D-Link DWA-552 Extreme-N Wireless PCI Adapter

I just had to write this review after reading all the terrible commentary on this great network adapter, so here's one that gives this product 5-Stars across the board. I have been using the DWA-552 for more than 2 months in my i7 920-'Nehalem' Quad Core CPU powered home-built PC, and I've got nothing but Kudos to say about connectivity, reliability, speedy transmission, and plug and play goodness that this card offers. When I built my PC I was worried about this adapter, since it was the ONLY PCI adapter available at the time that wasn't some off-brand gadget, and the reviews were so awful about it! Well, no more because I've been pleased as an October pumpkin with the fantastic performance and connectivity of this adapter in Vista Ultimate 64-bit with the new PC. In fact I've never had a bad or insurmountable problem or issue with this network adapter in 2 months of 24/7 use with the new PC. Installation is nothing at all, easy as pie: just simply install the network adapter with your PC powered down, and off, button it up, reboot, insert the CD ROM that came in the kit with drivers and control panel for the device, install the drivers/control panel, reboot, and BAM! Instant connectivity! I have been using the device with a "Gemtech" N-series Router, better known as the NewerTechnology N-Series Router, The MAXPower Router, and the two co-exist perfectly. I never had a dropped connection, never had any connection issues at all with the D-Link DWA-552 device in the two months that I've had it online with the new PC. I don't know what all the trouble and terrible problems are about with the other reviews of this network adapter, but I've got to give it 5-stars across the board in my use of it the past two months. I mean I have ZERO to complain about, because the adapter performs as advertised, with or without the D-Link Control Panel installed. To be honest, I never even bothered to remove or uninstall the D-Link Control Panel, as it never got in the way of my Vista network controls, just sat there kind of passive while I worked with Windows network protocols to acquire a network, and once connected, no problems at all with the D-Link DWA-552 PCI adapter, none at all! After I installed the adapter and had it working 100%, I went to the D-Link web site and found, and downloaded the most current control panel and driver for Vista 64-bit and installed that package, but that isn't to say that the OEM/stock CD ROM drivers and control panel doesn't work. All that I mean is that if you want this adapter to work seamlessly with your system, download the latest and greatest driver/control panel package from[...], and you'll be that much better off for doing it. I can't think of a single negative thing to write about this network adapter, as I had no bad experiences at all with it. It is just that simple, and good, an xlnt product by D-Link! I am going to buy its brother, the DWA-556 adapter, which is PCI-Express not PCI like this one, because I have a need for the PCI-E type of adapter now that I've added twin EVGA GTX-285 video cards to my rig...as that eliminated the PCI slot (it's covered by the 2nd twin-lane video board) for all intents and purposes, and I have faith that the DWA-556 is just as good as this adapter here has been...After having the DWA-552 for a couple months I tend to think that D-Link has its act together for network cards/adapters, and I have confidence that the DWA-556 is just as high quality of an item as this one has been for me. Don't be afraid of this adapter because of a bunch of crappy reviews from folks who have other problems, which are compounded by this adapter it seems, and then they write a bad review of a good product...that just isn't even fair or equitable for such a great product as this one. Wavey Davey gives the D-Link DWA-552 PCI XTreme N Network Adapter 5 stars across the board, and you can take it from me, this thing works PERFECT in Vista 64-bit Ultimate OS! You can take that to the bank! Wavey Davey June 25, 2009

I used this for my desktop that i moved to my room, instead of getting a 100ft ethernet cable, i decided to try this adapter despite many critical reviews. Luckily, i did because this adapter works GREAT on my vista 64 bit desktop. I picks up my router (A netgear WNDR3700 Dual band N) within 1 second of logging in to my account. Speeds are very fast, 17 mb/s download and 3.4 mb/s upload, results by speedtest.net. I usually get that much with the desktop hard wired to my router, so no loss in speed. Signal is pretty good through 3 walls, 1 heater, and my desk. Pros: Cheap- under $50 is a very good price to pay for xtreme performance easy to install- just plug in the adapter to an empty PCI slot and screw in the antennaes FAST!- very good speed and signal Now for the Cons, the fit was a bit awkward with the PCI slot, but with a little motivation, you can screw the fastner in with little problem. Also, VERY IMPORTANT: DO NOT use the DLINK software included in the disc, it is sloppy and slow, and probably why alot of people have had problems with connections. DO THIS INSTEAD: after you log in the first time after installing the adapter, windows will ask you to find the drivers, click yes, then when it tells you to insert the disc, do it. This way, windows will download only the drivers from the disc instead of the network software crap. After installation of the drivers, you are golden. Just click the "connect to" tab under the start menu like you would on your windows laptop and choose your network. All this is assuming you arnt already connected to the internet when installing because if you are, the driver installation program will just get the drivers online instead of from the disc. Cons: awkward fit- the adapter dosnt fit perfectly in the pci slot cover, but that might just be an isolated issue DRAFT N 2.0- this is one of the later versions of wireless N, its not the official wireless N protocol that was issued a couple months ago, i still get very good speeds and connections, but just saying because amazon advertises this as the official wireless N. Final thoughts: overall, this is a very nice and easy adapter that is much better then the one in my wireless G laptop. just a small modification needed in driver installation, but i highly recommend it and wouldn't hesitate in buying it again if i had another desktop.

I've changed where its located twice in my motherboard thinking I didn't have a good connection in the PCI slot. The card will randomly decide when it wants to work. I start my computer up and its good and runs fine, the next time i start it up, it acts like i have no wireless card in the slot. I updated the drivers and troubleshoot it and it said it fixed all errors but still selectively works. Not a bad connection, could be better because my laptop gets better signals than my desktop and supposedly this card is better. Will get something new soon if this problem isn't solved.

OS: Win7 64bit. I have been using a D-Link DWA-556 for years now, and it has been 100% reliable. But it uses one of my two PCIe slots. I needed that slot for something else, so I figured I would get the DWA-552 (it is the same but PCI instead), since my computer never had an issue with the drivers for the 556. Like many others have suggested, don't use the software that comes with it. The instructions inside even say you can use the built-in Win7 controls to manage your wireless network with this card. So I disabled (without removing) my 556, and installed the 552. Win7 recognized it but couldn't find the drivers. Obviously without internet access, I could not go on the net to find them. I used the drivers off the CD instead which were newer than those available on the D-Link support page which I downloaded prior. The drivers installed apparently fine and the computer found the card and accessed my wifi network. About 2 minutes later, it lost the connection. Sometimes it would log back in, other times it would just sit there and stare at me. This would occur multiple times per hour. I did find a setting buried in the device manager that you can uncheck that stops the computer from "turning off" the device. This did nothing. I would be in the middle of watching a youtube video, and the small Task Manager in the bottom right corner would automatically open up and alert me that I have lost internet connection. I let it sit by itself, on, for 2 hours and came back and the Task Manager said it was still connected, but I didn't trust it. I went and checked the router log and found that it disconnected and reconnected 8 times while I was away. They were not spaced uniformly, like every 20 minutes or every 45 minutes. It was completely random. When it was working, I would enable/disable the two cards and test out the connection speeds. They were essentially the same as they should be. The product I was using for the new PCIe slot failed miserably so that was being returned. Because of this, I decided to reinstall my PCIe card and return the PCI card. Guess what? Now my 100% reliable PCIe card was taking random dumps, even after properly "uninstalling" the drivers for the 552 in the device manager prior to removing it. I guess some of the files are the same between the two cards because the driver version for my 556 was now changed. I know this because fortunately I wrote down the driver version and notes ahead of time in a txt file so I could compare. I remember when I rebuilt my system from XP to Win7 that I did not need the drivers, the PC went online and found drivers much newer than those found on the D-Link support site or on the CD. I told Windows to update the driver and use the ones on the internet. Windows found those same drivers and installed them. The problem went away and I spent several hours licking my wounds from this experience. If I wanted to play around with this card for a few days longer, I probably would have tried telling the computer to find the drivers for the 552 automatically online. I have a feeling this would have worked better and I could have kept my PCIe port freed up seeing that I have 4 PCI ports and none of them are used. In the end, to completely make sure none of this driver BS remained in my computer, I did a system restore to 2 days prior. I'm going to go ahead and give this 3 stars for the speed consistency. If you can get it to work reliably, you will enjoy it. I would also suggest people avoid all the D-Link drivers and go with the MS certified ones off their servers. You will obviously have to get the card up and running first in order to access the internet to get those better drivers. Of note, there are two versions of this card. One has the 3 antennae spaced out like in the product photo, the other has the 3 antennae close coupled all clustered next to each other. Not sure of the difference in performance but the one I received was the close coupled version. Lastly, I would like to add that of the 3 D-Link products I have owned/tested, only one hasn't given me issues. That is the DWA-556. My DGL-4500 router failed, the 552 was a failure right out of the box, and it tried to make my 556 fail. Not cool D-Link! Not cool at all! I will stick with Netgear and Asus if I can in the future.

I was VERY hesitant to purchase this product based off other reviews of it not working on other Windows 7 64-bit desktops... But I had no major issues with installation, setup, or connecting to my D-link DIR-815 wireless N router. Steps I followed: 1) Installed hardware in PC 2) Turned on PC, started windows (manual said "new hardware detected" pop-up would appear, but it didnt), inserted setup CD 3) Clicked "Install Drivers". Clicked through installation 4) After completing driver install, it gave me a "No adapter detected. Please install adapter and hit ok" Confused, I re-opened my PC and saw that the adapter was blinking. So I assumed it was installed correctly. I clicked ok and it brought my back to the starting page of the setup CD 5) Instead of clicking the shortcut that the CD installed on my desktop for "wireless connection manager", I just went straight to wireless connections, connected to my wifi network, entered my password, and voila... Frankly, I'm a little paranoid to check for any driver updates (since its working fine now). So I'm just going to leave it the way it is and hope it continues to work. Doesn't give me the strongest of signals (3 out of 5 bars) and I'm a room away from my router. But the up/down speeds are where I feel they should be. I'm happy it worked and even happier I didn't have any major issues with the install/connection process.

I bought this network adapter almost a year ago to replace a Linksys Wireless-G adapter in my media center as part of an upgrade from G to N wireless network. My media center is in my living room on the main floor while my router (D-Link DIR-655, another excellent product) is in the basement. The two component are fairly far from each other and are separated by walls and ceiling. The old Linksys adapter provided poor connectivity (60-70%) while this new D-Link adapter is constantly providing 97-100% connectivity. Some additional notes: - I use the D-Link ANT24-0230 antenna with this adapter because my media center is buried in a cabinet. - My media center was initially running Windows Vista Home Premium but was upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium. Both operating systems identified the card and installed it on the first try without any manual help. - I am streaming HD content from my network server over this connection without any glitches or distortions. Overall, an excellent product.

I have the DIR-655 Extreme N Router and that has proven to be an excellent piece of kit. I bought it primarily because of the gigabit switching, but its 802.11g wireless performance has been excellent. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for this adapter. I recently re-arranged my house such that my main computer now has a wireless rather than wired connection to the router. I had initially been using an old USB wireless adapter I had kicking about, but decided to get this adapter to free up a USB port and to use the superior speed of 802.11N. The installation was pretty straight forward - I installed the card, switched on and installed the drivers. As soon as the install completed, I got a BSOD. I rebooted and this time I was able to connect, but the connection strengh was fluctuating between poor and very poor with frequent drops and reconnects. By comparison, the USB adapter was getting either very good or excellent. A speed test confirmed what the driver software was telling me - my transfer rate was no better than 3Mbps. Just to be clear, the router and computer are at the same height, no more than 10 feet apart and with a single chipboard wall in between. I played about with the router positioning and different settings (during which I had a couple more BSOD's). At best, by positioning the router right next to the computer, I managed to get the signal strengh up to 'good', but as soon as any kind of wall got in the way, it dropped off to poor and the transfer rate dropped off dramatically. All in all, this product has been a step backwards for me and its being RMA'd.

I purchased this adapter for use with a computer running the current Fedora distribution of Linux (64-bit version). As is often suggested, I temporarily disabled security on my wireless router while setting up the new adapter. It was reasonably straightforward to get connected in that mode. When I turned WPA security back on, however, it took a little more work to get everything operating. I discovered that I had to disable NetworkManager, which was not able to configure the interface for WPA with a passphrase, and set up wpa_supplicant myself. Fortunately, once you know that you want to configure wpa_supplicant, there are reasonably clear instructions available on how to do it. Now that everything is configured, I have had no problems with the network connection coming back up after a reboot, and I get a good connection even though the router is on a different floor of the house.

Good stuff at a great price, and very satisfied with the product. It arrived at the prescribed time. No complaints whatsoever

Item arrived on time and as described.

I installed the hardware and it wasn't working, it didn't detect any network. Therefore I put my pc right beside the router to plug it in, and I realised that the adapter was detecting my network with a 70% signal... right beside it, they were a foot apart. I pluggeg the router to my pc by wire and I downloaded the most recent drivers. It helps, now the adapter is detecting the signal (network) and I have wireless internet on my pc. However, for no reason the wi-fi is deconnecting now and then and it is really annoying when I'm playing online or streaming something. I don't know why but I was downloading something the other day and my wife was on her tablet and the internet connection on the ipad will go on and off... Therefore I recommend that you buy another wireless adapter then this one.

Installed it into my windows 10 machine and worked immediately with no software needed. Excellent range and speed. Would buy it again. .

Ive read every review on Amazon, have spent numerous hours on forums. Trying multitudes of different drivers and applications. The signal is so incredibly intermittent that it's almost impossible to tell if it's a hardware defection or im drunk.. Seriously tho, I can connect to make my network without problems and the signal strength will be at 100%, this is upwards of 30-40ft from my source router. Within 5 minutes, my connection dips to inoperative levels and soon cuts out all together with Windows barking at me to setup a network connection! I have tried official drivers on my Windows 8 machine and I downloaded the Atheros drivers which had been recommended. I even installed this card into my Windows 7 machine and still the connection issues persisted. Im sure i'll get a bunch of messages saying i've installed it wrong... trust me, i'm no computer engineer but i've been building and maintaining pc's since I was 8... installing a nic is the least challening thing i've encountered. Anyway... I give this a 1 star because it didnt work for me... and I know for a fact that it hasnt worked for many people like me...