3 mobile broadband plug and not play

Things that are supposed to be plug and play, and just work when you plug them into your computer, sometimes aren’t.

That certainly was the case yesterday in my experience with a new 3 broadband modem that I ordered from 3 on Wednesday and which arrived the next day.

I spent a total of 90 minutes in two separate phone calls with 3’s broadband tech support (an 0870 number: wish I’d found this website earlier), troubleshooting why this dongle wouldn’t work, and getting it fixed so it would work. And now it does.

But what a palaver!

Out of the box, the friendly text in the nicely-produced user guide booklet says all you do is plug the modem in to a USB port, and follow the on-screen instructions.

The text also includes an explicit warning not to follow the Windows driver installation wizard that will likely appear as it won’t fully install the software. It did appear. And so I didn’t follow it.

As it turns out, that is at the heart of the plug and not play issue I encountered – if you don’t let Windows Vista do its thing after the 3 installer has done its thing, you’ll encounter errors when trying to connect and which give you little clue as to the reason why you can’t connect.

If you look in Windows’ Device Manager, you will likely see as I did two entries under ‘Other devices’ for two Huawei (the dongle manufacturer) devices with little exclamation marks, both reporting Windows Code 28 errors meaning drivers not installed.

Right-clicking on either entry and choosing ‘Update driver’ resulted in the wizard searching and not finding a file, whether you let it search automatically or chose the manual install and specified a location.

One interesting point in my second conversation with the very helpful 3 tech support agent – he said I was the first person to call in a problem with a dongle and installing it on Windows Vista. So a mutual learning experience.

To cut a long story short, here’s my experience on a Windows Vista laptop that finally got this gizmo working:

1. I already had the 3 broadband modem software installed, so I uninstalled it via the Programs & Features option in Control Panel.
2. I double-checked to see if there was an entry for any Huawei devices. There was, so I uninstalled those as well.
3. I rebooted the computer.
4. With the SIM card inserted in the dongle, I plugged the dongle into a USB port. I waited for the computer to see it and kick in the ‘installing device drivers’ wizard. When that finished, the Installshield wizard started to set thing up and install the 3 application and modem.
5. Once that completed, I waited; within about twenty seconds, up popped a Windows dialog telling me that it needed to install drivers for a new device. I said go ahead which it did.
6. Once that finished, I clicked on the desktop icon to launch 3connect, the app with which you manage your connectivity.
7. I then clicked the big green ‘Connect’ button and within 15 seconds, I was online.

So it works, great.

But that’s not the end of the story.

I wanted to set up my account at 3 using the ‘My 3’ access. So I click on the option under the ‘My account’ tab in 3connect which launches my browser.

And all I get is this:

And I get this same error if I try to go to My 3 directly from 3’s website. Hopefully it’s temporary although it’s still happening today as I write this post.

This sequence of events is a bit disappointing, suggesting a distinct lack of robustness in 3’s service infrastructure. Broken links in the supply chain, so to speak.

Still, at least I have mobile broadband working now even if I can’t yet check my account online.

[Later] I recorded this seesmic video to just double-check what I’m saying in this post re 3’s instructions to ignore the Windows driver installation wizard and what happens if you follow that instruction.

3 mobile broadband setup