Connection issues with a Belkin Wireless G USB adapter

Hmmmm...

I'm having trouble with a Belkin Wireless G USB Network adapter. I just set up a new PC with WinXP Pro and I'm having stupid problems with getting it to work. I'm using a Netgear DG834G router that works perfectly with my 2 other PCs and a Wii.

Most of the time, I plug it in, the Windows and/or the Belkin Wireless program see my network (and a couple of the neighbours' ones as well) but can't connect to it. I've confirmed the encryption key, tried WPA, WEP and even no encryption, tried access control and still it does exactly the same thing. I've even done a hard reset of the router just in case it was something silly in the configuration. Nope.

However, it worked one and a half times :) After I'd done a Windows system restore back to when I'd just uninstalled the Belkin software, I reloaded the software and with a bit of twiddling, it worked. Which was great. Then I reset, and it stopped working. For about 30 seconds. Then it reconnected itself automatically.

Anyway, since turning my PC off again, I can't get it to work. I've tried rebooting, I've tried waiting, I've tried plugging the adapter in after the PC has been turned on, I've tried it in it's little USB extension cradle thing, tried it in other USB sockets and it's just not having any of it, yet all the other devices connected to the router work with no problems at all.

Sometimes I do have to refresh the network listings to get it to see my router, but the connection strength is always excellent.

The USB adapter was one I had spare, but if i have to piddle around much more, I'll just buy a PCI card and stick that in instead :)

Any ideas?

I pretty much have the same setup as yourself with regards to the USB belkin adapter and netgear router.

Mine works completely fine with the router, but where I used to live I remember occasionally having to unplug the adapter from time to time as I noticed the LED not flashing on it, but this normally fixed the issue. Your situation does sound similar as I used to play online games, and get pissed off when it disconnected randomly lol.

So as I said, I DID have this problem but don't have it now. One good thing is to make sure your driver for the adapter is up to date, and also good idea to update Win Xp. I used to think the USB port was going to sleep or something to save power, cannot be certain though.

You could try some tests by using your adapter in your other computers to see if they get the same issue?

Good luck!

Glad it's not just a lone problem then :)

I have tried pulling it out and slotting it in again a few times; it worked once, but got nothing the rest of the time. I'll try a driver upgrade. With it being a new install, I think I've only got SP2 on it... in fact, I've not been online long enough for it to download SP3, so I must have :D I've got the SP3 network full download, so I'll shove that on it as well. Cheers for the info!

If you have problems finding the drivers for the adapter let me know as I recently downloaded them, and should have it on one of my hard drives still. :D