Region : Others

Model : TL-WN821N

Hardware Version : V4

Firmware Version :

ISP :

Dear, TP-Link,

Not far ago I purchased a 300 Mbps USB WLAN dongle of your brand from one of our local resellers.
I have used it on Win7 64-bit desktop, the connection was stable and at all I have had no problems.
But now I got an older computer to repair for my friend and I needed to connect it to the Internet.
I decided to use the same dongle as on my Win7 desktop mentioned above. And then the troubles came.

At first, I downloaded the newest driver for WinXP 32-bit from your website. Plugged the dongle into a USB
port, the Found New Hardware wizard suddenly appeared on the screen. I denied to use Windows Update
location to find suitable driver, I choosed to install driver manually from the specified place on disk.
I extracted the downloaded driver package, then deleted all files and folders except for WinXP 32-bit folder
and let the wizard search for a driver in that non-deleted directory. It passed and the dongle driver was
installed successfully. (At least the wizard told me that ...)

So the WLAN connection icon start to display left the the clock in the bottom left corner of the screen.
I refreshed the available WLAN networks list, got that mine displayed, clicked on it, entered password, got
connected. It displayed a baloon notification "Signal strength: Average" & "Link speed: 26 Mbps". OK, I
opened the browser and tried to navigate it to a Google.com. Took a while and then "Server Unavailable".
I looked at the WLAN icon in the bottom left corner of the WinXP screen and saw icon status "Unconnected".
Opened the WLAN networks list again, clicked on my network, again antered password. Then the message
about my computer being connected came up. After about 5 mins it displayed "Connected!" and I checked the connection. It displayed "Signal strength: Average" and "Link speed: 6 Mbps". I opened the browser, again tried to get to the Google.com, no change (server unavailable). Tried also another sites, same effect.
I decided its time to restart a computer. Got it restarted. Again had to select the WLAN network, enter pswd
and got connected. This time it displayed "Signal strength: Average" and "Link speed: 1 Mbps". Even this time I was unable to navigate my browser to any website on the Internet. (Tried Opera and Firefox.)

I uninstalled the driver, restarted PC, plugged in the dongle, used the Setup.exe which you have added to
the driver package. Got installed driver via setup. I also installed Easy Set-up utility. Got PC restarted again.
After restart the utility came up, I used it to connect to my network. Worked OK. I got onnected, however, I got the message about average signal strength and about 1 Mbps link speed again. And guess what, I could not get the browser to any of the website, again ...

I am quite confused. At first it does not work on WinXP 32-bit, and in addition the connection speed drops continually from 26 Mbps to 1 Mbps. And it does not work at all. I do say its the problem if drivers, cos as I said, I had no troubles with this dongle in Win7 64-bit. Really NO problems. Used it also on my notebook, again Win7 64-bit, no problems. Also checked my network for possible errors, I could successfully and quickly connect from my notebook Intel Centrino-N 6230 (300 Mbps) WLAN card, and as well had no connection or stability issues while using my fathers laptop with some Broadcom chipset OEM card.

The hardware version of my dongle is V4.1. Can you help me got it to work also on that WinXP 32-bit?
I would be very thankful. I hope I provided you a very detailed description of the problem.

And can you, please, tell me, whats the chipset on my dongle? I guess its not Atheros anymore, since driver files has other names ...

Thank you, TP-Link. Have a nice rest of the day!

Best regards.