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Ugh, this is such an idiotic problem to have. Sorry it will take so long to explain it.
I bought a Zonet ZEW2500P USB Wireless B/G adapter from Newegg because it has outstanding ratings and is often reported as Windows 7 64-bit compatible.
It works fine on my Windows 7 64-bit laptop (doesn't need it but I was testing).
It works fine on my brother's Windows 7 64-bit desktop.
It trashed my new 64-bit Windows 7 desktop that I purchased it for.
The first time I plugged it in, it played the device detected and device deactivated tones several times. Windows automatically installed a driver and it showed up in the taskbar using the wireless networking utility built into Windows. I could see all of the nearby wireless networks and connected to my home network. Except the internet didn't work.
Annoyed, I installed the driver off of the disk, with the USB card still plugged in as it says to do - the progress bar reached the end, but then it froze until I finally gave up and unplugged the wireless card, upon which the installation finished.
Since then, the damn thing has only caused problems. For a while, if it was plugged in, it would constantly be deactivated and detected in Windows, as if it was shorting - but it never did this on the other computers I tested it with. Also, if I try to utilize networking feature built into Windows - the wireless network list, the adapter settings, 'set up a new connection', etc - the networking feature will freeze until I unplug the card. However the taskbar wireless indicator still shows our home wireless network (but no other network!) but when I try to connect that utility freezes.
The drivers off the disk don't work. The RaLink wireless utility that came with the drivers on the disk doesn't even detect the card. I did a system restore and it still didn't work. I downloaded a different version of the drivers/wireless utility from Zonet AND THIS NEW VERSION BROKE MY SYSTEM RESTORE COMPLETELY. Every time I attempted to do a restore (even after rebooting, uninstalling the drivers and RaLink software), I would get a 'catastrophic failure' error message. I ended up reinstalling Windows 7, which fixed System restore but didn't help with the wireless card.
Let me remind you again the card works PERFECTLY with two other Windows 7 64-bit multi-core computers, so the card itself isn't defective. This doesn't make any sense to me and I'm somewhat afraid of doing anything more and breaking system restore or another Windows component again. Help, please?
My desktop:
iBuyPower Gamer Extreme 938i
Intel Core i7 2.8 Quad
4GB DDR3
GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD2 mobo
My laptop is a Core2Duo 2.1 and my brother's is a PhenomXII Quad (2.5 maybe?),