Netgear WPN311 Wirelss PCI card - failed installation in XP

[BillyNoMates]

Went wireless last week with all Netgear kit - WPN824 router - happy with that. Plus 2 x WPN311 PCI cards.

My Windows 2000 SP4 PC works fine with both WPN311 cards.

I cannot for the life of me get the other PC - XP Home SP2 to accept the card. It freezes during the 'New Hardware Found Wizard'.

The PC is an ASUS A7M-VM Motherboard, 512Mb RAM, 40Gb hd with 38Gb free, so exceeds the Netgear system specifications.

All the PCI slots work with a variety of other cards - Soundblaster, Ethernet, Graphics and they test fine using test software.

All PCI slots have been tried with no other PCI cards installed - same problem.

The BIOS has been updated to the latest level. A clean XP SP2 installation is being used.

Both the shipped driver software (v1.1) has been used and the latest (v1.2) - same problem.

3 Tech Support cases have been raised with Netgear who simply state that there MAY be a compatibility issue between the WPN311 card and the Motherboard.

HP state that the PC should run the card OK.

Problem is the retailer won't take the card back as it isn't faulty - works in my Win2K PC fine.

No point in me buying a different manufacturer's PCI card as it won't be able to utilise the Netgear proprietary RangeMax feature of the router.

Any suggestions before I go and purchase a reel of Cat5 cable ?

[wideboy]

Can't help you with the conflict. Might suggest if you're going to buy more kit, that you try a USB wireless dongle - Netgear or Asus - prices keep falling.

[BillyNoMates]

Best suggestion yet - hadn't considered using USB. That would allow me to stick with the RangeMax Netgear kit.

I like that idea - thanks a lot !

[rojash]

The retailer is obliged to take the card back, faulty or not, if it is not fit for the purpose. If it doesn't work in your machine, it's clearly not fit. Aprt from that, I would have thought that most rertailers (my company, for example) woulf be willing to take it back as a matter of goodwill.

[BillyNoMates]

Retailer swapped it over to the USB version when presented with the 6 pages of Netgear Trouble Ticket that I went armed with !

Reception is not quite as good and it doesn't support WPA, but it works.

No thanks to Netgear Technical Support.