Dongle wrangle. Help me fix my Belkin F5D7050.

April 18, 2006 3:45 PM

How do I reinstall my Belkin F5D7050 USB wifi dongle?

I recently reinstalled Windows XP on my laptop. Now I can't find the driver CD for my Belkin F5D7050 (version 1 I think) USB wifi dongle.

The interwebs are awash with horror stories about getting this particular piece of kit to work. I've tried using the Belkin drivers, I've tried using the Ralink drivers for the RT2500 chipset. The software installs, and then nothing happens. Nothing at all. I plug the thing in, and it's either unrecognised (and the Windows wizard can't find a suitable driver anywhere) or, if I've installed a driver, the dongle shows up as broken in the device manager.

I'm sure the answer is out there on some website somewhere, but I've trawled and trawled, and none of the remedies people mention have worked for me. I appreciate this question is likely to receive a "search harder" response, and I shall do, but I live in the hope that someone else has gone through this, and emerged sane enough to relate the sorry tale.

As the Amazon.com review says, it's too light to be a paperweight, so I'd quite like to get it working again. Plus I'm now cabled into my router. Help me be free once again!

posted by ajp to computers & internet (3 comments total)

I don't think 'broken' is a code the device manager actually gives. . . What's the actual error message/number?

Also, did you install in the order the manual recommends? I've seen plenty of USB (and/or) WiFi hardware (my logitec quickcam, for one) that dies a horrible death of software conflict hell if you plug it in before you install the software.

According to the manual the device should not be pluged in at all until it's asked for during the software install.

Belkin Instructions
posted by tiamat at 4:11 PM on April 18, 2006

Fair questions. If I install the Belkin driver (I checked and double-checked they were the correct ones for my version of the F5D7050), the dongle shows up in the device manager with a little yellow blob on it with a black X through it; not being all that familiar with debugging Windows problems I simply took this to mean it was b0rked. After several attempts to get them working, I've uninstalled those drivers now so unfortunately I can't check the errors code.

I'm currently using the Ralink driver. The dongle shows up in the device manager as "RT73 USB Wireless LAN Card #2", and in "Location" it says "Location 0 (Belkin 54g USB Network Adapter)" so I assume the thing has been detected correctly. Status is, apparently "working".

However, in my "Network connections", the "Wireless network connection 2" (I'm not sure why it's number 2, I don't have any others) has a red cross through it, and says "Not connected". Oh, now it says "Wireless network connection 3".

Ah. Now it's disappeared.

Anyway, the wireless network connection dialog tells me there are no wireless connctions available. I'm sitting right next to a working wireless router (my flatmate is using it right now).

So I'm a little perplexed.
posted by ajp at 4:55 PM on April 18, 2006

Oh and yes I faithfully followed the Belkin instructions each of the bajillion times I installed the sucker. Thanks for the link :-) They refer to the CD, which of course I don't have. I ran the driver install after downloading it from their website. Nothing happened. The only benefit was that I could insert the dongle without the Windows "new hardware" wizard popping up.
posted by ajp at 4:57 PM on April 18, 2006