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Netgear Wireless Wizard

I just (foolishly) got a Netgear WPN311 card to replace a WGT311T card which went faulty with a hardware error.

Well, I'd had my problems with the stupid WGT311T card and it's 'Wireless Wizard' and sure enough I'm getting even more problems with Netgears absolutely braindead driver implementation this time too.

Firstly, the Netgear Wizard utility generally doesn't install when I install the drivers. The icon is on the desktop, the programs are in the folder on the HD but it can't be started.

I say 'generally' because one time, quite unexpectedly when I booted the computer, it decided to pop up and install itself. However, even though it then ran itself upon subsequent bootups it had about a 30% success rate of actually configuring the card and connecting me to the internet; on some boots it would work but mostly it wouldn't obtain an IP/connect to the internet or just gave a cryptic error message. A quick reinstall of the Netgear drivers soon resulted in it being removed, never to be seen again (well, yet).

Secondly, the card won't configure through the WinXP built in Utilities. It's there in the hardware manager, and apparently functioning too. I've even got it to log on to my wireless network with WEP security but an internet connection is not provided. Some messing around shows that it is not being assigned an IP address. Attempting to force it to load one with ipconfig/renew results in an error message. Yes, the router (Netgear 634) is setup to dole out IPs/DNS etc. on request to any MAC address on the network. I can use the router via my old OEM $10 network card just fine to access the internet.

Thirdly, what's all this dumb messign about having to load drivers BEFORE inserting the card into the PC. That's just moronic. The OS is Windows XP SP1.

I can't believe I'm the only one who has suffered this - anyone else out there been through the wringer with this rubbish line of network cards? I've just logged my second support case with their online support site ... the first one is still unanswered after three working days.

Gav

Reply to
gavs_usenet
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Unfortunately your not the only one, as I have had my rounds with the wireless drivers supplied by Netgear. Actually the drivers are fine, it's the wireless application that comes with the drivers that won't work with XP SP2. What I did was to install only the drivers for the card, It will ask you something like do you want to use the netgear app because it has more control over the wireless card than the XP app, just say no, don't install the app, just install the drivers and then you can configure the wireless settings through the wireless app in XP. Works fine.

Duane

Reply to
duanedeen

Unfortunately, even though the card _appears_ installed in Windows (device drivers installed, device reporting functional, network card logged onto my home wireless network) it isn't actually functioning. It doesn't get a TCP/IP address even though it's set up for DHCP.

If I try to 'repair' the connection I'm told that "TCP/IP is not enabled for this connection" even though I can pull up the 'wireless properties' and see that it is indeed attached to the card. Weird. And that's without SP2 installed - I've deliberately avoided installing it because of these sorts of potential problems.

Of course, the dedicated Netgear Wireless Assistant doesn't work AT ALL. Wonderful work there from Netgear, well worth paying 2-3x the price of a generic OEM card for their branded product.......

Gav

Reply to
gavs_usenet

Ive encountered the same prob above with - it turned out to be a newer version of a file called PCANDIS5.sys present in windows/system32. The Netgear card dosent like it - it wants to use its own. Delete this file and re-install the Netgear drivers and away you go - FYI, if you do a google on this, you will find it dosent just affect Netgear .............

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Reply to
MM

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