVG antivirus and

AdAware SE and there were no signs of any spyware. Following Snowdog's

advice of using the setup in the Utility folder, I did not receive a

serious error message (but I did receive a message about a driver, but

it seemed to have no effect). I did *not* have to stop any other LAN

or modem connections. After setup and putting in the card, I similarly

saw the card connect to the router after about 2 minutes and then to

the internet after another 5. I'm not sure what caused the problem,

but thanks Snowdog for finding a solution that unfortunately is the

only option unless Linksys takes some initiative.