Your experience with usb wireless adapter

Hi ... I'm just curious to hear your experience with using usb wireless adapter . Are they any good ? Also does anyone know which service can stop the internal wireless adapter from working ? windows xp pro sp3 ?

 

I have used several different ones. They were all good. From the ones that I have used, I can't say one was that much better that the other.

You could try and disable it in Device Manager.

OR:
Go to your bios select Advance under Integrated Peripherals your network settings should be there and this disabled it. If not, refer to your manual.

 

Please clarify what you mean with wireless adapter?

Depending on which area of the world you are in this could be a simple wifi adapter to hook up to your own home/office network or a cellular adapter which uses 3g networks to connect to the internet.

My experiences with both...

1) WiFi, I used a Belkin wifi adapter to hook up with my Netgear router for several months (on an old 98 system). I had a few problems but I'd say they were more to do with driver/operating system rather than the actual hardware. Not enough to annoy me but occassionally had to reboot a couple of times before a connection was established.

2) Cellular, I also used a Huwaie cellular adaptor for a few months on an XP system. Very poor reception and speeds varied massivly from as little as 3Kbit's/sec to the advertised 2Mbit/sec. An expensive service which I have vowed never to return to. (BTW my mobile phone on the same network had no signal problems at all).

Regarding disabling the internal WiFi as MrBill posted it should be available in the BIOS, if not look for a switch/button or a combination fn+ key to disable/enable (on my laptop it's fn+f8) but seriously if you have wifi built in it's very likley to work better than any usb dongle you try.

 

Its for my laptop . I did have wireless working but for some reason now I don't even have the wireless network listed on my laptop and the light that show it working isn't on . Normally it would be a blue light and that would tell me wireless is working but now all I see is a orange light . I'm thinking maybe I disable a service for it . I even try a different wireless adapter PCIe card and still no go . So either I stop a service for it or its dead altogether .

 

Make and model of the laptop?

 

Hence why I asked for make and model Pete

My friends old laptop (as Acer I believe) had a similar light coding, the LED itself was the button which annoyingly was placed on the front, centre of the laptop. Those of a rotund build could easily switch wireless on/off by accident.

 

HP Pavilion DV6308 AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-50 1.6GHz 1GB 120GB DVD±R 15.4" WXGA LAN Firewire GeForce Go 6150 XP PRO sp3
HP Pavilion dv6308ca Notebook PC ... p/n: GA218UA#ABL

 

What do you mean by Fn key combo ? What other key if its a combo ? Also When ever your is on Orange code are you still able to see wireless network listed in the devise manager area ? Because I don't see anything any where , nothing under the network , its like I have no wireless at all . I even try to reload the driver but nothing seem to be happening . Thanks

 

Look on your numbers keys on the top of the keyboard. They will have symbols on them. Holding down the FN key will change them from numbers to what ever symbol is on them. Like holding down the shift key to get something different than numbers.

 

Sorry but I still not getting it ... I should maybe mention this windows isn't a preinstall HP product recovery windows version . The original is a Vista but I took Vista off and put on my copy of XP pro ... Okay back to the keys . I don't have a Fn key above my keyboard . I do have it near the Ctrl and Alt keys . When I try Fn key with the numbers keys nothing changes . Let say it is a key problem wouldn't I have done that in the first place ? I mean wouldn't I had to have turn it off ? Though I know I never did . Another thing to . If it is turn off , would the wireless network still be visible in my network folder and under devise manager ? Because I don't see that as well . Thanks for helping

 

TerryFox,

This may be way too simplistic but the 6000 series laptop does have a manual switch to turn the wireless feature on and off. I discovered this after a great deal of aggravation on my first wireless laptop when I couldn't get my wireless to work.

From Wildfire's post:

If your laptop looks like the thumbnail below, perhaps the switch got turned off accidentally.

 

I guess I could have worded it better on the FN key. It is on the bottom of the keyboard on the left side. The number keys should have the symbols on them. You have to press the FN key down and hold it and then what ever key for the wireless...

Found the 2 different things listed below doing a Google search.

If the light is at the top of the keyboard is the button. It does not look like a button. Press it and wait as much as two seconds for the color to change. You will then need to re-establish a connection to the wireless router. Click on the wireless icon next to or near the clock in the task tray of your screen. Choose a connection from the list that appears.

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Turns out I had to restore the default setting on the computer to get it to turn back on--just press f10 as the notebook is booting up (so before the desktop is loaded after you restart) and then press f9 and then YES to restore default settings.

 

Mine is like pic one, number 4 and 5 ... It slides like an off and on switch but nothing happen when I do either . PeteC has an hp and he knows about this orange light code . Pete if by chance you are reading this when you have an orange code ? Are you still able to see the wireless network in the Network folder and do you see it listed under the devise manager ?

 

I try the f10 / f9 default bios setting and it didn't change . Also try every key with the Fn key still not working . I posted my problem on hp forum site as well and some of the members say their a bad solder joint on the motherboard

 

Okay , thanks for that because I don't see nothing nor am I able to reload the driver/program or am I able to do a set up for wireless . So it must be a hardware gone bad within the M-board . Back to my original post for an usb wireless adapter ...