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[kronos212]

Having a problem when the drivers are installed into the OptilPlex 9020 with Windows 7 installed (x32, x64 makes no difference). The screen flashes a rainbow of colors for about 20-30 seconds and then the PC would shutoff. Upon reboot, I have video during the Welcome message and right before the logon screen appears, which I am thinking that is when the drivers get loaded,  it flashes the colors again. I can boot into safe mode and delete the drivers and everything works. but when I re-install the drivers, error reappears.

I did a fresh install of Windows 7 Pro x64 with no other drivers. Installed this card and as soon as the drivers are installed I experienced the same problem.

I've been installing these cards into Dell Optixplex 520/620 but they have been Windows XP. I did installed them into a Optiplex 780 which is Windows 7 and it works perfectly.

The 9020 has two PCIE 16x and one PCIE1x. The card was in all three slots and I still have the error once the drivers have been installed. I have many 9020's and the error replicates on four systems that had the card installed.

Problem only occurs on the 9020

I have a ticket open with DLink and the person handling my case passed this information to head quarters and for me to post this information on the forums.

[FurryNutz]

Link>Welcome!

• What drivers are you using? CD or web drivers?
• Link>What Firmware version is currently loaded? Found on the routers web page under status.
• What region are you located?

If the cards work on other PC HW and not on this one particular PC model, I presume there maybe an incompatibility issue with this PC HW. You've proven that the cards work with XP and Windows 7 on other PC HW.

[kronos212]

I used the drivers provided on the disc and the web drivers. If I recall, they were both the same version.

DWA-548 wireless card shows F/W Ver.: 1.01
DWA-525 wireless card shows F/W Ver.: 1.20

I'm in the United States.

[FurryNutz]

For the 525 I see v1.23 just relesed a short time ago.
For the 548 I see v1.02 available last year...

Have these been tried?

[kronos212]

The drivers for the 525 wasn't updated as of last month when I was troubleshooting this problem. I downloaded those and installed them and as of right now I can not replicate the failure. However, when I was first working on this last month, it wasn't a 100% failure; maybe around 90%. One day I changed something and it worked. Came in the next day and it was failing again.

I'll continue to power cycle the PC to see if the failure will replicate.

I have been using the 1.02 drivers for the 548.

Does the driver package also include any updated firmware?

[FurryNutz]

I don't think the drivers include FW. There isn't any FW for DWA adapters that I know of.

[kronos212]

Well, the failure finally replicated Friday.

[FurryNutz]

How so?

[kronos212]

After several power cycles, the failure returned; still the flickering of colors on the monitor. I didn't do anything different, just the power cycling. A few times after I installed the drivers and the failure happened, upon reboot the it didn't replicate. Once in Windows, I check the device manager and it showed a problem with the card. Said drivers couldn't be loaded. Uninstalled and re-installed and the flickering came back. I wish I could post the pic and short video showing what occurs like I did for the DLink tech that was helping me in email.

[FurryNutz]

And you used the updated drivers from the web and not the ones from the CD?

Adding Screenshots In A Post

[kronos212]

I think I may have made a discovery. During my troubleshooting the past couple days and installing a newer BIOS that wasn't available last month when I first started working on this problem I noticed that the DWA-548 was working all the time. I was able to log into Windows, connect to our wireless. I was able to un-install the drivers and re-install them with no problems. The DWA-525 on the other-hand was failing every time. So, I put in the DWA-548 card, put the backplate and antenna back on and it started failing again.

I continued to do more troubleshooting and I came to the conclusion that if the antenna's are NOT installed, both cards work perfect. I can log into Windows, un-install and re-install the drivers and connect to our wireless. I then put the antenna's back on and the failure replicates for both cards. Once booted into Windows and connected to our wireless, I then can then put the antenna's back on with no problems.

And I also noticed when the failure occurs and I get the flashing of colors the PC is not locked up, so there could be some inference somewhere, maybe? When the problem occurs during log in, I can still hear the hard drive loading all of the files for windows to load. When the problem occurs during driver installation, I can press the front power button and can hear the Exit Windows sound effect and the drive closing all of the files and then PC shuts off.

[FurryNutz]

Wow, thats strange for sure that installing the cards with out the antennas attached fixes this. Well the cards are kind of a two way radio, sending and receiving radio signals so I wonder if there could be some components on the PC that maybe susceptible to radio interferences? These cards are older generation cards and may not have more discrete signals or up to date signals as newer generation cards may have. You might want to test this out and see if a newer generation adapter card does the same thing or not. There maybe some interactions going between the motherboard of the PC and the cards as well. Something new would need to be tested to see if it still happens.

[kronos212]

I have deployed several of these PCs to production and they are all working without the antennas attached. I still have not received any updates from the tech from DLINK that was working on my case; I've sent him two emails weeks ago.

After we use up these models, we may go to something else. Thank you for you help.

[FurryNutz]

You may want to phone contact them about this instead of email. We find phone gets more immediate response. Do you have a case # for this? If so, PM me this.

Can check this out to see if it would be a better upgrade:
http://us.dlink.com/products/adapters/ac1200-wi-fi-pci-express-adapter/