Home > Consumer Reviews > Medialink - Wireless G USB Adapter - 802.11g - 54Mbps - Windows 2000 / XP / Vista 32-Bit / Vista 64-Bit Compatible

Unfortunately I've experienced a similar problem to a couple of other reviewers. For the longest time I just could not get the unit to work on my system. There were two main problems:
1) My wireless network is found easily enough, but when I connect, it disconnects within seconds, and goes into an intermittent connect-disconnect loop, being only connected for a few seconds.
I worked at length with their friendly tech support to no success. As a former phone support person, I know that there's an infinite number of PC configurations 'out there.' This XP machine had never had wireless. I isolated the problem to something unknown on my system (by returning the adapter, which then worked perfectly at the factory; but of course the replacement had the same problem in my home). OK, it wasn't the hardware, it was my personal problem.
I consulted a network professional, who said he had seen similar problems with other wireless adapters. His workaround was to test by turning off security on my router. That fixed it! Then by changing my security to WEP from WPA-PSK, the connection problem was solved. Yea!
2) I now have a 26 character WEP alpha-numeric security code (I'm unwilling to run the network wide open with no security). But the code is not 'sticky' in the software. This means that every time I want to connect, I have to enter the code. I have not yet resolved this problem. It may be related to an XP problem of not all items appearing in the system tray at boot time. If I log off and log back on, all items appear. A Microsoft tech bulletin acknowledges this system tray problem on some machines, but offers no solution. I'll update this review if I get it fixed!

I've amassed quite a collection of useless wireless USB adapters over the years. When I recently moved to Vista (32-bit on two machines and 64-bit on another), I thought for sure it would be impossible to find an adapter that even worked with that operating system, much less was equipped with drivers digitally signed by Microsoft. I took a chance on this one, and I'm glad I did. It's the best adapter I've ever owned. The drivers are digitally signed for both the 32-and 64-bit versions of Vista! I've never seen an adapter where you didn't have to click past those ominous warnings about the drivers not being signed. And the performance has been 100% flawless--no more restarting, shutting down, plugging and unplugging, etc., to maintain a connection. This is the one to get!

I purchased this adapter to avoid having to run ethernet cable up to my daughter's XP desktop computer in her upstairs bedroom. I'm no computer expert and had some problems configuring the security. I thought the problem was related to the adapter, but it turned out to be a configuration issue with the router.

There are countless 5-star reviews attesting to this products technical performance. I'm writing this review to commend and thank Medialink for friendly, easy and competent tech support. I called their tech support and was immediately connected to live support, no voice mail or being put on hold for 10 minutes. The thing I most appreciated is that once tech support determined that the security issue was related to the router rather than their USB, rather than brush me off and tell me to go call Linksys, they went out of their way to coach me on security configuration and got me up and running. For that, I give Medialink 5 big fat stars!

Pretty easy setup, great price. I have this constantly plugged into an older Dell to pick up a secured wireless network. The setup was simple, however it was more difficult figuring out how to get the device to default to our secured network vs. a faint nearby open network. Beef up the instructions a bit and it would definitely merit 5 stars.

This thing works just as well as the normal internal card that came with our laptop. I'm not too sure if this would go great with the extreme gamer, but for our use it works superb (we browse the internet, do small-scale games eg. Runescape and Age of Empires II, as well as use other applications such as AIM and Skype). The CD that came with it had all the necessary drivers and it installed correctly and in less than a minute. In literally less then a minute, we went from having a broken internal wi-fi card, to a working external one.
If you don't mind having a stick protrude out of your computer approximately 2 inches, then this is definitely worth the purchase for you. You can always remove it for travel.