Three days ago my MTN datacard finally arrived at my house. Three days ago I inserted the install disc and tried to install the software. Three days ago I was greeted with an error saying I could not install the software for no apparent reason. Now three days later and after much hair pulling I’ve finally worked it out. I thought I would share the story with you and help some people out. I must say I’m very impressed with my Mac for actually being super easy when it came to the workaround. Kudos to Apple I suppose.
So the hardware I’m using is the Huawei E220 USB modem. I’m running a Macbook and Tiger. As I mentioned, I kept on getting errors while trying to install the MTN software. I went to the Huawei website, I downloaded software after software until I had no where else to go. After much posting and complaining on local forums I got hold of a piece of software called “launch2net”. The creators are German so clearly creativity in naming products wasn’t their number one priority. I’ve been using that software as a workaround as it connects me but has a limited time online and only 10 connects in the demo version. The full version is almost 100 Euro’s and thus not particularly feasible. I’ve been poking around with user accounts and permissions for the past three days and then the simplicity of it all hit me like a ten ton brick.
Here’s how you install an E220 modem without using any software.
- Insert the modem into your Mac
- Wait a bit
- Open up “System Preferences” and then “Network”
- The computer will ask you to add the “Huawei E220″ to network preferences. Go into “Network Port Configurations” and click the tick box next to the E220. Click apply and you’re sorted.
- You’ll then have the option to connect via the E220. Leave everything blank except for the phone number which in South Africa is *99#
- The connection will be established without any annoying buggy MTN or Vodacom software
It’s really that simple and ironically took me 5 minutes after 3 days of frustration. Now all I need is a way to monitor usage. Does anyone know if MTN sends usage emails out like Telkom does for my ADSL?
PS: I’m not sure if the “launch2net” software had anything to do with installing drivers or anything but if this doesn’t work then possibly try installing “launch2net” first then use my method.
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yes but only if asked to.
they can send you it as many times as you want but unfortunatly it 48 hour for a responce. It can only be seen at the strock of midnight on their systems when you will probeply notice that you get cut off.