Vista and Wireless N... D-Link DWA-552 problems.

[aadosx]

Hi all,

I am not sure if this is the correct forum for this question; if not I apologize.

I recently purchased a Dell XPS 720 to upgrade from my 5 year old Dell Dimension 8200. The 720 came with Vista Home Premium on it. I have been itching to get Vista since beta but I held off this long because I was afraid of driver issues, etc. Well, I guess I didn't hold off long enough.

I have a D-Link DWA-552 Wireless N Adapter card that I used in my old Dell with Windows XP Pro and it worked like a charm. On the new Dell though, it's a disaster. It took me a while to figure out that the network card was my problem, but I've finally pinpointed it to that. Whenever the drivers for the card are not installed, the computer works fine. But then once I install drivers, I have all sorts of locking up issues. The computer can lock up completely, some times it blue screens, and some times the monitor won't return from it's low power state if I walk away from it.

I have tried 3 different sets of drivers. One from Windows Update, one from www.station-drivers.com, and then of course both versions available on D-Links website. I also found some "beta vista" drivers on D-Links site in a weird place, but I couldn't even get them to install (Windows didn't recognize them as the correct drivers I guess).

Is there anything I can do to make it work? What's up with Vista and wireless n cards? I checked Microsoft's website and according to the Vista compatibility section, the card is "Certified for Windows Vista" which is the highest possible rating. Obviously not! Please help.

I would even consider buying a new card but if this one is suposed to work and it doesn't, how can I know that the next one I buy will work? Are there any that have been proven to work with Vista? Should my card work?.. whats up? I don't see what I could possibly be doing wrong, but who knows. I searched around too and found that I'm not the only person that seems to have trouble with the 552.

Thanks!
John

 

[shucklak]

Hello,

Just posting to let you know you are not alone on this..

I actually had the dwa-552 in a vista computer (amd 3400) and it worked perfectly, as it does in XP.
However, I just built myself a new computer (amd X2 3800) and now I am experiencing very similar problems, actually a bit worse. Once my computer boots up I have about 60 seconds to do anything before it freezes, presumably because the driver is kicking in.
I can boot into safe mode and uninstall the driver, then boot into Windows and the computer will work fine so it is def the driver. I am using the exact same driver as I did for my old vista machine which leads me to believe that the driver is not agreeing with my mobo's NVDIA chipset.
I would assume since you have a Dell XPS that you are using an Intel chipset so we wouldn't really be able to single down the problem to just that. I am interested in a fix, however I think it is in D-Links hand more than anyone. I will submit my scenario to D-Link so that they are aware of it. Until they release new drivers though, I'm going back to XP
Please let me know if you do come across anything though as I will do the same.

 

[aadosx]

Hey,

I actually have an nVidia chipset... 680i. I ended up narrowing it down to most certianly the card so I just went to Best Buy and bought a Netgear wireless N card.. and guess what... it works perfectly. Screw D-Link!