Just spent an interesting hour trying to connect a Netgear WG111v2 USB WiFi Dongle to Netgear (Sky Branded) DG834GT router. They are both from the same manufacturer so you would they would work together!

This router was setup with its default Sky settings so WiFi was setup as WPA.

I installed the WG111 onto an XP laptop installed the newly downloaded V 5.1.1308 (26 Dec 2007) drivers and tried to connect. The router was spotted without problems and I was prompted to enter my WPA password, which was printed onto the bottom of the router (I had logged in to router via the web admin console to check this was correct). After what seemed like a long delay I was left not corrected to the router, but with no obvious error.

I fired up my work laptop which has built-in Wifi, this saw the router and connected as soon as the password as entered. Strange I thought, is this an XP or a WG111 problem?

I did a bit of searching and saw this was not an uncommon problem, the WG111 seems a troublesome child. In the end I got it working, this was the process I followed:

  • Via the network connection window in XP I looked at the properties of the WG111
  • On the wireless tab I switched of ‘Use windows to configure my wireless network setting’.

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  • This allowed me to open the Netgear Wireless Assistance tools to get more diagnostics. I saw that the router was running on the same channel as another local router.
  • Via the web based admin console of the router I changed the channel to a free one, in my case 10 – However, I don’t think this actually fixed the problem.
  • Via the web based admin console of the router I changed the WiFi mode from ‘b and g’ to ‘g only’ – This is the important one I think
  • I saved the changes and rebooted the router and it all worked
  • Just to tidy up, via the network connection window in XP I went back into the properties of the WG111 and on the wireless tab I switched on ‘Use windows to configure my wireless network setting’
  • Finally rebooted the laptop just to check it all worked, it did

I suspect the issue here is the WG111 getting confused if it is in 802.11b or 802.11g network, so removing the confusion fixed the problem