I have a Compaq Presario V6000 running XP. I installed a TP-Link WN321G
"amdx" hath wroth:
Taken over? How so? Are you unplugging the USB device or are both wireless devices installed at the same time? You should be able to just unplug the USB device, which unloads the driver, and leaves your internal card functional. It's also possible to run both wireless devices at the same time, and simply change the route metric or default gateway:
to decide which card gets all the internet traffic. However, trying to connect with both devices simulaneously to the same wireless router causes "weird things" to happen, so that's not a great idea.
Maybe it needs a bit of help. Go to: Control Panel -> Networks and right click on the TP-Link icon. Select Disable. See if the internal card now works. To switch back and forth, enable one, disable the other. You can also get to the enable/disable functions by right clicking the respective icons in the system tray.
You might be able to do it a bit more elegantly with some added software:
I have the program but have not used it to switch wireless devices. I'm therefore not sure it will work for wireless switching.
Can't you just unplug the dongle and enable the internal wifi card?
If you have enabled another program to manage this wireless connection, use that software.
If you want windows to configure this wireless connection, start the Wireless Zero Configuration (WZC) service. For information about starting the WZC service, see article 871122 in the Microsoft Knowledge Base on the microsoft.com website.
I did this, it didn't help. Although I had to plug in the USB adapter in order to get the TP-Link icon to show so I could disable it.
As I write I'm removing the TP-Link software and will see if I can get the internal card to work. OK, removing TP-Link software didn't help.
Any other thoughts? Thanks, Mike
Hey guys, I did a system restore and got everything working. Seems a bit involved to enable and disable the internal card, but I don't need to do it often. Thanks for the help.
"amdx" hath wroth:
Looks like the TP-Link USB thing came with a wireless "client manager" that seem to think it's also running the internal card. It may just be a configuration issue. Go to: Control Panel -> Network Right click on the TP-Link USB thing and select properties. At the top of the window, it might offer a check box with "Allow Windoze to configure wireless device" or something similar. That means disarm the TP-Link wireless client manager and use WZC instead. That hopefully is the same as what you're using for the internal wireless card. With both cards using WZC, you might have a chance to do the enable/disable trick.
Oops. Y'er right. What I was really trying to do is stop or disable any "management" programs running in the background that came from TP-Link. It's a crap shoot, but I guess it didn't work.
Yeah, but I don't like the implications. TP-Link apparently replaced some parts and pieces of the wireless puzzle on the assumption that it was the only device in the system. That's a fairly good assumption but not a great way to write a driver. System Restore should put you back to before the TP-Link stuff was installed.
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