wireless help needed

[p.i.m.p]

help for a friend,

Hies,

So i went and moved house, now i have a shiny wifi connection instead of cable. So i got myself a Wifi card for in my PC. Installed drivers from CD, plugged it in one of my three remaining open slots, and booted up to finish the install process. It then gave me a message that a problem has been detected with the card, would I like to retry plugging it in? Yes, i thought, and tried the other two slots as well. Same result. I concluded that either all three slots i tried were broken or the card was and seeing as it was late and i had spent too much time on messing about i decided to return it and just get one of those nifty USB wifi adapters. Seemed easier.

Alas, no joy. After installing the drivers from CD as specified by the manual i plug in the little bugger. My computer is supposed to then detect it i guess, but instead it goes 'detecting USB adapter' forever. So, either this one is broken as well or it's some arcane setting in windows somewhere which is somehow preventing my machine from detecting new adapters. Or something.

Anyone got any ideas? I'm at a loss here

it's a Netgear N600 wireless dual band WNDA3100

he's tried pretty much everything, different drivers, different USB ports etc..

any ideas ?

OS = Win 7

 

[beto]

Well, when you say he has tried pretty much everything....


The first thing I would say is to uninstall whatever software and driver he installed from CD. Then try one of two things (or both).

1) After uninstalling the previously installed software and driver, and using a program like CCleaner to clean up any remaining bloat - shut the computer down, plug in the USB wireless adapter and then restart. See if Windows can find the correct driver. If you are saying he already did this and it just hangs and never finds a driver...

2) Go to the NetGear website and get the latest driver directly from the website and install that.

I would try those two first.

Edit: And by driver I do NOT mean the entire NetGear software package. Just the driver. Try only the driver first.

 

[PTNL]

If your friend wants to try a different brand, this Rosewill unit has been working flawlessly for me.

Details

Edit: If PCIe ports are an option for your friend, then go with Intel.

 

[p.i.m.p]

beto,

he's tried that, and with all types of drivers, even the latest ones, no go

i'll pass on the info

thx

 

[beto]

beto,

he's tried that, and with all types of drivers, even the latest ones, no go

i'll pass on the info

thx

Yes, well, if it were me, I would return the thing. If it takes that much effort to get it working then it isn't worth the hassle IMO. In this day and age, if they can't make it plug and play, I won't deal with it for long. I just bought this TP-Link wireless adapter last week and it installed right away and seems to be working fine (so far anyway).

I really have no idea what the Netgears problem would be. I just know that often times the software and drivers found on installation CDs are old garbage that create more problems than they solve.