I have a desktop that connects thru a cable modem and a 4 port wireless Gateway router.
Right now, only my laptop uses the wireless part of the router.
I would like to make the connection to my desktop wireless also, but I would like to keep the ability to connect via an ethernet cable. This is mostly for file transfer reasons. As of right now, when doing file transfers, I do connect my laptop using a cable for faster transfers.
Do they make a combo wireless card with ethernet port for desktops?
Or, if I added a wireless card, would it conflict if my current wired ethernet card was left installed? Just curious if anyone has done this yet.
You can have both. I am doing it right now with a built in ethernet card and a wireless linksys connection. My wireless receiver on my computer is connected via USB however I don’t think that shouldn’t make a difference.
Let’s assume XP, since there are other variables involved with older versions of windows and other platforms.
There will be no conflict between your wired and wireless card, but the behavior probably won’t be exactly what you would expect. If you have them both connected, windows won’t know which one to route the packets to, and will just end up picking one or the other (it will work, but it won’t necessarily take the faster path). In order to control the route to use, you either have to get into complex subjects like adding path metrics to your routing tables, or you can take the easy way out and simply disable the network adapter you don’t want to use at the time. Just go into the Network Connections control panel, right click on the adapter, and choose “disable”.