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I did finally get it to work by following the manual instructions and re-booting twice. Which should you do first.
I do RTFM when I get something like this and it said to install it by inserting the card in a PCI slot and then powerup and install the driver. Plug and Pray, not Plug and Play.I had to get a new NIC on an urgent basis as the onboard NIC in our XP desktop failed due to a lightning strike, so I did not get the chance to read reviews first, otherwise I would have stayed away from this product.
WTH. Makes sense, right.
In the package, the wrapper with the card in it had a big label that said to install the SW first. They could at least slap a sticker on the box.
It appears to work as well as can be expected.
This unit was truly plug and play unlike its predecesor (not V2).I installed it on a 2001 HP pavilion running XP Home with absolutely no problems and no configuration or drivers to mess with.
I've tried using 3 different drivers, two from netgear, and one from the chip manufacturer themselves, all 3 resulted in random freezes within 5 minutes of booting into Windows. If you like to gamble on mediocre hardware, then by all means by this card, maybe you'll get lucky and it won't lockup your machine or freeze your system for several minutes randomly. If Netgear is aware of the problem they're yet another company that doesn't support their customers because they don't admit it and they don't offer a fix. Do yourself a favor and search google for "netgear FA311" and look at all the problems. This card has a major hardware flaw that can't be solved by drivers or firmware updates. Probably because it's a hardware issue that can't be fixed with software. I hear these problems are solved on the FA312 because it uses a totally different chipset, so if you absolutely have to buy a card from Netgear, get that instead of the FA311.
and updating my ram and video card have checked my irqs and reformating hard drive none worked. The card was the problem buy another card other than fa310,fa311 the one I have and fa312 even if you have intel or something else I would not waist my money on this card it will probably give you problems down the road.
The computer seemed to work for a while or at least had few errors when I first used it but I guess that was when I had windows 98 for 2 years. SUCKS I had this right form the start with my compaq 7970 which is amd k7 processor and has the via chipset.
Eventually I was wrong it was this card as mentioned before by others apparently it does not like some amount of internet use and when the card gets stuck it shuts down and windows xp just says error or points to the video card or irq sharing ot page fault in non page area as the problem. When I upgraded to windows XP it just got terrible I had frequent blue screens and errors.
I thought it was my video card or my ram or Irq sharing tried all that didn't seem to be it. I have tried updates from [.].
I put in a 3 com card I bought a few years before this computer and wow no crashes that other computer is now wirelessly connected to my home network.
They told me I never even had a warranty after signing for a 5-year-plan and paying $499.99. Now I have to go to my computer-know-it-all cousin who has a Windows 98 SE disk.
For one thing, it was VERY easy to install, because it was my first time going in the computer. I got this card for free via Verizon Online DSL because of a switch-up and it has its ups and downs.
I guess that my computer acted up when installing because during the crash, two files, NDIS.VXD and NTKERN.VXD got corrupted and i was relying those files to load the driver. But the manual and the actual computer read out isnt the same, making it somewhat confusing.
I'm running a 5-year-old Windows 98 SE that survived from a crash in 2003. But, let me tell you to NEVER buy a Hewlett-Packard (HP) Computer.
They basically messed me over $500.
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