Vodaphone pay as you go dongle issue
 

My elderly neighbour has just bought one of these for his Acer laptop. When it is plugged into the USB it comes up in My Computer as a DVD drive and when I click on it, it looks like a drive with no DVD in it.

When I plug it inot my computer it does the business and starts to install software, connect to the net etc so I know it is an issue with his notebook rather than the USB Vodaphone dongle.

How do I make his notebook recognise the dongle properly?

Neil

Give him your notebook Neil,

it may be operating system related, try going back to vodafone they can be helpful. great toys when they work.

happens a lot with linux, what OS is he running, I have a 3 one up and running on linux, so it is possible
:thumbsup:

Windows XP

it needs the vodaphone software installed to tell it the dongle is a modem not a drive, could download from vodaphone direct if it won't see the drive, but it should have an autoplay icon in it.

check the virus checker, they sometimes disable autorun.inf which could cause it not to install the drivers.

Run mine on XP & Vista, sometimes it takes a long while to install, seems to install as dvd, modem, usb device - then it loads the software off the dongle, vodafone mobile connect, as it did on your computer neil, possibly he should try again, but give it plenty of time to finish, I also find it reinstalls when I use a different usb connection.

A couple of easy things to check for you.
1. Anti virus software, this can block the install partially or fully as may have happened this time, check for program fragments and remove any before attempting reinstall. Also shut down or delete any antivirus software, kapersky is a major cause of failed install or non connection
2. Is auto run enabled?
3. Is there any form of software to block automatic install on the pc

With the stick being recognised as a disk drive this is normal as the pc will pick up on the memory card slot in the stick, most of the time it will show 2 drives one of which will be the onboard memory with the installation software. To overcome this in the past i used to instal from disc although they don't tend to provide them now when i worked for a mobile network i had a stack of the things for just this purpose. It may be possible to download a generic driver or look for your network specific one.
Also check to see if one has ever been used on this laptop before as i had a number of issues with laptops which had more than one stick previously installed. As most networks use the same sticks and software but with skin differances this can cause conflicts.

try this if you can connect to the net any other way

http://vizzavi.co.uk/dispatch/Portal...036&tabIndex=2