No wireless networks are being detected

[sakau2007]

I have an Edimax Ralink RT73 wireless USB dongle that I use for wifi. When I used build 7100, Windows 7 would not recognize it. After some research, I found that if I upgraded to the retail edition it would work.

So I installed Win7 Professional 64 bit and installed the device. It installed correctly, and appears to be working fine in the device manager. However, when it scans for networks, it finds nothing which I know is completely bogus because my iPhone can detect a dozen sitting right next to the thing.

The driver is dated from March 2009 so I thought that might be an issue even though it says the driver is up to date and working properly. I have scoured the net and cannot find anything about this USB dongle and its Windows 7 compatability/driver update.

I'm about at my wits end. Can anyone help?

 

[Jonathan_King]

Hello,

It is the sign of a cheap card that will not detect networks. Did this card ever work? Do you have another machine you can try the card in?

~Jonathan

 

[sakau2007]

i can try it on another machine when i get home. i'm pretty sure it worked when i used it a couple years ago on a machine that had XP on it.

i could see the card being cheap not detecting some marginal networks, but it doesn't detect anything... not even the ones that are right on top of it.

 

[Jonathan_King]

In 2 years, electronics can fail. We will see when you test it.

 

[chev65]

If your USB dongle doesn't show Windows 7 support than the odds are good that it will not work. Lots of compatability problems with network hardware lately and for the most part if they don't your hardware as Windows 7 compatible it won't work correctly.

 

[sakau2007]

I have not yet gotten to test out the dongle in my xp machine because i dont have a cd rom drive in it for the driver software but ill work on that

as for win7 compatibility, what is a wireless device that is known to work reliably in win 7 and is available inexpensive online?