Customer Reviews

NETGEAR WG311 Wireless-G PCI Adapter

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(51)

 

 

First of all, this card is a great product and better than any of the competitors, to include Linksys and D-Link. With the deployment of SP2 you will need to change the install procedure for the V2 card so that it works without causing your system to reboot constantly. DO NOT install the utility and drivers ahead of time as the instructions in the packaging tell you to. Rather, install the card, then boot up and let windows detect the hardware. Instead of installing the drivers automatically, use the "I Will Select" the hardware option then through the hardware wizard browse to the XP Drivers folder on the disc and let windows install ONLY the driver, not the utility. XP has a very good wireless management utility and you will give up nothing by not having the Netgear utility installed. The card will finish install and you'll be up and running.

Update: mid November 2004:

This was originally a 1-star review. Netgear issued updates for this card allowed work fine Windows Home SP2, which I confirmed during the build of a new machine two months after the original review.

My rant in September 2004 was valid then based on the state of their support for XP SP2.
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Original early September review:
Once installed and working: 4 stars. The single star is for the overall experience in Windows XP Home Service Pack 2 environment. This eventually required a rollback from SP2 *and* an operating system reinstall. This might not be worth it for most people seeking just a little faster data throughput...

If your are considering purchasing this --or **any other wireless network adapter**-- check carefully for compatability with Windows XP Home SP2. After over 4 hours of my own troubleshooting, and another hour on hold to speak with Netgear tech support, I learned that the only issue was that this device was having major compatability issues with SP2 (which we deployed last month on 4 computers in our network with no negative effects..until now). At this point you pretty much have the choice of returning to your previous (or non-existent) networking environment or uninstalling SP2. WARNING: Do not choose the SP2 uninstall. I went from a midly annoying networking hardware issue to a full blown operating system meltdown. In the case of Netgear, the SP2 compatibility issue was not discussed on their web site (and certainly not in the included literature): I had to get this important information from the support rep. only after registering the product for the 90 day support period. If you are putting any wireless adapter into an XP SP2 system, it is time well spent to check with their tech support BEFORE install. The hold time may be time consuming, but it will be less so than Windows reinstallation (or a hard drive reformat!). Naturally, since my Netgear issue has morphed into a Windows issue, there's no more help coming from Netgear on this. I've had generally good experiences with Netgear products (a new router and laptop PCMCIA card installed flawlessly and were up and running in minutes), but this combined MS-Netgear SNAFU is a disaster of major proportions. Your experience may vary...but it would take very little for it to be better than mine! Good luck, and caveat emptor!
Update: Rollback from XP SP2 plus a reinstall of the operating system plus another 45 minutes on the phone with tech support and we did succeed in getting it running. Enjoying the higher throughput, but I'm not sure it was worth the effort.

I'd like to start off by saying this is the only Netgear product I ever had a problem with.

I actually have the older WG311v2 edition of this product and it seemed to work for a while. The problem occured when I started getting constant dropping after a few minutes of being connected. I investigated and found that of every 10-15 pings I sent to the router (both a Netgear MR814 802.11b and the WGR614 I decided to upgrade to), it would lag once for up to 1 whole second which is bad when it comes to network connectivity between a system and the router. I tried disconnecting 2.4GHz phones, switching channels, moving the router, moving the computer, replacing the router, changing the PCI slot the card sat in, using Wireless Zero Config, using the latest Netgear util. Nothing worked. To top it off ping testing with other computers wireless on the network showed no dropping. The WG311v2 would drop/lag and I would have to manually make it work again with enable/disabling of the card and reboots of the machine.

I did some research into the card and read that a possible hotfix might have caused an issue. Nope, the Hotfix wasn't installed on my system. I later learned that the WG311v2 card just plain has major problems when it comes to reliable connectivity.

I picked up a D-Link DWL-G510L the next day for cheap and plugged it in and installed the latest drivers. No problems at all AND the drivers supported WPA-PSK, WPA, WPA2-PSK, and WPA2. The WG311v2 only supports WPA and WPA-PSK.

Netgear might have fixed the issues with the WG311v2 with the release of the current WG311v3 but they also might not have. I would take a closer look at the D-Link. It works, is usually cheaper, and it supports the latest wireless security protocols and works great with Wireless Zero Config.

This card turns out to be compatible with Win XP SP2 only if you limit yourself to installing the drivers. The Netgear utility that comes with it as part of the installer is not compatible with SP2, and causes a blue screen crash. I found this out the hard way! So when Windows prompts you for drivers, browse to the Drivers/XP directory on the CD, and let Windows do the rest. Don't use the installer!

As detailed in many other reviews before this, the included software has a problem with XP2. In my case, the software installed fine, but would drop signal frequently, and it was all very frustrating. BTW, the CD had the latest version of the software. Here's the right way to install:
1. Uninstall bundled software.
2. Reboot
3. At the 'Found new hardware, install driver' dialog, choose 'Have Disk' or equivalent, and point it to the 'drivers\XP' folder on the CD.
4. Done.

This has the net result of ditching Netgear's wireless manager in favor of the in built windows one, which is perfectly adequate. I'm getting 4 bars out of 5 with the router in the basement and the desktop in the 2nd floor.

Good product, faulty software.

Installation is straightforward, as it usually is with Netgear products. After a bit of fiddling (namely disabling the 'g' mode), which really should not have been necessary, given that it was talking with another Netgear product (the MR814 router), connectivity and throughput seemed solid. Unfortunately, my system would freeze (such that only a hard reset would revive it) any time I tried to play an AVI or MP3 file. I'm not sure what bizzare interaction is causing this, but it is a known and well documented issue (just Google "wg311 freeze") with these boards. Netgear support was useless, and they seem unwilling or unable to resolve the problem. My recommendation: stay away! And a lesson for me: do more research before making purchases...

Terrible product. I have tried using the Windows XP wireless application with just the netgear drivers and tried using the Netgear wireless application with the netgear drivers. Using either one the card disconnects at random using WPA, then you have to repair the connection and sometimes reboot to get the connection back. I reinstalled windows both times I changed drivers just to make sure nothing was conflicting with it, but nothing helped. Latest drivers are 2_0_0_7 and were published in Nov 2004, so netgear has moved on to other cards and is not supporting this one any longer.

This would have to be the worst piece of equipment I have ever bought. I installed it as per directions, and it seemed to go fine, but the performance of the link was very poor, it is sitting not far from a PC with a DLINK card in it and that PC is getting Very Good to excellent connectivity, same can't be said for the netgear card, it is perpetually sitting down at poor or no connection.

I then found that my PC would lose connectivity after 10 minutes (or less) and then the task bar would freeze, I couldn't even bring up task manager to close the PC down.

I then uninstalled the software, downloaded the latest drivers, re-installed the card, and tried to use the Win XP controller, but the issues were exactly the same.

This is just once piece of hardware that doesn't like to work, a waste of money and time. I would like to see NETGEAR actually fix the issues that so obviously plague this card.

If so many other manufacturers can get it right why can't NETGEAR, I think their engineers and programmers need a swift kick up the backside.

Until Netgear fix the issue with this card it is the last piece of NETGEAR equipment I will buy. I have had Netgear switches and hubs that worked fine, but obviously Netgear just ins't ready for the magic that is wireless.

My recommendation... buy DLINK instead.

I am aware of the compatibility issues that this PCI adapter has with Windows XP SP2. Like many people who has XP SP2, I also got a blue screen following Netgear's installation instruction, which is to install the utility and driver from CD before you install the hardware.

The compatibility issue originates from the utility software provided by Netgear, but not from the PCI adapter itself. However, the problem is easy to fix.
Follow step 1-7 if you have already plugged-in the hardware and receive a bluescreen after restarting Windows XP.
Follow step 3-7 is you have not begun the installation process.

1. turn off your computer and unplug the PCI adapter
2. start your computer and uninstall the Netgear utility software from Control Panel
3. insert the installation CD but do NOT install the utility and driver from the CD
4. turn off your computer and plug-in the PCI adapter again
5. start your computer and Windows XP will tell you "new hardware found"
6. follow the instruction and let Windows XP search your computer for the appropriate driver (include your CD-ROM drive). DO NOT INSTALL THE UTILITY SOFTWARE.
7. in just a few minutes, your wireless PCI adapter will be working smoothly with no problems!

Note: Windows XP's default Wireless Connection Manager is a good program, therefore, there is no need to use Netgear's utility program which has serious conflict with XP SP2.

The adapter itself is a great product. It would have received a 5 star. However, due to the faulty installation instruction and the incompatibility of Netgear's software for Windows XP SP2, it receives only 4 stars. Netgear needs to fix this problem and get rid of the incompatible utility software ASAP.

Product Randomly Disconnects from network. After 6 months of off and on tech support still no resolution. I've been using computers for almost 20 years and tried everything imaginable. Just bought a new product from linksys, install was faster, easier, better defined, working flawlessly now.