[.John.]

Scamallite, on Jun 30 2007, 08:37 AM, said:

.John., on Jun 30 2007, 12:45 AM, said:

Well...how did I solve the problem? Ordered a new Dell E1420 with the 4965 card...so hopefully no more issues

haha!

My guess is you wanted a new laptop anyway and that this issue wasn't the only reason for buying a new one? If it is the only reason, you could have just replaced the internal card with a 4965 for around $100

No way, you can get one for like $40 or $45 bucks no problem...

[Taz3L]

On a brand new Acer laptop running vista.... I was getting 3 bars at close range and many disconnects (disconnecting about once every 5 minutes) from a DLink VWR - Vonage Wireless router.

When I found this thread I knew I had struck gold.

The Acer has a Intel Pro-Wireless (3945abg) built into it. It had driver version 10.6.0.29 so I followed instructions above and I downloaded and installed driver version 10.1.1.17... rebooted....wala!

The signal is now at 5 bars and holds steady.... for at least a day now. This driver changed the image near the clock to be something less cool looking but the connection functions fine. I did not get any message of warning about Vista incompatibility... it just installed it.

THANK YOU to all who figured this out!!! You saved my sanity!

[td17_uk]

i have to say this is not just a vista problem or a single wireless adapter problem i had the same thing happening on a different adapter but the problem was the same. the same time it happened to me it happened to my dad only he's running xp so it seems that it may be windows related maybe an update that automaticcally installed on shutdown.

it seem strange that two people independantly would have the same problem whilst running different operating systems, this has persisted for about 3 weeks now and niether of us can run our routers wirelessly

[RyanN]

I'm back to report my status. Well, the XP fix doesn't allow Wifi to turn off, but I am having some issues. Someone earlier in this post said that they are having trouble reconnecting when they resume from sleep/standby; I am too having this problem. It says it's connected, but its "Local" and does not have the internet, however, nothing in my network shows up. I'm going back to the original Vista driver, it never gave me any trouble and the connections is just fine. As long as it's at 54Mb/s, I'm happy. I don't really care how good of a signal it has, just as long as it's connected at the fastest speed.
I'm also having some unrelated issues with my bluetooth (Dell Truemobile 350) card and my touchpad. The bluetooth has never worked right. It works fine in XP, but in Vista, the Bluetooth tray icon always disappears (yes... I have it enabled) and my Bluetooth remote, and my cell phone won't connect to the laptop, even if I allow my computer to be found (it always defaults back to the hidden setting). So bluetooth is really bugging me and if any of you know the solution, please please tell me. Also, every few weeks, my Synaptics Touchpad driver seems to just disappear. Reinstalling always fixes it, but I don't know the reason why it does this. Everything works on my touchpad except for the scrolling. When I try to go to the settings, it says "Unable to connect to the Synaptics Pointing Device Driver" It has been doing this ever since I purchased Vista at the beginning of February. I didn't have any trouble with RC1 with any device. Everything seemed to work... bluetooth, wifi, mouse, etc... If anyone can help me with this, please PM me.

[Atuyo]

It seems Intel doesn't know or want to acknowledge the issue on its download page. I experience this radio turning off problem as well and am just here to document it for anyone out there trying to fix the issue.

I am using a Dell XPS M1210 upgraded to Vista Business in June with the Intel 11.1.1.11 drivers. I have not had any problems with my wireless card for almost a year since I got the laptop with XP so its most likely a Vista driver issue as you guys have already pointed out. My problem isn't very serious probably because I am using a Vista upgrade on a clean restored system and I only have Windows Live messenger and an internet streaming TV software.

I did not experience the issue with the Intel drivers for few weeks until one day I noticed limited connectivity while my laptop was idle for few hours with no open windows except for a running messenger and McAfee. The wi-fi light was turned off and neither software activation nor hardware switching (I tried turning it off and back on using the switch at the side of the XPS laptop) could re-enable the radio. I even restarted but it did not come back on. The only way was to shut down and power on again (but just a while ago, a restart while the card was turned off did work). Since the first time the issue occured, I have had it occuring at least 3 times more while not doing any internet-intensive stuff, mostly while I was away from the laptop. I have even had it working while using P2P TV software and it never gave me problems, so till it becomes really intolerable and Intel hasn't released a fix, I will continue to stay with the Intel 11.1.1.11 drivers for now. I hope this radio turning off thing doesn't damage my card though.

*I realised this issue doesn't get much useful replies in other forums and its a little hard searching about it too. If I hadn't come across this thread I might just think the wireless card was dying on me. Some tech guy in the BIG companies should really take note of the problem.

[silversurfer]

Same problem as described above with the 3945abg adapter.

My experiences with different driver versions are that no driver is stable.

After deactivating SKYPE from the autostart no more shutdowns occur so far. (I know that this is only one component of the puzzle)
Update: The same error occurs with or without SKYPE, it was just luck for a while.

I don't want to adjust the settings of the adapter. It should work with every roaming configuration and modus.

It is time stealing to sell products with such intolerable bugs.
Assume that 100000 people are fighting with the same problem and every of them has to restart the system 10 times a day. It's about 50000 working hours per day that are lost without counting tech support etc.. Such a bug costs millions of dollars.

I hope the bug will be fixed soon.

This post has been edited by silversurfer: 18 July 2007 - 02:25 PM

[RyanN]

silversurfer, on Jul 18 2007, 04:06 AM, said:

Same problem as described above with the 3945abg adapter.

My experiences with different driver versions are that no driver is stable.

After deactivating SKYPE from the autostart no more shutdowns occur so far. (I know that this is only one component of the puzzle)
Update: The same error occurs with or without SKYPE, it was just luck for a while.

I don't want to adjust the settings of the adapter. It should work with every roaming configuration and modus.

It is time stealing to sell products with such intolerable bugs.
Assume that 100000 people are fighting with the same problem and every of them has to restart the system 10 times a day. It's about 50000 working hours per day that are lost without counting tech support etc.. Such a bug costs millions of dollars.

I hope the bug will be fixed soon.

Try the XP fix or the original Vista driver fix. If you don't want to try to fix it, then don't complain. We all know that it *should* work fine with the Intel drivers, but it doesn't, and we can't do anything to fix it, but we can avoid the problem. You can find both fixes in this thread. The original Vista driver fix is probably the easiest, but doesn't always work. The XP fix seems to work great, but it's a bit more in depth than the Vista fix.

As for me, I recently reinstalled Vista on my laptop (after having Vista installed for a whole month) because it was blue screening. I tried the Toshiba Bluetooth stack for Vista, and it was causing problems. After reinstalling, my 3945ABG card was acting weird. It wasn't shutting down like with the Intel driver, but it would simply lose the connection and couldn't find it unless I restarted the card (using Fn + F2) and then it would only work temporarily, so I tried the XP fix word for word and it hasn't had a problem since.

[Scamallite]

Its been over a month and the 'XP Fix' is still working perfectly for me!!!!

[sakurakessho]

I just bought a new HP laptop (dv9000) and was experiencing the radio problems with the 3945abg. But i was wondering if anyone was also reporting bad speeds? I have a 10Mbit connection here. And my desktop can download just fine at high speeds, my laptop barely gets anything.

Now my radio problem was fixed after I updated the driver from the intel site. But my speeds are just awful.

[NightAngelGuard]

Hey guys, this forum helped me realized that whenever my bluetooth is on the chance of the wifi getting disable is way higher. Though, i have only tested this theory for only 2 weeks I am pretty sure it helps if you disable the bluetooth when you are not using it. Beside enabling it only takes a few seconds. Good luck to you all in figuring it out. Disable the bluetooth helped me so far. By the way neither the vista or xp fix could run on my system. Its a Vista Home Premium, can anyone tell me why?

This post has been edited by NightAngelGuard: 01 August 2007 - 06:49 AM

[jcp411]

Man! I wish I found this thread soo much sooner! I haven't read it all but it's so encouraging to find someone with similar problems. I've been hanging out at http://forums.micros...o...2&SiteID=17 because it was the only thread about it that I could find. But things aren't as lively as here.

Anyway here is what I have and I'll finish reading the rest of this thread and report back with what I find. That I posted in that thread a few months ago. Not much has changed since then. Same basic issue. I'm really happy to see that someone else felt it was a combination of high bandwidth and number of connections.

System configuration:

Alienware Area-51 M5790 Laptop - Vista Ultimate
Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG

Changes that I just made:

Had driver version 10.x.x.xx (was something like 10.0.6.29 10/30/2006). Just upgraded to 11.1.1.11 4/30/2007 Intel. (Update 8-2-07: I had gone back to the 10.0.6.29 driver because the new one hadn't helped any but today I went back to the 11.1.1.11 one.)

Also changed these settings:
--Roaming Aggressiveness - From 5. Highest to 1. Lowest
--Transmit Power - from 5. Highest down to 1. Lowest and then back to 5. Highest
--Wireless Mode - From 6. 802.11a/b/g to 3. 802.11g

Issue:

It would seem to randomly drop the connection. If I just supposedly disconnected from the network (Network and Sharing Center: Disconnect) and then reconnected to the same network it worked. Diagnose and Repair never seemed to work. Always would want to get a new IP address from the router (Linksys WRT54G).

I noticed it tended to drop the connection under higher loads (e.g. Google Maps (zooming in and out a lot), Google Video/YouTube, downloading Real video sermons from a church site) but was never always consistent with this. One time I thought it was the cable connection or the modem (Vonage phone dropped out exactly at the same time). But after it kept happening one night I connected direct to the modem and it never gave any problems. Also I've been having problems this morning with it and I just connected direct to the router. So far no problems.

Another laptop (XP) that uses the wireless doesn't have a problem and a desktop (98SE) wired to the router doesn't have problems.

[jcp411]

Excited to report that the instructions in post 35 seems to have fixed my problem!!! I'll certianly post back here if it didn't but consider my issue resolved! Thank you everyone!!!

[JimGallant]

Hi Guys This looks like an awesome forum...

I'd like to add my 2 cents here...

I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 I bought in April 2006

Original Config
Core Duo 1.66
1GB RAM
60GB SATA 7200RPM HD
128 ATI X1300
Intel 3945ABG with Dell Bluetooth 350
Windows XP Professional

I started encountering the problem with the wireless card turning itself off about two months ago. This while I still ran XP. I don't run any file sharing programs or Skype, etc... I pretty much just surf and that's about it. I do run live messenger occasionally but the wireless problem occurs regardless of whether my IM is on or disabled. I have noticed on occasion that the wireless turns itself off when i'm at YouTube or MySpace and the problem is intermittent there. Also i run windows media player a lot with an internet radio station of some type streaming through it.

I check updates frequently and i had all the latest XP drivers on the laptop. But the problem occurred nonetheless. Also ran IE7 in XP and (of course) in Vista...

For fun and work research i picked up Vista Ultimate and upgraded to 2GB RAM. I wiped and formatted the HD instead of doing an upgrade. I started with the core Vista Driver on the wireless card (same problem) the drivers from Dell (v10.6 I believe, same problem occurred) and finally with v11.11.11 from the Intel site (problems occurred). Running more or less the same configuration and going to the same websites, it seems to me that something dynamically updating on a webpage may be upsetting the radio. the problem still occurs for me at the same websites i mentioned earlier and/or sometimes with WMP running streaming content. I also noticed that if I opened another browser of IE (for whatever reason), or if I clicked Back or Refresh while the page was refreshing/loading, i would notice the wifi radio dropping...

Well I have just applied the suggested settings to the card for Roaming, Transmission and Packet Burst. I also set the Power Saving feature to the recommended (from here) settings. It's been good for the few minutes after the change... Good news for me is I only have one router per building I'm in so I can set roaming to minimum...

Dell has a page also about the issue Here...

Nice meeting everyone here!

J

This post has been edited by JimGallant: 03 August 2007 - 08:32 AM

[jason.c]

Does the new 11.1.1.16 drivers solve anything? I'm using the XP-Fix, but my wireless connect is still intermittent.

http://img261.images...489/utorid9.jpg

That's my uTorrent speed graph. You can see the spikes that occur for a few seconds every few minutes. I can attest that it's not the upload/download speed fluctuating, because I get dropped from games and also I am unable to surf the net during the times when the wireless seems to turn itself off.

It's so frustrating. Would the XP drivers or the original Vista drivers be better? Or does applying the XP-Fix take a while before the wireless card is fully stable or something? Cause I recall someone using the fix and having his connection dropped after 30 minutes, but after that everything works well.

Thanks in advance.

This post has been edited by jason.c: 11 August 2007 - 03:03 PM

[ZaDDaZ]

Let me first just say you all have done a very thorough job of troubleshooting.

I noticed the main problem, the WiFi card turning off, at a client's office, but since I was always hardwired anyways, it didn't matter much. Just noticed that the WiFi light on my Dell Inspiron 9400 (same as 1705) would just turn off. I tried to go wireless a couple of times, but it wouldn't work and I just chalked that up to their wireless being flaky.

I have been using my WiFi at home for over 7 months now without any issues and with the Intel drivers. I got tired of constant WiFi disconnects with my last laptop, so I bought an 802.11a access point last year, which is why I believe I have not had any issues.

I started beating my head against this problem in the past week. I am on vacation and the high speed access here is 801.11g. My connection would work for an average of 10 minutes, the light would turn off and the icon in the system tray would say that it was still connected, but the connection was limited. Hitting Fn-F2 (the keystroke to enable/disable wireless) would only turn off and on the Bluetooth indicator, even though Dell QuickSet was indicating it was turning off and on both WiFi and Bluetooth. Either way, that did not help at all.

I have rolled back to the Microsoft driver, and I cannot even connect, I believe because of signal strength.

I am going to forget trying to get this to work since I've only got 2 more days of vacation and I can deal with dialup until then. I thought it would help to know that if the card is doing 802.11a, it seems basically stable with the latest Intel drivers. Does this help at all?

[ZaDDaZ]

.John., on Jun 30 2007, 01:30 PM, said:

Scamallite, on Jun 30 2007, 08:37 AM, said:

.John., on Jun 30 2007, 12:45 AM, said:

Well...how did I solve the problem? Ordered a new Dell E1420 with the 4965 card...so hopefully no more issues

haha!

My guess is you wanted a new laptop anyway and that this issue wasn't the only reason for buying a new one? If it is the only reason, you could have just replaced the internal card with a 4965 for around $100

No way, you can get one for like $40 or $45 bucks no problem...

I see I could get one of these for around $40, but will it go in a Dell Inspiron 9400 (same as 1705)? If a $40 purchase will fix this problem, I wouldn't even bother wasting my time with tech support. However, since this card is Pre-N, it has 3 antenna ports and the 3945ABG only has 2. Would it work with just the 2 installed or would I need to somehow figure out a way to get the 3rd antenna installed and does it even come with the antenna cables?

On Dell's site, it says that the 4965 is only for "Select Dell Latitute Notebooks" which wouldn't include mine since its an Inspiron. What say you?

[Fovea]

I have a Dell 1705 that use same wireless card. Just disable Ipv6, reboot, and you may have to setup new wireless connection. That's what Dells tech support don't know...most part they are useless when it's a vista issue.

[jaaroo79]

Hey yall having DELL, patching yo radio problems... here's something new:

If you are experiencing issues with your Intel 3945 a/g wireless network adapter in the Vista operating system, please update to the latest driver which was just posted recently, 8/15/07.

ftp://ftp.dell.com/network/R164259.EXE

I'm gonna try it out, got Dell Inspiron 9400, with, of course, 3945ABG C how it wrks

[RyanN]

I tried the new driver from the dell site. They say this problem occurs if you have bluetooth installed on your laptop (as I do). I've been using the driver since the day it was released and I haven't had any trouble. My signal is great and I'm not having any drops in my connection. I think this is the one we've all been waiting for!

[Nick Marques]

RyanN, on Aug 21 2007, 10:43 PM, said:

I tried the new driver from the dell site. They say this problem occurs if you have bluetooth installed on your laptop (as I do). I've been using the driver since the day it was released and I haven't had any trouble. My signal is great and I'm not having any drops in my connection. I think this is the one we've all been waiting for!

What's the version of the driver say in Device Manager? Dell only repackages Intel drivers to my knowledge... Does Intel have a new version out?