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