Having Trouble With My New Wireless Card

Yesterday I got a new 108Mbps wireless card to replace my 54Mbps card.
My current 54Mbps card is a D-Link AirPlus G (DWL-6510) and the new 108Mbps card is a TP-Link TL-WN651G.

I installed the card and once I booted up the PC it automatically installed the required drivers for me. I thought this was a bit odd because a device like this has never done that for me before. The card had poor signal (1-2 bars constant) so I opened device manager and got the card to search for new drivers, the drivers were installed and the cards signal maxed out at 5 bar.

After about 5 mins of use the card kept losing internet signal and I had to refresh pages many times to get them to load up. Eventually the card disconnected fully from the network. I re-booted thinking it may just be a "new hardware glitch" which my Vista based PC always gets when I install new hardware, always takes a few boots to get it working properly. It worked slightly better this time but I had the same symptoms as before. I tried this a few more times but the problem still persists.

I opened the device properties in device manager and it says that the speed of the card is only running at 54Mbps, this is a little strange seeing as it is a 108Mbps card. We have a Belkin N1 MIMO WiFi router capable of 300Mbps so I don't think the router is the problem. The router broadcasts 802.11b/g/n so it covers the whole signal spectrum. My new wireless card runs at 802.11b.

Can any of you shed some light on my little connection problem and why my card is only running at half it's quoted speed.

How far are you from your router? Sometimes when you are further, it will slow down. I have experienced this when using a long distance antenna and it drops to 24 and 18 MBps

I would only be about 15metres away from the router with the signal passing through only 3 walls. My 54mbps card never had signal problems.

Hmm, then I'm not sure
Good luck!

Thanks for your help and the quick responses Trace.

I am actually using the new card right now, it is still only running as 54Mbps though. My old 54Mbps card actually runs faster than this one at the moment lol.

lol No problem, just wish that was the issue.

Maybe channel issues? I had 1 computer that would run fine and another one with the same card in the same room would have problems keeping the signal. I just adjusted the channels till the problem went away. Maybe this card is more sensitive to another router in the area and its having trouble keeping on the channel you already had on the other card. Just something to look into.

We live on a property about 1km away from the closest house around us, I don't think it is interference from another network. How would I go about changing the channel?

Router settings - Wireless section.

For xp x64 edition, for my card with a realtek chip, I just started using the utility provided with their drivers, and it stopped doing that, and still works fine.