Hi
I have an old Dell X300 laptop (win xp) on which the wireless antenna is in bad shape so the internal wireless card was not picking up good signal. I bought a DWL-G650 (h/w b2) pcmcia wireless g card to use in it's place. It worked beautifully...until it didn't.
I noticed that the PC would spontaneously and completely lock up. no keyboard, no mouse, internet connection would go down. Only way around it was to do a power switch power down and restart. At that time, the card might or might not start up again. It seemed that if I pulled it out and reinserted it forcefully, it would power up. Maybe, I'd get an internet connection, maybe not. I did a driver update, but nothing new was required. Everytime I would restart, the pc would eventually lock up. Sometimes at the windows loading screen, sometimes at the login screen, sometimes after a short while of use, sometimes after 4-5 hours. I was guaranteed to have a problem if I went standby. I received a couple of blue screens in the process also.
I finally took the card out completely and reinstalled the internal wireless and have had zero problems, aside from poor signal reception.
Should I assume that maybe something went bad with the hardware, DWL-G650?
Thanks