Lost wireless after upgrading Windows 2000 to Windows XP

[poordirtfarmer]

Lost wireless connectivity after upgrade of a Windows 2000 machine to Windows XP Home

At home I had successfully connected six machines to the internet and had things working just fine until I upgraded a Windows 2000 machine to Windows XP Home. Here’s how I’m presently setup:

Dlink DI-624 wireless router plugged into Brighthouse’s black box

Six computers:
1. Windows XP Pro plugged into back of DI-624 w/CAT 5e wire & using the onboard adapter
2. Windows XP Home plugged into back of DI-624 w/CAT 5e wire & using onboard adapter
3. Windows 2000 Pro w/ Dlink wireless PCI card DWL-G520
4. Windows 2000 w/ Dlink wireless PCI card DWL-G520
5. Windows XP Home w/ Dlink wireless PCI card DWL-G520
6. Windows 98 SE w/ Dlink wireless PCI card DWL-G520

Machine #5 is my teenage daughter’s. She talked me into upgrading her machine from Windows 2000 to Windows XP Home for students. The wireless connectivity was working just fine until the upgrade was complete. At that point the little Dlink histogram on the bottom right of the screen appeared with all the bars white (indicating no signal – yellow means weak and green means good). Since that time I’ve spent literally dozens of hours pouring over the problem. I’ve emailed Dlink so many times they’ve quite replying. It didn’t always seem that they had read the previous correspondence, but for awhile I at least got replies. I tried everything they suggested – many times, in fact.

Summarized below is a consolidation of all the actions that they suggested in the various emails listed in chronological order.


Before doing anything else:
1 I disabled any type of security software ( Uninstalled BlackIce Firewall)
2. Disabled any antivirus software. (Norton AV )
3. Disabled any PPPoE software. (I've none that I know of)
4. Also disabled Microsoft's own Win XP firewall.
5 I removed all unnecessary software and Applications in Startup (I just went in and deleted everything from startup).

Prevented Windows from Configuring the wireless network:
1. Clicked on Start and right-click on My Computer. Selected "Manage".
2. In the left pane, double-clicked on Services and Applications. Selected "Services".
3. In the right pane, scrolled down and double-clicked on Wireless Zero Configuration to open the properties window.
4. In the properties window, clicked on the General tab at the top. Next to Startup Type, clicked the down arrow and selected "Disable". Under "Service Status", clicked Stop. Clicked OK to close the properties window.

Uninstalled the Software for the Wireless D-Link Card
1. Uninstalled the D-Link wireless utility from the Control Panel
2. Disabled the On-the-Motherboard Ethernet adapter
3. In Device Manager verified that the D-link adapter was uninstalled

Turned off Machine & Physically Remove the Wireless D-Link Card from the Motherboard

Rebooted the Computer into Safe mode (Pressed F8 During Boot-up)
Logged into Device Manager & verified no D-Link drivers are listed under Network Adapters.

Reboot Under Normal Mode
1. Made certain again that there are no background utilities running (Anti Virus, Firewall, Anti-spyware, etc. NOTE Norton A/V had started back up so I terminated it again)
2. Unzipped D-Link drivers and double-clicked SETUP.EXE.
3. Followed the wizard prompts to install the utility in the default location & click NO

Now Turned Machine Back Off & Re-Installed the D-Link Card - this Time in a Different PCI Slot

Restarted & When the New Hardware Wizard appeared, selected Install Automatically & clicked NEXT
1. Got the digital signature not found message - selected Continue Anyway
2. Clicked FINISH
3. Disable Win XP Zero configuration ( Http://support.dlink.com/faq/view.asp?_id=1398)

At this point the familiar histogram appears at the bottom right of the screen. It's all white (sees no signal). I double click to open & get the busy (hour glass) for maybe a tenth of a second ... That's all. Never opens. Likewise from "Start”; "Programs"; double clicking the Dlink utility gets a small fraction of a second busy and nothing else. won't open


I fully expected to be able to view the site survey, select my SSID and WEP, but I can’t get there. I’ve tried over and over. I have an extra Dlink card and tried it for awhile with the same result. Dlink sent a replacement card, but again - same thing.

In desperation I moved the problem machine next to the access point and plugged it in with CAT 5e. The onboard LAN worked just fine with wire, so I installed all the updates available. Now Machine #5 is running XP Home SP2 with every patch available as of last night. Incidentally I went to the Dlink site and downloaded the latest driver for my Rev A1 (version 2.48 dated back on 1/7/2004). I tried again the scenario described above - same result. WOW! This is getting old.

I just can’t imagine big companies like Dlink and Microsoft selling stuff on a large scale that simple doesn’t work – seems that there’d be boycotts and riots. I must still be missing something. Can someone help?

If there’s no solution with the DWL-G520, is there something else out there that someone knows will for sure work with Windows XP Home and the DI-624?

[johnwill]

Install SP2 for XP, and try these two procedures:

TCP/IP stack repair options for use with Windows XP with SP2.

For these commands, Start, Run, CMD to open a command prompt.

Reset WINSOCK entries to installation defaults: netsh winsock reset catalog

Reset TCP/IP stack to installation defaults. netsh int ip reset [log_file_name]

Note: the log_file_name needs to be specified, e.g. netsh int ip reset reset.log

[poordirtfarmer]

Thanks Johnwill!
I attempted to follow your suggestions.

(1) I hooked up subject machine with Cat 5e to the back of the DI-624 & downloaded all the latest updates. “About Windows” tells me that I’m now running Microsoft Windows version 5.1 (Build 2600.vpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519: Service Pack 2).

(2) I typed in the “netsh winsock reset catalog” and pressed Enter. It responded that the winsock catalog was reset … but also said that the computer needed to be restarted to complete the reset. So I restarted the computer. Then I reopened the command prompt to get ready for the last step.

(3) I had absolutely no idea what to put in for log_file_name, so at the command prompt I literally typed in your example: “netsh int ip reset reset.log” and then pressed Enter. The cursor dropped down to the next (completely blank) line. Nothing appeared to have happened, but I went ahead and restarted the machine anyway. After the restart, I still can’t get the Dlink utility to run. So I’m guessing that I need to figure out exactly what log_file_name to put in there in order to reset the TCP/IP stack to installation defaults ... Do you have a technique for that? Thanks!

[johnwill]

Well, you can just search for the log file with Windows search, but the stack is most likely reset.

Have you tried using the Windows Wireless Zero Configuration utility and loading just the D-Link drivers, not their configuration utility?