In short, you seem to have a warranty issue and what's to say a card or part you have doesn't have a defect?
http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6142-0.html?forumID=5&threadID=8833&start=0 is a recent discussion about Dlink's support and in the tail of the discussion a new clue fell out and that may have been their issue all along.
Bob
First off, I will state that I have spoken with D-Link 1st level tech support and 2nd level tech support on the phone, searched all over support.dlink.com, searched many hardware forums, searched newsgroups, and have searched search engines, but I haven't been able to resolve my problem. I have a D-Link DWL-G650 802.11g wireless card (revision H/W Ver.: B3) and a D-Link DI-624 802.11g router (revision H/W Ver.:C1). To sum things up... they have never worked together since I purchased them. I can pickup the router's signal with my laptop / wireless card, which gets 100% signal strength and 100% link quality. The problem is that I can't seem to get it to pull an IP from the router (with DHCP enabled) and I can't ping anything internal or external (router, my other wired desktop computer, and websites). I can't browse to any websites at all. The wireless card sees the router and the router sees the wireless card. I can go into the router configuration and check for the presence of the connection from under "status" (top tab), and then "wireless" (button on left) and it sees my laptop when the laptop is on and connected. I just can't get it to do anything from there.
Both products are upgraded with the latest drivers/firmware. The router is running 2.28 and wireless card is running 2.46, although the router came loaded with 2.25 and the wireless card came with 2.36, which didn't work out of the box. I have messed around with all sorts of configuration options including trying to setup static IP, static subnet, static gateway, and static primary DNS. I check to make sure that the SSID matches on the router and the wireless configuration tools and they do (keeping in mind that they are case sensitive). I only show one connection listed under network connections (wireless network connection) and no bridges or anything. I only show one wireless network in the wireless configuration utility, which is my network. I have also disabled the "use windows to configure my wireless network settings" option in the wireless network connection properties.
I don't consider myself to be a networking expert, but I have a fair amount of experience (most of which is with wired networks, but a little with a few wireless networks that I have setup for friends). I think that something is either causing the router to have a problem assigning the wireless card an IP with DHCP or the wireless card isn't retrieving the IP, although I could be completely wrong and I haven't had this type of problem before with any wireless networks that I have worked with.
I have a desktop computer that is also connected to the router via a wired network cable (also running Windows XP Pro, same as the laptop). The desktop is pulling an IP address from the router dynamically (using DHCP) and is currently assigned to 192.168.0.100 (IP range on router is setup for 192.168.0.100 ? 192.168.0.199). The desktop computer is functioning perfectly and I couldn't be happier about that aspect. I have also powered off the desktop and only had the laptop on to see if it was a conflict between the two computers, but that didn't help.
I believe the laptop should be assigned to 192.168.0.101, but that's not happening. Even when I assign it manually in the laptop's TCP/IP settings, I still can't ping anything. When I have the IP address, subnet, gateway, and DNS setup manually (static) and I go to the command prompt to type ?ipconfig?, everything lists how it should, but I can?t ping anything (internal or external). When I have the IP address, subnet, gateway, and DNS setup to generate dynamically, I get an IP that is listed as 169.254.211.20 and subnet of 255.255.0.0 (which isn?t even listed in my router?s allowed range of IP addresses).
Does anyone know if Windows XP SP1 and the 826942 XP wireless update rollup package is required in order to get the DWL-G650 wireless card to work properly? I would hope that the card would work fine without them, since I can't get my laptop online to download them yet. The wireless card is my only means of going online with the laptop. I have an older laptop that doesn't have a built in NIC and I don't own a PCMCIA NIC... see below for my laptop specs.
I have an IBM I-Series 1400 laptop. It's about 3-4 years old but has been a real trooper of a laptop and has been upgraded on the amount of memory it has to help it run a little faster (came with 32MB, now has 256MB). The laptop has a 433 MHZ processor, 5GB HD, 24X CD-ROM, built in 56K modem, floppy drive, USB port. It was designed to run Windows 98 and came loaded with it. I upgraded the memory and am now running Windows XP Pro on it.
I know that after mentioning how old my laptop is someone is going to ask if I checked to even see if my PCMCIA slot supports 32-Bit cards or only 16-Bit cards. I know that is must because the card can at least see the router and claims that it has made a connection. But I did check to see if laptop supports 32-Bit cards anyway since I've had problems. I read somewhere that to check this you can do the following (in Windows XP)...
1. Right click on "My Computer" on your desktop and select "properties" from the menu that pops up.
2. Click on the "hardware" tab.
3. Click the "device manager" button.
4. Click on the "+" symbol listed by "PCMCIA adapters" to expand the listings under that type of hardware.
5. If you see anything listed under PCMCIA adapters that lists "CardBus", then it supports 32-Bit cards.
My laptop has listed "O2Micro OZ6812 CardBus Controller". I'm also curious if anyone else has my same cardbus controller and knows if there is anything specific to it that could cause the problem.
At this point, I am not sure what else to try. Sorry this post is so lengthy, but I wanted to be sure to cover everything I have done so that no one has to suggest anything I already tried. I feel like I have spent all of my resources at this point and I am wide open to any suggestions that anyone could possibly offer. My window for returning both of these products to the online retail website that I purchased them from to get a refund is running out and I would like to see them work together before I am forced to return both of them and go to another brand of wireless networking products. After too long they won't take them back. If time starts running thin and I am still unable to get them to work, I will have to return them (which will cost me return shipping and a 15% restocking fee). If this happens, I will definitely be going to another brand of wireless products. I really hope to get this resolved soon. I don?t really want to return them, since I had read such good things about D-Link wireless products (range, throughput, etc.).
If I have to go to another brand of wireless products, I will probably go to the Netgear WGT624 (see this performance review? http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3244_7-5089477.html). It?s supposed to perform about equal and have similar features (although unfortunately costs a fair bit more). Does anyone have any other good performance comparison review links that I would like?
Thank you for any help that you can provide!!!
Dustin Cowell
Email: dustincowell@netzero.com
(NetZero is not my ISP, just my email service)

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