D-Link WiFi Card Gripes

The DWL-G630 is a PCMCIA 802.11G Network Adapter

June 18, 2005. About the D-Link Airplus WiFi G network adapter model DWL-G630 hardware revision 3 when used with Windows 2000 (with all patches applied).

Simply put, the computer processor constantly runs at 100% when using this network adapter.

Task Manager show that the two processes using the most CPU are reg.exe from D-Link and services.exe which is part of Windows. Process Explorer (from Sysinternals.com) shows that services.exe is running about nine different services.

I tried killing the services that I knew were not needed, but it didn't help. I stopped the WiFi card, but it didn't help. I shut down the D-Link WiFi software, but that didn't help either.

Killing the reg.exe process finally brought the cpu usage down to normal levels (below 5%).

The reg.exe program was automatically started by Windows at boot time. I stopped this and rebooted and was surprised to find that the wireless connection worked without it.

I tried to search the D-Link Knowledge Base for anything about program reg.exe but they don't let you. Their KB is keyed only off product. There is no general search.

More Technical Details:
The software for the network adapter is version 3.00. The driver version is 2.2.4.32.
Program reg.exe runs out of C:\Program Files\D-Link\AirPlus G Wireless Adapter Utility
It is version 1.0.0.1 and the product name is "reg application".
The card is hardware version C1 with firmware version 3.00.

I contacted D-Link and they (Gloria) responded very quickly with the below. It's a typical tech support response, by which I mean the exact meaning is not at all clear.

To resolve remove the utility from the start>>all programs >>Dlink utility

I then asked D-Link if when they said "remove" they really meant uninstall and, if so, what should be un-installed. Gloria responded very quickly again:

Uninstall the Dlink Airplus utility.

This strikes me as strange, as the Airplus utility controls the WiFi card and manages its connections to WiFi networks. I wrote back saying: "If I un-install the Dlink Airplus utility, then what software should I use to manage and control the WiFi card and its network connections?" Mel from D-Link quickly responded with:

Michael, The information provided to you was to remove the D-link startup file from the startup of the computer. We do apologies for the confusion. Please follow the steps given below:
1. Disable any type of security software.
2. Disable any antivirus software.
3. Disable any PPPoE software.
4. Also disable Win XP firewall.
5. Please remove all unnecessary softwares and Applications in the Startup by getting in the MSCONFIG program:
Please follow the steps given below to disable the AIRPLUS.EXE utility from the startup:
1) Click on start > RUN. In the run text box type in MSCONFIG.
2) Then click on STARTUP tab from the top of that window.
3) This will show you the list of programs installed on this computer. Locate the airplus.exe in the list of programs.
4) Then uncheck the box in front of airplus.exe. Then click on OK to save the settings.
5) You may have to restart the computer once.

The word is "apologize", not "apologies". English is not a pre-req to doing tech support for D-Link.

Note: A reader of this page suggest that the use of the plural "softwares" may indicate that the writer was from Hong Kong or was Singaporean Chinese. Apparently they often make errors with plurals, because they don't use plurals in their own language. Also, their spelling will be British, not US English and the British spell "apologize" with an "s" rather than a "z".

I know already, from tinkering around, that killing the airplus.exe program does not get rid of the cpu usage problem. As far as I know there is no reason at all to shut down anti-virus software, PPPoE software or a firewall, just to change the auto-started programs list. After changing the auto-started list, you might have to re-boot to see the effect. You think? I'm wasting my time.

Still, I respond with "The computer also was running program reg.exe automatically at boot time. Should that too not run automatically?" This time the response was from Shane who said:

The REG.EXE is an application that makes registry entries in Windows based systems.

I press on, responding with: " I mentioned program reg.exe because it was being auto-run by Windows at boot time and also because it was running from the D-Link directory. More specifically, it runs out of C:\Program Files\D-Link\AirPlus G Wireless Adapter Utility. The version is 1.0.0.1 and the product name is "reg application"."

For the time being, I have to leave this here as I no longer have access to the machine in question.

Your Experiences

Update: April 2, 2006: Another Windows 2000 user wrote that he got rid of the cpu usage problem by un-installing and re-installing the software. However, he thinks the problem was due to having originally installed the drivers with insufficient account privileges. He logged in as an administrator, uninstalled the software, reinstalled the drivers and everything worked fine. It might be that reg.exe ties up the CPU because it can't save the configuration into the registry when executed from an account with insufficient privilege.

Update: March 23, 2006. A reader of this page made the problem disappear by re-installing the software. Specifically:
He was using the DWL-G630 card (Rev. C, driver 3.01) on a 2004 Gateway M-series laptop running Win XP Home with all bug fixes applied. CPU usage was about 60% and disabling the Reg.exe on startup only reduced cpu usage about halfway. Without the WiFi card installed, the computer uses a normal 1% cpu. Updating the driver to v3.05 didn't help. Then he uninstalled all D-Link software and reinstalled. Bingo. The Reg.exe process is no longer listed in the running processes and CPU usage is down around 5%.

Update: October 20, 2005. A reader of this page reported 100% cpu usage in program reg.exe with another WiFi card - a Linksys Wireless B 2.1 GHz 802.11B Model WPC11-VN v. 4. The software that came with the card was Setup Wizard version 2.0.

Update: October 15, 2005. Another reader of this page wrote to say there is a new "beta" version of the drivers for this NIC. However, they didn't work for him. He also sometimes suffers a Blue Screen of Death in ar5211.sys when booting with the card in the system

Update: October 12, 2005. Another reader of this page wrote to say preventing reg.exe from automatically running at startup time fixed the problem - cpu usage went back to normal.

Update: August 22, 2005. A reader of this page had the same problem and reported that after he prevented reg.exe from automatically running at boot time, the problem went away and all seems well. At least at first.

FYI: The D-Link support page for the DWL-G630 revision 3. There are no newer drivers to try.

Page created: June 18, 2005

Page last updated: April 2, 2006