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Wireless Network Card Troubleshooting – Blue Screen of Death

admin — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 21:27:26 +0000

As Wi-Fi hotspots are mushrooming all over the world, they let people have the chance to get rid of those inflexible network cables and surf on the net wirelessly in the WLAN. However, a high-performance wireless Internet access is not an easy thing for some users, because when contacting with your wireless network, your wireless network adapter may probably meet a lot of strange failures, which may seriously affect your networking experience if you don’t fix them in time, and the blue screen is one that among those common failures.

If blue screen shows on your computer immediately after you installed a wireless network card, above all, you need to check whether the net card driver you installed is compatible with your operating system, for example, if your driver is only available in Windows 2000, but you have installed it in Windows XP, well then your computer would be more likely to have a blue screen. Therefore, make sure you have installed the correct network card driver.

If your driver is compatible with your system and has been installed properly, you need to go through the installation of this network adapter, and check whether it has inserted to the right slot or port properly, for if you pull out the card from its PCMCIA port on the motherboard or its USB port just a few seconds after plugging it, blue screen would lightly happen, because frequent pullout and plug may make network adapter’s corresponding port confused and fail to identify this adapter. Additionally, if you pull out your net card suddenly when its LINK light is blinking, that would also leads to blue screen, or even worse, your computer or your network card’s port would be damaged.

By: Molly Smith

Home Networking

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:31:28 +0000

Setting up Your Home Network

As society and technology change, it’s becoming common for homes to have more than one computer. When an existing computer is a few years old, parents will often take advantage of today’s lower prices, purchase a new computer, and pass the old one down to the kids.

Suddenly, there’s a need for a home network, so all computers in the house can share an files, printers and an Internet connection. Fortunately, setting up a basic home network is not rocket science. To start, you’ll need a router which becomes the central point of your network. Most office and electronics stores offer home networking kits with a router, ethernet (network) adapters and CAT-5 networking cable.

If your computer was assembled in the past five years, it probably already has an ethernet adapter. Check the back of the system unit for a port that looks like a telephone jack, but slightly bigger.

If you don’t have an ethernet adapter, you can purchase one (about $20) and install it yourself. You can also use a special ethernet adapter that plugs into a USB port, if you can’t stand the thought of opening your system unit to install an ethernet adapter.

Wired or Wireless Networking?

You’ll need to connect each of your computers to the router with a cable, or go wireless. If you want to use wireless connections, you’ll need a wireless router and a wireless adapter for each computer. Most laptops have a wireless adapter built in, most desktop models do not. If you need a wireless adapter, you can purchase one that installs inside the system unit, or get a USB-style adapter.

Having a wireless network eliminates the need to string unsightly cables all around the house, but it can also create a security risk. Wireless networks are often configured by default to allow access to any computer that attempts to connect. So an Evil Hacker driving by with a laptop (or even your neighbor) might be able to tap into your Internet connection or poke around your hard disk.

Fortunately, wireless security encryption is easy to set up. See my article Wireless Security for step-by-step instructions.

Network Configuration

Whether the network signals travel through wires or through the air, network resources must still be shared so that other computers can access them. If you are running Windows XP or MacOS X, all you have to do is connect your computers and high-speed modem to the router, and Internet connection sharing should just work like magic. If not, restart the cable modem, router, and the computers (in that order) and see if that does the trick. If you can’t access the Internet from one or more computers on the network, consult the manual that came with your router.

One nice side benefit of having a router is that they have firewalls built in to the hardware. Firewalls protect you by hiding your computers from network attacks, but still allow you to surf the web and handle email. So after installing a router, you can turn OFF the Windows firewall and any other software-based firewalls you may have running.

Sharing Files and Printers

Sharing files and printers on a Windows network is also pretty painless. To share a printer, go into the Printers section of the Control Panel, right-click the icon for the printer that needs to be shared, and choose Sharing from the resulting menu. By assigning a name to the shared printer, the owner allows other computers on the network to access the printer by browsing using their Network Neighborhood (or My Network Places) icons. Access can be restricted to only some computers or users through the use of the Security or Permissions options on the Sharing screen.

The same concept applies for shared file and folders on a network. For example, if you want to share a collection of MP3 files on a home network, just browse to the folder using the My Computer icon, right-click the folder name and choose Sharing. After assigning a name to the shared resource and setting Permissions other computers on the network can access that resource via Network Neighborhood or My Network Places.

By: Bob Rankin

Setting Up a Wireless Satellite Internet Network

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:12:43 +0000

There are several advantages of going wireless with your internet service. You can network your home or office computers easier, you aren’t tethered to the wall and you can access the internet on multiple computers at the same time. If you are interested in going wireless and you are also interested in satellite internet service, then you may want to set up a wireless satellite internet network.

The first step is to subscribe to a satellite internet service. These services are broadband so they are generally going to work with wireless networking equipment that has traditionally been used to create wireless networks for land based broadband internet services. The three top choices for satellite internet service are StarBand, HughesNet and WildBlue.

While you are waiting for your satellite internet service to be installed, you will want to buy all of the wireless networking equipment that you will need. First of all if you don’t have a computer that has an internal wireless networking card already built in then you will want to either buy one that does, or you will want to buy a wireless network adapter. Next you will need a wireless router.

After your satellite internet system has been set up you will be ready to connect your wireless network. To start with, connect your satellite internet modem to the router. The router will then send signals to your computer via infrared signals. Configure your router following the instructions that came with your router.

If you are using a wireless network adapter you will want to plug this into a USB port in your computer. Otherwise your computer should receive the signal using its internal wireless card. Turn your computer on and follow the instructions that came with your satellite internet system to set up your account if your technician didn’t already do this for you. That’s all there is to it.

By: Sarah Freeland

Wireless USB Network Card Not Working – Troubleshooting

admin — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:38:55 +0000

If you use a wireless USB network adapter to access the network, probably you have met such problems before: the adapter has already been installed in the computer, and the system has recognized it, at the same time there is a message on the screen tells that its driver is installing, but when the installation is complete, you find that your wireless network card can not work and you wonder how to fix it.

As a matter of fact, if you check this problem carefully, you will find the USB port feature on your motherboard has been successfully enabled since your computer recognizes this card, also the computer USB port and the network card USB interface have no problem. Obviously, it is the improper installation of your adapter driver leading to this error.

Generally you need to install or update the relevant USB controller program for the first time to use the computer USB port. Therefore, you can open the Device Manager (Start / Control Panel / System / Hardware / Device Manager), double-click Universal Serial Bus Controllers, right-click the related controller and select Update Driver to keep its driver up to date.

If the approach above fails, and then you can check whether the network card driver has been installed correctly, for the installation of some wireless USB network adapters is different from that of the normal ones: you need to firstly install their drivers, next plug the card into the computer, and then system will configure and install them automatically, if the order is wrong, it would also easily make your card unable to work.

Want to handle your net card driver problems easily? Visit Driver Update Tool today, our team will do our best to offer you more!

By: Molly Smith

Wireless Network Card Troubleshooting – Computer Crashes

admin — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:32:52 +0000

As the technology advances, now many devices can support hot plug, such as USB devices and 1394 devices. However, essentially, most hardware operations should be completed after the power supply is cut off, otherwise it may cause computer crashes or even the permanent damage to the hardware.

Sometimes computer may go dead if the wireless network card is pulled out suddenly from its related port. This failure occurs in a relatively high frequency. The reason why this failure happens is that many PC users think this wireless network card’s USB port or PCMCIA port supports hot plug, and it can plug and play. Actually, they take this plug-and-play function as random plug and few of them know that this wireless NIC card should not be plugged when working, for it is not only easy to hurt the card and its corresponding computer interface, but also likely to cause system crashes.

If your computer freezes up because of wireless network adapter plug, firstly, you need to confirm whether you have performed this action when the card is working, if so, you have to restart your computer.

In addition, in order to avoid this error, you’d better stop processes like information transmission and it’s best to disable your wireless network adapter in Device Manager before pulling out it.

Step 1 Click Start and select Control Panel.

Step 2 Double-click System to open the System Properties sheet.

Step 3 Click Hardware and choose Device Manager.

Step 4 Right-click the Network adapters and look at its properties.

Step 5 Disable and plug this card.

By: Molly Smith

Fast Network Printers For Multipurpose Use

admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:53:55 +0000

The network printers are the printers installed over the private network such as LAN; these printers are used for printing documents from various computer terminals in the network. The network can be established over the whole department or a building of an organization. These network printers make connection to the network by being installed at some specific USB port of the main computers of the central offices and take commands of printing from the various terminals connected, only if the permission from the main computer is granted.

These Printers are the multifunctional printers that offer many features within a single unit. These printers include scanner, photocopier and sometimes-even Fax machine within it. Such printers find great use in the offices as the need of buying other equipments is prevented. The other equipments, if bought separately, cost even more amount and also occupy more space. For this reason, very high performance, all-in-one printers are being used today.

These printers can be either laser printer or ink jet printers. Laser printers deliver high speed of operation while the ink jet printers are comparatively slow. Today printers are available in many configurations, types, capacity, functionality and style. Printers can be either colored or monochrome. They can be chosen on the basis of user capacity, that is, the connectivity to the terminals. A few manufacturers offer even up to 200 user terminals connectivity.

The multifunctional printers are offered by many manufacturers in the market. Some of the famous manufacturers include Brother, Canon, Copystar, Kyucera, Lexmark, NEC, OKi, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp and Xerox etc. The Copystar CS 1635, NEC NEFAX-805 and Sharp AR-M162 are a few of the best seller printers which are in current trend. The cost of these printers comes in the range of 600-1100$.

The printers can be selected on the basis of printing speed based on their printing requirements. The speed varies as number of pages it can print in a second along with maintaining a good quality print. Few printers come in with networking capability, if the requirement is for the whole department then printer with networking facility should be used. Their network installation is also very easy, many a times the company sends a serviceman for installing the printer.

Today network printers have become a very common device in any office department. Its utility is nowhere hidden; any user from his terminal can use them anytime. By network printer the need of buying several printers is vanished. And when these printers include scanner, copier and Fax machine, then it satisfies all the needs of an office.

Thus the multifunctional network printers are the choice of the time; these should be installed in places such as offices, companies, departments, business houses etc. The easier is the use of technology, the more is speed of operation of the system. So for making an efficient operational system there should be continuous revision in the accessories and equipments used.

By: Keith Reynolds