What's wrong with my computer?

March 29, 2006 9:52 AM

Wireless networking problem with a Thinkpad t40/Cisco 350 mini-pci wireless card. Windows XP sp2, latest versions of everything, as far as I know.

Every ten minutes or so, regardless of the router, authentication, etc. my laptop drops its wireless connection as if the signal/access point have disappeared. It will fail to detect any wireless signals until the card is disabled and re-enabled in the device manager, which is the only thing that seems to fix it. Disabling/enabling, repairing the network connection and attempting to reauthentcate don't. Eventually, however, I get a bluescreen with the message:

DRVR_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (it's only visible for about 3/4 of a second before rebooting, so that may not be exactly right)

It works fine for ten minutes or so after rebooting, then craps up again. Failure may be dependent on use: if I don't make any connections over the wireless link, it doesn't seem to lose it.
Sometimes, when I'm looking at the Wireless Network Connection Status window, it suddenly displays a totally impossible number of packets sent, like 2 million and something.
All of this has been happening ever since the card was installed--that is, it was never worked.

Sometimes (depending on the security type, I think, but I don't know that much about wireless security) it will fail aquire an IP address through DHCP, resulting in the message "this wireless connection has limited or no connectivity," and behaves in the same manner as above when I assign one manually.

I'm totally stumped. Wire network works fine. Searching for similar problems on the web has led to explanations accusing sp2 of "corrupting the TCP stack," but none of the suggested fixes have made any difference--though I haven't moved back to sp1 yet.

Anyone got any notion what's going on?

posted by pullayup to computers & internet (5 comments total)

What security settings is the wireless access point using? I have a Thinkpad (T42) with built-in wireless running XP sp2, and have found that I have trouble getting and maintaining a connection to APs with hidden SSIDs.
posted by pmbuko at 10:11 AM on March 29, 2006

I'd say it's a borked card and/or bus. If you can, try to test it in another machine, or a similar card in your machine.

Another hypothesis is shared IRQs. MANY network adapters aren't designed to share IRQs well (yeah, I know, this is supposed to be resolved since PCI...)

Run msinfo32 and check under share/conflicts if there's anything. Being a laptop, I doubt it is possible to change slots, so I don't have any idea on how to change the IRQ of the sharing resources.

Also, disable ALL power management (you'll want to do this while plugged to AC). It can be a poor implementation of ACPI (either laptop or card) cutting power where it shouldn't.

Oh, check the advanced properties of your wireless driver. It can have a control to set the card to "continuous power mode" or "powersave mode", set it to continuous.
posted by qvantamon at 10:42 AM on March 29, 2006

First change the settings so that it does not immediately reboot on the STOP error. Then get the actual STOP code next time it happens and check this list.

But anytime a BSOD is involved it's almost always a case of bad or incorrect drivers. See if you can find the latest version of the drivers for the card. You might have to do some legwork to find the actual best source of drivers (laptop manufacturer's site, wireless card's manufacturer's site, wireless chipset vendor's site, etc.)

Searching for similar problems on the web has led to explanations accusing sp2 of "corrupting the TCP stack,"

What a bunch of nonsense. Stick with SP2.
posted by Rhomboid at 10:59 AM on March 29, 2006

You say you have the latest version of everything. Double-check the wifi card's manufacturer web site for updated drivers. If you do in fact have the latest driver, try uninstalling the driver from the Device Manager and then reboot to re-detect and re-install the driver.
posted by banshee at 12:04 PM on March 29, 2006

If you want to use the IBM software/drivers for the wireless card, I would suggest disabling the Wireless Zero Configuration service in XP. If you click Start, then Run, then type services.msc and click OK, it will bring up a list of services for Windows. Look for Wireless Zero Configuration in the list, right click on the name, and select Properties. In the Startup type drop-down list, change to Disabled, then reboot.

You also might want to let Windows handle the wireless network card... I've had problems with the "official" drivers for wireless cards and devices, and have had far fewer problems letting XP manage the network connection.

You'd need to disable/uninstall the IBM stuff, but you might get better results.
posted by Jim T at 1:57 PM on March 29, 2006