Frequent freeze-up after installing wireless modem

[Guest]

I have an HP desktop running XP with SP2 that was problem free when using a
dial-up modem but, when I recently switched to a cable modem and installed a
Netgear wireless router and Netgear WPN111 wireless modem, the computer
started freezing up. A second desktop, a Dell, is running fine but the HP
frequently becomes unresponsive to the mouse and keyboard and must be
restarted using the power button. After putting up with this for a few days,
I uninstalled the Netgear software, removed the wireless modem, reconnected
using dial-up and the problem went away. I reinstalled the Netgear software
and hardware and the problem returned. The Dell continues to run fine with
the wireless setup. Any ideas?

 

[David B.]

Just to clarify, the WPN111 is not a wireless modem, it is a wireless
ethernet adapter.
Have you tried downloading and installing updated drivers from Netgear's
website?
I always recommend internal PCI wireless cards if possible over USB, they
seem to be much more stable.

 

[RalfG]

Concur, though I'm leaning towards giving up on wireless and running cable
instead. I was using a different brand of USB wireless adapters (Dlink) but
ran into similar problems, always related to the USB adapter driver.
Chipset of the problematic adapter happened to be Atheros. Two different
model adapters of the same brand, similar chipset, same problems. The
lockups or blue-screen crashes typically manifested when the connection was
under heavy load. By way of comparison another adapter using an Intersil
chipset did not lock up or crash the computer.