Wireless USB Adapter vs. Win 7 Pro 64-Bit

Howdy Folks!

I am having one heck of a time getting a new wireless USB adapter to do ... well, much of anything really. "Plug and Play" has become a nightmare of hours and hours spent tweaking everything I can think of. Here are the details.

My system runs on Windows 7 Pro 64-Bit. It connects to the internet via a wired connection, but - the only printer in the house is a wireless one, so I purchased an Encore Wireless N300 USB Adapter so I could access the printer when needed.

I do not believe my problem has to do with both a wired and wireless connection running at the same time, as I have disabled my wired adapter and physically removed the cable.

I have connected the adapter to different USB ports, installed the company drivers from the disc, uninstalled those and allowed Win 7/Windows Update to choose drivers instead (it uses Realtek RTL8192CU Wireless LAN 802.11n USB 2.0 Network Adapter), nothing seems to allow me to view the house wireless network (though other computers and the iPad can see it fine, so I know it is up).

When I attempt to "Manually connect to a wireless network", all I get is "An unexpected error occurred." The Windows diagnostics tell me there "May be a problem with the wireless adapter", but cannot repair the problem (or tell me specifically what it is). Following the Windows network wizard similarly ends in failure.

According to "Network Connections" the device is Enabled, but the Status shows "IPv4 Connectivity: Not Connected". I physically plugged the adapter into a laptop running Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit, and within 3 minutes (and auto-installing the above Realtek driver) the laptop had working Wireless Connection 1 (the onboard adapter) and Wireless Connection 2 (the USB adapter), so I believe the unit itself is functioning fine. But in my desktop the green status light just blinks slowly, taunting me but never connecting to anything.

Anyway - I'm about at my wit's end, was wondering if anyone had suggestions on other things I might try?

Thanks for reading!

On the assumption the other PC you plugged the USB dongle into was serviced from the same modem / router this is obviously allocating IP addresses correctly however on the system that it doesn't work is the dongle getting an IP address in IPv4 ? i.e. when you go into the wireless properties is it set to DHCP or static IP ? If you do a ipconfig command, does the wireless device get an IP address that is recognized on your network ?. Clearly the dongle itself and router don't appear to be the problem and I'd be looking more at the device properties and settings in the problem system.

Hope this is of help.

strollin said:

Is your desktop in the same general area as the router? When you tried the USB adapter in the laptop, was it around the same distance from the router as the desktop? Just trying to ascertain that the issue isn't that the desktop is out of range to the router.

The problem desktop is actually about 10 feet from the router ... the laptop that worked is like three rooms away!

ibshaw said:

is the dongle getting an IP address in IPv4 ? i.e. when you go into the wireless properties is it set to DHCP or static IP ?

Under 'Properties' for the "TCP/IPv4" item, the radio buttons for "Obtain an IP address automatically" and "Obtain DNS server address automatically" are both ticked (is that what you mean?)

ibshaw said:

If you do a ipconfig command, does the wireless device get an IP address that is recognized on your network?.

I don't think so, but honestly this mobo has so many adapters I'm not totally sure - here's my ipconfig /all, I don't see any clearly-labeled wireless adapter:



Windows IP Configuration

Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Bluetooth Network Connection 2:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Bluetooth Device (Personal Area Network) #2
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 2:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) 82579V Gigabit Network Connection
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::8128:74cb:9f73:2cbe%11(Preferred)
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.102(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Friday, January 06, 2012 8:35:16 AM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Saturday, January 07, 2012 8:35:16 AM
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 240387238
DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-16-88-8C-3A-54-04-A6-2C-52-19
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 209.18.47.61
209.18.47.62
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Tunnel adapter isatap.{682A4E1C-49FA-4D12-BB02-D8B0A6BF95A4}:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft ISATAP Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2001:0:4137:9e76:838:720:b3a4:ca64(Preferred)
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::838:720:b3a4:ca64%13(Preferred)
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : ::
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Disabled

Tunnel adapter isatap.{E3ECECEA-EA08-4B1F-89B7-032CACCFC1CD}:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft ISATAP Adapter #2
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter isatap.socal.rr.com:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : socal.rr.com
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft ISATAP Adapter #3
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Thanks for trying folks! This is a head-scratcher - I know I'm not quite up to speed on Windows 7 (I recently upgraded straight from XP to 7), but in my experience Wireless USB adapters have always just been plug and play and kick back.

When you do an ipconfig /all command it should list all the NICs (network interface cards) i.e anything the OS recognises as hardware that has the capability to connect to a network - this could be ethernet, bluetooth, wireless adapter etc that is physically attached and the OS sees - clearly from your screenshot there is no recognisable wireless device listed - so that is the problem. Can you see it in device manager ? - right click on my computer (not the shortcut) and select "manage" - it should be listed there and should not show a yellow triangle otherwise it is not installed correctly. TBH if you are not using a device you should disable it - on a laptop you should only need the wireless card enabled (and bluetooth if you use that), ethernet can be diabled and re-enabled as necessary.
Report back.

It does appear in Device Manager, as "Realtek RTL8192CU Wireless LAN 802.11n USB 2.0 Network Adapter" (or, prior to using the Windows Update auto-installed drivers, Encore Something Something). There are no exclamation points, and the 'Properties' says "This device is working properly".

Does not appear in the ipconfig list though. I disabled the two bluetooth adapters listed under Network Adapters as well, just for the heck of it, but no change.

If it appears in device manager without a yellow triangle next to it and the OS tells you it is "working properly" but does not appear when you do an ipconfig command then it is not getting an IP address allocated to it from the router and why it is not working. Go into the router's interface and check "attached devices" I would not expect you to see it so you will have to figure out why the router is not giving it an IP address because it will not work otherwise. Also, temporarily disable any firewall installed to see if that has any effect.

Alrighty, I'll keep researching, thanks for the lead. Can't imagine why the laptop would be given an IP but not my new machine, grr.

One thing I didn't notice until just now is that the green access light on the wireless adapter never changes from a slow blinking. Also tried disabling ZoneAlarm firewall, no love there either.

If you go back to the working machine and plug in the dongle then do an ipconfig you will see it because it has been given an IP from the router - that is what you are tying to achieve on the one that is NOT working..... you will not get on the internet if the only access to the network is a wireless card that does not have an IP address.

Don't know if this sheds any new light on things - the "Windows Network Diagnostic" informs me, 'Problems Found: There might be a problem with the driver for the Wireless Network Connection adapter' (no duh!) If I mouse over that, it says "Windows couldn't automatically bind the IP protocol stack to the network adapter".

So maybe it's a driver issue? 64-bit related possibly? But I've tried the drivers that came on the disk with the dongle, as well as allowing Windows Update service to auto-install. Not sure what other drivers I could try.