Finding a Vista Driver for Your DWL-G122 Wireless Adaptor

(Posted 5/8/2007) - If you are one of the many Dlink G122 Wireless Adaptor users who've upgraded to Vista (Home Basic) here is some information that may help you determine the driver to download.

If you are lucky you can just go to Dlink's Support website and view the downloads for the DWL-G122 chip version you own (here's the link). Select your region and then select the DWL G122 product. The G122 page lists 4 chip-versions, with drivers for each arranged by OS type. Seems simple huh?

The B1 version driver posted at present is really for the Ralink 2571 chipset (aka version C). If you are one of the many B1 version owners who have the RT2570 chipset you will not be able to use the posted driver (DR71wu.sys). Your chip's PNP hardware ID will not match the DR71wu.inf file and Vista will say it cannot find a driver for your hardware.

Your RT2570 chipset continues to use an RT2500usb.sys driver! But you must move from the 1.* versions found in XP systems to version 2.0.01 for Vista. To get what you need, download the XP driver package for version B1 from the Dlink site, and edit file NetRTUSB.inf changing only the driver version line so it now reads: DriverVer=03/12/2005, 2.00.01.0000 .

Now plug in your DWL-G122 and at the 'new hardware detected' prompt tell Vista you want to select the driver manually. Select the directory where your modified NetRTUSB.inf resides (make sure there are no other inf files in that directory that also match the RT2570 chip ID: USB\VID_2001&PID_3C00).

Vista will indicate it can't find the requested driver and ask if you want to use Internet Search to find the version requested in your NetRTUSB.inf. Indicate you want the internet search (which obviously implies you must have an internet connection).

The latest RT2500usb.sys file will be found and downloaded, then installed. At the device driver installed successfully notification you can disable the network device you have been using to connect to the internet and restart your PC. When the system restarts you should see a sysTray icon for the new wireless device (assuming it is enabled). You will need to configure your wireless adaptor to satisfy your wireless access security.

Note that you are NOT using a Dlink Config Utility anymore! You are using the Vista Zero-Configuration interface associated with wireless clients.

Updated Info: Here's a good Vista driver reference site . In particular, it contains a driver download that includes the above inf and .sys files for the B1 version of the DWL-G122 adaptor (use download file DWL-G122_revB1v2.04_revC1v3.10 ).

Enjoy your new Vista wireless access!