Ralink problem

I recently purchased a Averatec 5400, but I cannot connect to my router wirelessly with it. I am really not sure the problem. I was hoping maybe some of you could explain how you set it up or any solutions you may have. At this point I will try anything.

Averatec 5400 series:
Ralink2500
linksys router

Thank you

 

You should get an icon in the tray for the wireless adapter. R-click on it and select "View All Available Wireless Networks" Your router should show in the list.

 

It does not unfortunately.

 

Since you say that you have the ralink wireless card, go to www.ralinktech.com and download the wireless drivers from there. it should at the very least help, prolly fix your problems. Averatec doesn't seem to like sending out there units with the proper wireless drivers.

 

I guess the completely obvious thing to do would be to make sure the special wireless button on your computer is on. I'm not sure where it is on the 5400, but on the 6130 it is right next to the power button. It is simply a toggle switch; press it once the light (and your wireless card) turns on, press it again and they turn off.

 

Always try the simplest and most obvious stuff first...then start doing surgery if you have to...

1. Make sure your wireless it turned on, if there's a button for it. (I spaced this off the other day and spent an hour messing with my wife's system...lmao@self)
2. If you have XP (especially SP2) don't use the OEM mfr tools to run the wireless. XP wants to do it and you have to argue for quite a while with it to do it any other way, if it will work at all. Unless they've changed something, that is. Not that I know of though.
3. If you're on windows, check your device manager to make sure that windows thinks your device is there as well as operational.

If your device is shows up with a bang (yellow triangle with exclamation point in it) then grab averatec's driver and the one from RAlink/Broadcom (depending on what you have) and have them handy. Depending on what you got given for a driver package you'll either have an executable or a dll/inf (possibly in a .zip file). the exectuable may be a self-extracting archive or an installer. Drop whichever driver you're working on into a folder on your desktop and execute it.

If the installer fires up, just go with it.

If it asks where to extract to, tell it "right here" or otherwise just point it at your folder you're working in. Check wherever it extracted to and see if there's a "setup.exe" file in there. If there's multiple setup files (sometimes you'll see some setup.msi and other files named .msi or setup.xxx, those are microsoft install files or supplementary install files and you usually DO NOT want to fire those off by themselves). Execute the extracted setup.exe file and the installer should start going.

When it's done, reboot system and check device manager again. If you still have yellow bangie going on go to your device properties and get into the "update driver" mode. Tell it you want to specify where your driver files are and point it at the directory where stuff extracted. If that doesn't find stuff and/or doesn't work after reboot, try it again, this time tell it to look in winnt or windows directory (depending on whether you have 2k or XP) system32/drivers (IIRC) and see if there's something it likes in there. Really, with so many options available, you should never get this far wihtout having success already...

More later if you need it. The first two things take care of 99% of problems people have with outright connection. Quality of link is a totally different subject and people have written volumes of highly technical dissertations on wireless networks...

HTH

 

Simlilar problem: Averatec 6240, brand new, ships with Ralink card (yuck!) and get "very low" signal that cuts off every minute or so.

I tried using the laptop within 3 feet from my Linksys WRT54G, and the signal begins to improve.

Downloaded Ralink's 3/14/2005 driver, doesn't help.

Averatec support tells me I'm the ONLY customer who's having a problem with the Ralink card (right...).

My older Averatec has a Broadcom card, works perfectly.

Any ideas? Anyone find a solution?

Is the card something I can physically take out and replace? (I'm a teacher, not a nerd, unfortunately.)

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

 

dvori, over at www.averatecforums.com someone has posted pics to show how to get at the RaSh*t wireless card in order to replace it. He also mentions what card he replaced it with.

On my 3250 I had the same problem with the onboard wireless - its sensitivity leaves a lot to be desired - so I simply bought a Belkin usb wireless adapter (b version, not g) and it works great. My 3250 is only 6 weeks old so I would void the warranty if I opened the case.

But if you are ONLY 3 feet from your router to get a good signal, maybe you should make sure you have the updated drivers from www.ralinktech.com NOT from Averatec.

 

Yes, I used Ralink's driver, not Averatec.

I tried using my Netgear Wireless USB Adapter (B) and it causes Windows to reboot in an endless loop! I ended up doing a system restore. Any idea why that would happen?

The RaS**t card *will* work if I hold my laptop next to my router, but it defeats the purpose of a wireless network at home.

Do you think another USB Adapter besides Netgear might work?

 

The fix that worked for me was to use the Ralink driver, and here is the most important part: Go to network connections, right click on your wireless network connection, select the wireless networks tab, then uncheck the box that says "Use windows to configure my wireless network settings". Once you fire windows, it should work fine.

 

Singlecoil, is that the same as disabling the Wireless Zero Configuration? I've seen this mentioned elsewhere, but don't know what this is. Mind you, my Belkin USB wireless is working so I didn't try to find out what this Zero feature is.

 

yes its the same. Its only useful if you don't have separet software to control the card, the oems soft is always better.

 

zero config isn't fully implemented until SP2. Once SP2 is installed, every time I've tried to tell windows to not configure wireless for me it breaks it compeltely. The good news is that the windows features introduced with SP2 work well and take care of connection automatically for you.

The one thing that windows is totally missing is a netowrk switching tool like Mac has now and Linux has had for some time (actually there's several applications available in linux that can handle this)...the problem in windows is that you can have different profiles, but the profiles don't extend to whether or not you have static or DHCP and other aspects, so you basically have to reconfigure your card if your work,, home, coffee shop, etc are significantly different. There is a commercial product for about 20 bucks that will do this but it mainly consists of prompter screens that walk you through stuff when you need to switch instead of just making it happen when you click a button...

Linux will surpass windows...it already has better 64 bit support. The only problem is that most wireless vendors haven't released 64 bit drivers yet (windows drivers are all you need as a linux application called "ndiswrapper" can grab those and use them for nearly every wireless card out there) so unless you want to be wireless-less you can't go fully 64 bit yet. I plan on installing a 64 bit bersion of SuSE 9.3 soon on extra drive space just to check out if it runs any faster than the 32 bit version.

 

I'm running redhat FC3 x86_64 on a 6240 with the rt2500 module, and wireless works fine.

 

This SuSE 9.3 is working better out of the box than any other distro I've used.

It has so much usability I can't believe it. I rarely have to go to command line to fix anything.

We were using FC2 at work and when I tried 9.2 I started switching people over when they were ready to set up a new system or were fed up with FC2.

Much, much more polished distribution. If you're looking for something to transition Windows users, SuSE is the best thing I've found so far.