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Technical Notes on Hardware Compatibility

When installing the special CommView for WiFi driver for your wireless adapter, you should normally follow the instructions that are given in the Driver Installation Guide (to view the guide, click Help => Driver Installation Guide in the program menu). However, there are important technical notes on some of the supported adapters:

Important: CommView for WiFi does NOT support any D-Link adapters with the "+" sign, e.g. DWL-650+ or DWL-G650+.

Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG and 2915ABG Mini PCI Adapters

CommView for WiFi drivers for these adapters have the following limitations:

They are for 32-bit Windows versions only.
They cannot be used in dual (monitoring + connectivity) mode. These are monitoring-only drivers.
Packet injection using Packet Generator is not possible.
These drivers discard packets with bad CRC, so you will not be able to see broken packets and have CRC statistics.

If these capabilities are important to you, please obtain a different fully-functional b/g or a/b/g adapter supported by CommView for WiFi.

D-Link AirPlus Xtreme G DWL-G650 Wireless Cardbus Adapter

There are several hardware versions of this card: A1, B1/B2/B3/B4/B5, and C1/C2/C3/C4. CommView for WiFi DOES NOT support version A1. It DOES support versions B1/B2/B3/B4/B5 and C1/C2/C3/C4. To identify your card, please visit the D-Link site.

CACE Technologies AirPcap Ex and Nx USB Adapters

No custom driver installation is needed when using this adapter; use the driver supplied by the vendor. The AirPcap driver that you use must have version 4.0 or higher. This adapter cannot be used in dual (monitoring + connectivity) mode. This is a monitoring-only adapter.

Using Your Adapter in Dual Mode

Once you have replaced the adapter driver with a new driver that comes with CommView for WiFi, your adapter may no longer be able to communicate with other wireless hosts or access points, because the driver uses a passive, monitoring mode. To restore the standard functions of your adapter, you would need to roll back/return to the original adapter's driver supplied by the vendor. However, this is not always the case. You can use the adapter in dual mode (passive mode when CommView for WiFi is running and active mode when CommView for WiFi is not running) if the following conditions are met:

Operating system: Windows XP or Vista. This won't work under Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003.
Your adapter must be a non-Intel 802.11b/g, 802.11b/g/n or 802.11a/b/g adapter. This won't work with older 802.11b adapters or Intel adapters.
You must uninstall any vendor-supplied adapter configuration utilities and let Windows use the built-in wireless configuration utility.

If these conditions are met, replacing the driver won't disable the adapter's connectivity. You would be able to use the adapter to connect to wireless networks, as you normally do, until you launch CommView for WiFi. Once the program has been launched, it will put the adapter in passive, monitoring mode. When you have closed the program, the adapter will automatically return to normal mode. You may have to disable and then re-enable the adapter to restore its connectivity.