Installing U.S. Robotics USR5410 in XP

I suggest you check the documentation that came with the USR5410. Sometimes if you let Windows install the drivers it thinks you need, you end up with a big mess that's hard to fix.

have you tried starting xp then hot-plugging the card in.

Tried that first. The Hardware Wizard can't find any drivers, they're buried in the software installation file (setup.exe).

The USR instructions say to install the software first and then insert the PC Card.

I recall reading something about setting up Windows Zero Configuration utility without having to install the manufacturer's software. Any ideas?

Chas.

I read somewhere that there is a way to get around using the manufacturer's drivers and just go with Windows Zero Configuration utility. Any ideas?

Chas.

You can try the 'Add Hardware' wizard in Windows and look to see if your specific hardware is listed. If so, it would probably work OK. You could do a Google search on microsoft.com and see if Microsoft has a driver on their site for your specific device.

First, mount the CD and search to find *.inf. There should be one for Win9x and one for XP/2K probably in separate folders. Copy the entire folder (to include *.cat and *.sys files) to your HD. Right-click the inf and select Install (without the card inserted). This installs the driver. Then insert the card. It should be identified.

If you cannot find the *.inf file, then go the USR and download the latest driver version.

To disable the USR utility, Start/Run command, type: msconfig[enter]. Select the startup tab, find the USR utility by name and uncheck the box in front of it. Reboot. Alternatively, Start/Run command/type: regedit[enter] and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run and find the entry for the USR utility and delete the key for it.

To remove the USR utility permanently, Control Panel/Add Remove Programs and uninstall the utility. The driver, if already installed should remain installed unless USR has done something different than one would normally expect.

To disable Wireless Zero Configuration, Control Panel/Administrative Tools, Services option. Find WZC in the list, right click Stop to stop the service. Right-click Properties and set the Startup type to Disabled. Reboot

One of these should get you to where you want to be.

Q

If you're going to play with the startup options, I suggest you use a utility made for the purpose. Some drivers start in more than one place in the registry. I suggest Starup Inspector for Windoze: |

is especially useful as the MSCONFIG program supplies with XP does not allow one to resize the window making it difficult to see what is happening.

Also, there are installations that leave considerable junk behind in temporary files that interfere with susequent attempts at reinstallation. Programs that drop read-only temporary files or read-only directories during startup are the major culprits. For these, I use one of the disk cleanup utilities such as: |

are more powerful and elaborate programs available, which will clean out unused registry entries, unreferenced DLL's, and uninstalled program registry entries. These must be used very carefully to avoid a trashout and are overkill for simple cleaup tasks. (Make sure you have the sound enabled when you run CLEANUP40. Heh-heh.)

If you have already installed the USR5410 drivers, it's harder, maybe nearly impossible.

Locate the .inf for this card, adn see if you can easily determine which drivers *.sys, where copied to the Windows directories. Make note of them, or copy the .inf file to some place for later reference.

With the card installed, use whatever uninstall program the USR program comes with, followed by going to the Windows Device Manger, and uninstalling the device.

Take the card out and reboot. Go back to the Device Manager, click on view, show hidden devices, and then go down to the network adapters and verify that the card is not there. Delete it if it is.

If you have Windows XP with Service Pack 2, from a clean start, you can make some other connection to the internet, maybe wired. Insert the new card, and let Windows search the web for drivers. Nothing from the Wireless Maufacturer's CD, nor web site.

If it doesn't ask if it can search the web or look to a CD, it is probably using the drivers you already installed. That might be okay. If you still don't like it, uninstall the card again, and move the *.sys files mentioned in the .inf file out of the Windows directories, and try again.

You can look at the properties of the card to see what drivers were loaded.

Thanks for the input. Conflict was the wrong choice of words. The card has always worked great. I only want the card inserted in my laptop when I use it at a Wi-Fi hotspot 2 -3 times a week.

What was happening was I had to switch between the XP Wireless Connection Utility Tray Icon and the USR Tray Icon to get the card switched on and configured each time I used it. I wanted to use the XP Windows Zero Configuration Utility instead of the US Robotics program. I've given up on WZC and disabled the service. Now it's only the USR utility.

Chas.

I've never used this card, so the following are just some general suggestions (and a summary of the suggestions from other posters):

1. Look for an uninstall option that will leave the drivers and uninstall the USR utility.
2. Look for just the XP drivers on the install CD or the manufacturer's web site (usually an .inf file and a .sys file). These are often labeled as Windows 2000 drivers. Then use device manager to install just the drivers, and use MS Zero Config for wireless setup. (This works well with a Linksys card I have).
3. See if you can get just the drivers from the MS Windows driver install wizard (which requires a second network connection).
4. See if you can disable loading the USR configuration utility (look in the start-up folders and in the run hive in the registry). Then just use Zero Config for wireless setup. (This also works with a Linksys card I have).
5. Uncheck the box in Zero Config that states "Use Windows to configure my wireless network" and just use the USR utility.

In comp.sys.laptops * * Chas wrote: : I just bought a U.S. Robotics USR5410, 802.11g PC Card. So far, it's : working great.

: It has the best reception of any wireless PC Card I've used and it's the : only one that I've been able to get to work on Win98SE TPs (240x & T20).

: The USR 802.11g Wireless Turbo Configuration Utility works OK in win98SE : but when I tried installing the card in XP, it seems to conflict with : the native XP wireless connection utility.

Why does it conflict? What do you mean? What do you see in Device Manager? Any yellow (!) next to the network device? If the drivers aren't installed correctly, try to install them correctly.

Here's what I've done: if you have a yellow'ed device in drive driver, remove it. Then do Control Panel -> Add New Hardware. You should be prompted to install this device. If you let it pick a device, try installing whatever device it picks. If that still doesn't work, you may find that after Setup ran it uncompressed/copied some drivers a program directory for the card - try browsing to the .inf files you might find there. Sometimes it is just a matter of installing/re-installing the drivers a few times to get it right, even in XP.

Andrew

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----> Portland, Oregon, USA

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Thanks for all the input and suggestions. The only reason I want wireless is to connect to Wi-Fi hotspots several times a week and occasionally for wireless networks at motels.

I only want the card inserted when I need to use it. I don't want the wireless software running in the background when it's not needed.

The USR 802.11g, USR5410 PC Card works great, even with Win98SE.

I use a number of laptops but most of the time I'm working with a IBM

240x that I carry around in my car. I wanted to use XP's Wireless Zero Configuration so that I had the fewest number of steps to get a wireless connection.

I tried installing the USR drivers without their configuration utility. USSR's installation program uses InstallShield and runs from Setup.exe, it's the same file for 98/ME/Win2k/XP. The instructions say install the software and restart then insert the card. What they don't tell you is the New Hardware Wizard comes up and you have to dance through letting the Wizard find the USR drivers. Once done, it works well on Win98SE but it conflicts with XP's Wireless Zero Configuration.

I tried copying the drivers and .INF file to a floppy then uninstalling the USR Utility, and letting the New Hardware Wizard install just the drivers (it usually works with the .INF file) but they wouldn't install.

What I ended up doing was disabling Wireless Zero Configuration service and reinstalling the USR software. The USR Utility puts an icon in the Start Menu Startup folder. It doesn't show up in MSCONFIG!

I deleted the Startup icon. Now when I want to use the wireless card, I insert it, boot up and then go into Network Configuration and Enable it. The USR Utility automatically detects the card, and connects to a network (not necessarily the one I want).

Thanks again,

Chas.

Seems like a lot of effort to save 0.1% of your processor power or system resrouces. Is your PC that close to the edge that running the little ap makes a difference?

Tony

I made a small bat file, and then put two shortcuts on the desktop, in the bottom right, so they look like they're in the systray ;-)

provides an executable called DevCon for Device Control.

devcon status * > all_devices.txt will give a text file with all of the devices and the current status. Find the name of your WiFi card there... Mine is an SMC2435W.

PCI\\VEN_104C&DEV_8400&SUBSYS_8402104C&REV_00\\5&2509CBFA&0&0051F0 Name: SMC2435W 22 Mbps Wireless Cardbus Adapter

devcon status "PCI\\VEN_104C&DEV_8400*" ensure that this shows only the status from the one device that you want to affect. (It's interesting what shows up under the same "VEN_" number.)

I made a batch file with one line: devcon %1 "PCI\\VEN_104C&DEV_8400*"

then I put two shortcuts to the bat file on my desktop, adjusting the properties so that one has a "target" of the bat file enable, and another shortcut for disable. "C:\\downloads\\DevCon\\2435.bat" enable I even picked clever icons for the two shortcuts ;-)

It's not a matter of power savings. The system is a PIII 500 240x with

192MB of memory running XP SP2 so it's not real powerful but it works fine for what I'm using it for (ACT!, Street Atlas, Excel, Word and the internet). I don't want a wireless card antenna hanging out of it all the time for the 1 or 2 times a week that I may use it.

The big annoyance was the steps that I was having to go through to enable the wireless card. Now it's only 2-3 steps to get it running.

I carry this and/or an identical 240x running Win98SE in my car and use them as large Palm Pilots. I have an almost new X31 that I don't want to subject to the daily abuse that the 240x TPs take ($300 investment vs. a $2000 investment).

BTW, the USR5410 works much better than the IBM A/B/G internal car on my X31.

Chas.

One last thought. You could get a wireless bridge. Something that connects to the Ethernet port. The wireless bridge is a self contained unit. OK this would be another investment, but it would not take any power to ruin the wireless only the ethernet port which is probably fairly low.

Tony