Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with wirelesscard

Help me find and fix my wifi card problem.

philomathoholic — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:05:46 -0800

I've replaced my wireless card, but my laptop still intermittently locks up. The problem occurs whether I'm running XP or Ubuntu, and disappears when I disable the wifi in bios. * I assume the freezes are related to when the card is transmitting.
* Ubuntu will work fine until it connects to an AP. Then it immediately has problems.
* XP has problems on the login screen, but works great (immediately) after disabling the wifi (via the wifi-radio button).
* Both XP and Ubuntu are fully up to date.

* My laptop is an HP Pavilion dv5000 (custom build), with a Broadcom mini-pci a/b/g wlan card.
* I thought the old card was the culprit, so I replaced it with an identical one from HP, but the problem remains.
* Ethernet works fine.

Should I suspect the motherboard? Do people replace the motherboard on laptops? Isn't that expensive? Don't people just replace the laptop instead?

What else could/should I be checking, to narrow down the problem?

How to make a router work like a wireless card?

omnipotentq — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:03:11 -0800

I need to make a linkys WRT-54G router act like a wireless card. I have a nice little network setup in the bedroom of my apartment with a belkin router. I use static IPs for my laptop and desktop that I have on it and I have about 4TB of disk space on external drives that are attached to the two computers that hold my movies, tv shows, etc.

I want to set up one of my spare (read: old) computers in my living room attached to my TV, and have it be on my network so that I can watch movies and TV shows that are on my desktop in my room on the desktop in the living room on my nice TV. I have a spare WRT-54G router that works just fine, and I want to see if there's a way to hook it up to the wireless network I'm projecting from the belkin router. (It's got WPA enabled, if that matters.) I don't want to spend the money on a USB wireless card (I just started two small businesses and quit my job, so saving money is paramount) and I don't want an awful cable going all over the floor from one room to another.

I'm good with computers and networks so whatever instructions you all have, I'll be able to figure them out, but this problem stumps me from step one. Do I go into the linksys router and connect it to the belkin somehow? I installed DDWRT on it once before, and I have no problem or issue with flashing the firmware to whatever will get the job done. Thanks in advance!

Advice on choosing new wifi card for my PC.

The God Complex — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 14:29:21 -0800

I need help selecting a new wireless card for my PC [more inside, obviously] I'm downstairs and the router and modem are upstairs. Right now I have an older D-Link card (with antennae), but D-Link hasn't updated the drivers since mid 2003. My primary issue is with World of Warcraft, which hasn't been running properly (my computer blue screens immediately upon entering the game with one character). I've done troubleshooting on a variety of issues (memory tests, etc.), and although my blue screen no longer contains information for some reason, I'm pretty sure my network card is to blame. I've read some reports on my card, and it appears that there's some issue with it BSODing when it gets "too much info" or something.

Anyway, long story short, I'm also having issues with a few other programs (such as when I have bit torrents open) that cause a BSOD with a network card driver error, so I'd like to purchase a new card. I'm probably about fifty feet from the router, but you have to go through a few walls to get there; my current card has an antennae to help alleviate any issues this may cause, so that might be taken into consideration. I've also seen some of the USB 2.0 wireless adapters but have no experience with them--does anyone know how well they operate? I'd like a newer card from a company still updating its drivers so I can hopefully avoid similar problems.

Any help is appreciated.

Why is my wireless disconnecting on my Windows 2000 pc?

humuhumu — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 14:15:48 -0800

Problem with a wireless card on Windows 2000. The manufacturers and Google have been no help. Ask Metafilter will solve it though, won't you...? [more inside, of course] I have a small desk downstairs on which sits a laptop. It doesn't move much. Until this weekend, it was an old Acer running Windows 98. Plugged into this was a Netgear MA521 Cardbus wireless card, which linked up perfectly with a Linksys router two floors up in the attic. Never had a single connection problem with it, signal strength always around at least 70%.

This weekend, I replaced the laptop with a slightly younger Sony Vaio. That was running Windows 98 but not very well, so I did a clean install of Windows 2000. Wireless card was installed and ran perfectly. Until, that is, I installed the relevant Windows Updates. Now, the connection drops every few minutes. There it goes again, in fact. There's no warning; no drop in signal strength; and the connection is picked up again almost immediately - as soon as the connection goes, the card scans through the channels until it finds the right one, and instantly connects. Downtime is no more than fifteen seconds. But it's intermittent, happens more often when I'm surfing then when I'm not, and is bugging the hell out of me. I can't find anyone else who's suffered this, and I don't know if it's card related, OS related, or laptop related.

Can anyone shed some light on what the problem is, or how I might solve it? All drivers, etc, are up to date.

FCC Question

Yelling At Nothing — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 19:00:10 -0800

So, I'm looking at the back of my wireless card, and I have an FCC rules question. [more inside] On the back of my wireless-B network card, it says that it complies fully with part 15 of the FCC rules; specifically, "this device may not cause harmful interference" (makes sense) and "this device must accept any interference that may cause undesired operation" (doesn't make so much sense.) I'm wondering what the purpose of the second bit is.