Having Problems With Nintendo USB Dongle Installation? Read Here!

*edit* Sorry to be a dick, but...
If you're having problems with your USB dongle and the guides don't help, then go talk to the official Nintendo Tech Support, they'll help me a lot better than me. Seeingas these guides are beating out Nintendo's own support website in Google, I'm slightly annoyed that I'm getting contacted by as many as 3 people a day about this, either through PMs, emails, or MSN... I'm just sick of it. Sorry.

Ooh, I know, let's do a follow up to the firewall guide with yet another WiFi guide. Anyway, I was having every problem under the sun trying to get this bastard to work... but now it is. The connector wasn't recognised by my PC, the Wii wasn't recognising the connector... At one point, my computer refused to start up. So here's a nice little uninstallation / reinstallation guide, in a few nice parts.

Oh, and this ain't for the people who have the dongle installed and the Wii / DS connecting to it properly, just not being able to actually connect to the internet. You're best off looking at my firewall guide, or the official Nintendo help site. This is for people who are having installation issues.

Enjoy!

- - - - -

Part 1 - Uninstalling All The Nintendo Crap

First thing you need to do - remove everything that's existing on computer curently. And not just an add/remove job, follow the steps below (nicked from the Nintendo site, cause I'm too lazy to type it all out)...

1. Uninstall the USB connector through the Device Manager.

* Make sure you have the USB Connector plugged into your computer.
* Click the Start button and select Control Panel.
* Click "System" and select the "Hardware" tab. Choose "Device Manager."
* Next to "Network Adapters," click the "+" to expand the list.
* If the Nintendo USB Connector is in the list, right-click it and choose "Uninstall."

2. Perform the DEVREMOV process.
* Make sure you have the USB Connector plugged into your computer.
* On your computer, click on the "My Computer" icon (found in the Start menu or sometimes on the desktop), and right click on your CD drive containing the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection Installation CD, and choose 'Explore.'
* Open "NintendoWFCReg/SoftAP." Within there, double-click the DEVREMOV.exe application.

During the course of running the DEVREMOV program, you will see three windows pop up successively.
* The first will have a series of question marks. Click "Yes."
* The second will have a picture of wires and lights moving on it while the DEVREMOV utility uninstalls the internet connection sharing for the Nintendo Wi-FI USB Connector. This will disappear on its own.
* The third will also have several question marks on it. Just click "Ok."
* At this point, remove the USB connector from your computer.

3. Check the "Programs" list and, if the "Uninstall" option for the connector is there, run this process.

* Click the Start button , and select "Programs."
* If the Nintendo USB Wi-Fi Connector is listed, click on the "Uninstall" program to remove it.

4. Check Add/Remove Software on the computer and, if listed, remove the USB connector.

* Click the Start button, and select Control Panel.
* Open "Add/Remove Programs."
* If listed, select the Nintendo Wi-Fi connector from the list, and click "Remove."
* Follow the prompts to uninstall the program.
* Reboot your computer to complete the uninstallation.

- - - - -

Part 2 - Reconfiguring & Tweaking Network Settings

Ah, time to write something of my own. If you followed the instructions above, you should have no record of the Nintendo device on your computer... or so you think.

The next bit is for advanced users only. Not my fault if you fuck up your PC and network connections. An explaination... every time you try to install the Nintendo USB connector and it fails, it creates a non-deletable LAN connection saved and hidden in your computer. Even if you uninstall the device driver, it still won't uninstall this network - It turned out that this was clogging up my networks every time I tried to use my USB connector, causing all sorts of problems. I believe I had all the way up to 'Local Area Connection 20' before I sorted it out. By deleting all these old hidden network connections, things can run smoothly again with no clashing of networks.

Open up our good friend regedit (Start > Run > 'regedit'), and the key you want to be browsing to is

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network

You'll see a few entries with {} brackets around them - these are types of networks... I think. Heh. Look for the folder with the (default) as 'Network Adaptors'. In here, you'll see more {} folders, which represent each network connection... (Local Area Connection, Local Area Connection 2, Local Area Connection 3, Wireless Network Connection and so forth). You can check the names of the connections by expanding each folder and looking for the Name key. Maybe an image will help explain better...

Basically, you want to delete ones you don't think are important (the latter {} folders) - I just left Local Area Connection, which is my Ethernet network adaptor's main connection... Your computer may not have a stupid number of connectinos - but mine did, and it might be the cause of some people's problems. Remember to back up your registry first, just in case. Once you think you're done, restart. If it doesn't boot up again, I think you've done something wrong.

- - - - -

Part 3 - Restoring Network Sharing Settings

Okay, so when you first installed the drivers, Nintendo sets up the Internet Connection Sharing options in a certain way so that it fucks up on any other times you install. Great.

Go to the Control Panel, then 'Network Connections'. At the side, you should see 'Set up a home or small office network'... Run it, and set it up so that 'your computer is directly connected to the internet and other run off it' or some bullshit like that. That should have enabled the Widows firewally, so go disable it, again in the Control Panel. It's a pile of shite anyway, get something else (APART FROM ZONEALARM!)

- - - - -

Part 4 - Time to install again!

Now, the easy part. Disable all firewalls, download the latest drivers from nintendowifi.com, and install the drivers like normal. Don't plug the device in until it tells you to, and make sure you're connected to the internet during the installation... if you followed my instructions, then everything should be working fine.

( Edited on 24.12.2006 14:35 by Phil :: CSF )

( Edited on 24.01.2007 22:49 by Phil :: CSF )

Legend! Stickified once more Thanks Phil

Surely the best choice is to go with a good wifi dongle from Linksys or someone similar, avoid all this crap, and pay a third of the price?

Martin said:
Surely the best choice is to go with a good wifi dongle from Linksys or someone similar, avoid all this crap, and pay a third of the price?

Anyway, yeah, the guide is finished. See the first post...

I tried posting this on the official Nintendo forums to help people out, as well as the firewall guide... but nobody read it. Within 5 mins, my posts had been knocked 3 pages back with n00bs saying "PLZ HELP ME IT ISN@T WORKIN PLZ HELP!!!1". So fuck them.

So does it work when playing games such as Pokemon Battle Revolution, or Mario Strikers? Just wondering, Because i have one, and wanted to know the possibility of it working with ssbb.

How do I get it to work when my computer's turned off?

What's a dongle?

Megadanxzero said:
How do I get it to work when my computers turned off?

NightmareItachi said:
So does it work when playing games such as Pokemon Battle Revolution, or Mario Strikers? Just wondering, Because i have one, and wanted to know the possibility of it working with ssbb.

Those Belkin things...piss take! I member me and you trying to get it to connect for about an hour and it was just having none of it!

Great guide, stars for you...even if it is about 7 months old lol.

Just get wireless internet, ie BT Home hub, much better

Thanks a lot u and superlink that have told me the link , u're the best now i will see if it works . im setting up internet connection sharing at Nintendo Wi-fi usb connector registration tool installer.

5mins later : It works perfect nice job c3 mod

( Edited on 17.09.2007 20:22 by ChrisJoKeRiX )

We purchased our Nintendo WiFi USB adaptor second had at EB Games (legitimate retalier, legal purchase) but it sisn't come with the disk. So had to uninstall some time ago but can't run "DEVREMOV" as we don't have a disk to run it from. Want to reinstall it so that kids can play but can't do that either as uninstall isn't complete. Argh! How do we do the devremov step without a disk? C.

Lol, spammer alert.
Any idea if the Nintendo WiFi dongle works on Windows 7? Or does anyone have another way of getting WiFi on my DS? I hate that it can only use WEP in DS games. Dx

( Edited 27.11.2010 10:01 by Mush123 )