D-Link DWL-G630 Wireless-G Notebook Adapter

The D-Link AirPlus G DWL-G630 Wireless Cardbus Adapter is an 802.11b/802.11g(2.4GHz) wireless adapter that supports high-speed wireless networking at home, atwork or in public places.

Unlike most network cards, the DWL-G630 provides data transfers at up to 54 Mbps(compared to the standard 11 Mbps) when used with other D-Link AirPlus G products.The 802.11g standard is backwards compatible with 802.11b products.

Features

Compatible with 802.11b and 802.11g Devices

Fully compatible with the IEEE802.11b and 802.11g standards, the DWL-G630 can connect with existing 802.11bor802.11g- compliant routers, access points and cards. That means you can stillcommunicate with colleagues and friends while you have the ability to link to evenmore wireless networks.

Faster Wireless Networking

Faster data transfers mean increased productivity.With the DWL-G630 in your laptop PC, you will have the flexibility of wireless networkingspeeds that save you time and money.

32-bit Cardbus Performance/Plug & Play Connectivity

The DWL-G630 is apowerful 32-bit cardbus adapter that installs quickly and easily into laptop PCs, andwhen used with other D-Link Air Plus G products will automatically connect to thenetwork out of the box.

User-friendly configuration and diagnostic utilities.

1 Don't bother if you have XP
What a headache this thing was... I made it all the way through to the point where my system recognized that there was new hardware and I had to click to ignore the fact that D-Link isn't certified by Microsoft (**key point). Then it found the driver file on the CD, and when it tried to install it, it simply said that the hardware could not be installed.

I called the customer support line - a fairly painless process - and walked through the installation with the rep. His conclusions was that a very very small number of CDs get corrupted or are bad (yea right!!) and that I would have to go to the D-Link website to download the most recent installation drivers. He swore that the site had the best and most recent fixes and that it would definitely work.

So the next day I went to the site, after uninstalling everything, and went through the installation process again using the latest and greatest. Result: SAME THING!!! It wouldn't install. What a piece a garbage. I called back in and the guy analyzed the situation and told me to return it, that the hardware was probably faulty. Uh huh...

The thing of it was that he didn't say, oh the card you have is bad, go get another one of the same. He basically implied that I should get a different card. To me this means that I would have the same trouble with all of the DWL-G630 cards I tried - due to incompatibility with XP SP2 - and that I need to get a real product that has been certified by Microsoft. (i.e. Linksys, ahem...)

Save your money!! Stay away!! Don't waste your time!!

Even the guy at Bestbuy said that the Linksys versions were much more reliable. I did actually buy the Linksys at first, but the signal was too weak, so I wanted to try a different one to see if it would be better. What a mistake! I'm going back to the weak signal thank you...

2 Pretty average - works fine most of the time
Considerably better than D-Link router products. It's amazing, but it did not want to work well with D-Link router (presumebly faulty) but works excellent with Belkin products. Its driver software may be a little annoying. When the computer starts, XP loads its own driver for this card; then the program that comes with this card unloads the XP driver and then then loads it back again. So the connection is established, broken and then again re-established. It works fine otherwise.

3 Save your money
I got this card because it was the only thing the bookstore on my campus sold at the time that my linksys was stepped on and broken. This is a piece of garbage. I am on WinXP and the connection drops in and out. Constantly. My Linksys card worked flawlessly for over a year and a half. Also, if you have 2.4 Ghz phones in your house, this card is very susceptable to the interferance from it, so try not to keep the phone near the card if possible, but even this will not help much. This card is still not XP certified after being out for months, meaning either the company is to lazy/cheap to get it certified or it failed certification testing due to drives issues and overall poor quality. Tech support is also laughable. If you look at other online reviews, you will see that the card works great on some computers but will crash others, so its a toss up. All of of this amounts to one thing; SAVE YOUR MONEY! Im gonna go get another linksys tommorow.

4 D-Link DWL-G630 with Compaq Presario Notebook 2100
The D-Link DWL-G630 wireless card wasn't recognized by my Compaq Presario 2170US laptop with WindowsXP, being displayed as "PCMCIA MTD-0002". I had to flash the BIOS, (risky for a novice?), instructions are at http://h18000.www1.hp.com/ , click on Product Support Information, and search for "Compaq Presario 2170US BIOS". Even after doing this, I still have to pop-out the card, and pop-it back everytime XP is restarted for the card to be recognized. Good Luck!

5 This worked great!!!!!!
When I installed the software on Windows XP it was a breeze it took about two minutes. As soon as I restarted and popped it in it detected it and I was cruising the web on my netgear router(wireless b) in a flash. Thanks D-Link for this great product.

6 Poor compatibility-buy at your risk!!
I recently bought D-links DI-514 wireless router and the AirPlus G DWL-G630 wireless pc-card and am not happy with either. The router just stops broadcasting frequently and I have to restart it. The wireless card has been a royal pain. DO NOT BUY this card if you have a Compaq Presario laptop. They are not compatible. I tried everything Dlink tech support suggested including doing a complete fresh reinstall of windows XP (!) and trying a replacement card and my computer still locks up. From my reading of forums on the internet, D-links wireless cards seems to work well on some computer brands and not others. You see posts where people have the same card working great on one laptop and freezing up another one. Amusingly, when I was explaining to the level 2 tech at Dlink that my previous Orinico wireless card worked perfectly for 3 years he said that I should have hung onto that card because that is what he currently uses! Dlinks level 2 tech doesn't even use this shoddy product!! Nor did they have an explanation why their drivers STILL are not windows XP certified. Come on, XP has been out for years and Dlink just hasn't gotten around to it yet (or more likely its just not certifiable)??? If you are still keen on getting the card, save yourself the hassle and check the forums first (www.dslreports.com)to see if others with your computer brand are having problems.

7 Solution
ziik
anonymous
bella-vista.sfo.ygni
Disclaimer: I'm not a certified technician. I'm just a simple guy who is trying to make his own broken stuff work. Use this advice at your own risk.

Introduction:

For those of you with a DWL-G630 or DWL-G510 wanting to use WPA-PSK, I have a solution that may actually work.

The DWL-G630 uses the same drivers as the DWL-G510 since they both use the same chipset (made by Marvell called the Libertas 88W8310).

Methods:

Since there is little useful literature regarding the DWL-G630 and WPA-PSK, I began looking up issues with the DWL-G510 and WPA-PSK. I found one user review at:

Èwww.epinions.com/content_141083577988

who discovered that the ASUS WL-138g also uses the same chipset - the major difference is that the WL-138g is supported by drivers that allow it to support WPA-PSK in real-world use (as opposed to how the DWL-G630 'supported' WPA-PSK for me).

Thus I decided to try the ASUS WL-138g drivers (version 2.3.0.19) on my D-Link DWL-G630. The ones I used I found at:

Èftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/lan/wifi-g/wi..

(ASUS has two other versions 1.9.6.0 and 2.2.0.20, but I haven't try them - I'm not even sure if some of these versions are beta).

After uninstalling D-Link's drivers, I used XP's add/remove hardware to use mrv8ka51.inf as the driver for the DWL-G630. I then set up WPA-PSK on both the DI-524 and DWL-G630.

Results and Conclusion:

The connection has been solid for about 4 hours now with no real change in performance. I'll see how it fairs tomorrow and update this post if anything significant happens.

Please post a reply with a quick summary if this does / does not end up helping you.
to forum á È á 2004-07-09 05:28:26 á á Print

jonvwill

Member
Did you follow the advice to remove the ASUS "utility" program and set up WPA-PSK using Microsoft's "Wireless Zero" utility instead?
to forum á È á á 2004-07-10 12:01:26 á á Print

jonvwill

Member
Ah, I see. You didn't use the utility in the first place -- you just used ASUS's driver file.

I'll have to try this.
to forum á È á á 2004-07-10 12:03:46 á á Print

jonvwill

Member
NOTE: this is in response to the post by ctt
I'm trying this as I speak. So far, I've definitely noticed a lack of disconnects. Wireless Zero still reports 1 Mbps connection speed, though. I'm not sure if there's something else that needs to be changed in order to fix that.
to forum á È á á 2004-07-10 18:09:19 á á Print

jonvwill

Member

2004-07-03
Loc:Ames, IA

Sorry about the multiple posts, but I wanted to follow up on this. It looks like the solution posted by Ziik has fixed the problem. Disconnects using WPA-PSK/TKIP are a thing of the past.

When it first connects, the Wireless Zero utility indicates a 1 Mbps connection speed. That slowly increases over time (10-20 minutes), and tops out at 54 Mbps as it should. I'm not sure what causes it, but I haven't noticed poor performance. In fact, running bandwidth-intensive applications seems to increase the connection speed faster.

Well done, Ziik. Perhaps D-link needs to look at the Asus driver, to figure out how they did it :^)

Thanks again.
to forum á È á á 2004-07-11 00:32:48 á á Print

Ziik
anonymous
bella-vista.sfo.ygni
Well I did some more testing and had a setback. WPA-PSK was still rock solid with the ASUS drivers but as soon as I tried to change back to Open System WEP I got the BSOD. It took a windows system restore (not just a driver switch) before I could get everything back to normal.

8 compatibility issue and poor reception
my co-worker bought this card, and unable to install driver on dell laptop
yes, I have no luck at all to install the driver
but when I install on my fujitsu laptop, it can be done easily
however, the result for me is disappointing, it get low in reception, while other can get good to very good

luckily I didn't get the card, but I'll suggest my co-worker to return this card if the netgear card I borrow to him is working, due to compatibility issue

9 Clear documentation, easy to setup
I'm a first-timer when it comes to setting up wireless network to access broadband internet.

And with this card, I've FINALLY manage to get everything to work together. My home network now includes: Linksys router, Netgear wireless-G card on my laptop (win2000), and this D-link card on my wife's laptop (win98se).

Comments on this card:
Pros:
- very simple and clear (full-colored) instructions to setup.
- works well with win98se and win2k. I set it up within about 5-10min to work with the win98se laptop, which refuses to take the Netgear card. With Netgear, I spent 5 hours and it still did not work.

Cons:
- I feel the Netgear card is better in terms utility software and rescanning. If you are securing your network, the utility that comes with the card does not accept passphrase. This is a little inconvenient when you need to reset your password on your router. Netgear's utility provides a passphrase tool.
- When the wireless connection is broken (eg I switch off the router), the netgear card and utility rescans more quickly than d-link does. (netgear takes 10 sec, d-link takes about 18 sec. from the same spot.)

In terms of tech support, I've tried them all.
- Linksys has best tech support.
- Netgear's support is outsourced to India - and they don't quite care what you think about them. They kept pushing the blame to my ISP and router when the card didn't work on the win98se laptop.
- D-link support is also from India, I tried it before when I bought a USB hub and didn't like it. They gave you a case number for email correspondence, but don't followup.

When I was at Best Buy, the sales rep said linksys experienced much less returns than netgear and d-link, but linksys is usually more expensive. i guess you pay for reliability and better service.

Hope these comments help.

10 wpa doesn't work
Tried using this card with the dlink DI-524 router. WEP works well but WPA doesn't for longer than a few mins as the connection just gets dropped. Returned both the dlink router and pc card for another brand which both work very well in WPA mode.

11 Exactly what I wanted.
I recently purchased the D-link 802.11g/b card. I had been very hesitant to purchase a card because I'm a bit new to wireless networking. What I wanted most was an inexpensive, easy to setup, easy to use device with all the normal features such as WPA.

(...)

12 Device problems with Windows XP
Although the device appears to operate just fine as far as the network, speed, and range is concerned, the card has a serious problem running on laptops under Windows XP.

I spoke today (April 26, 2004) with D-Link customer service, and they said that the card is "new" and may still have driver issues. Also, they are aware that under Windows XP, the card is unable to wake up after standby/hibernation. This is what I experienced with my Thinkpad laptop. So the card installs OK and operates correctly....but the moment the laptop goes into standby the card will turn off, and then when the rest of the laptop wakes up the card will not. I have to reboot to wake it up. The kind telephone representative I spoke with was hopeful about a driver fix soon. I am not sure if the problem is only for some brands of laptops or all of them under Windows XP. I think I will return my card for another brand with better drivers.