Laptop wierdness.

OK.. how’s this for something strange…

Under Windows the wireless LAN driver can see the access point, register with it using WAP, thinks it’s sending packet but doesn’t and doesn’t receive any packets. It can see the MAC address of the AP and the signal strength etc. This is after wiping the Windows partition and reinstalling with a clean install.

Under Linux the same NDIS driver (from the same install source) loads using ndiswrapper and everything just works as it should.

Erm, what on earth can I be missing which is preventing it all working under Windows? I haven’t a clue!

If it weren’t for the Linux side of things working perfectly I would think that there was possibly a hardware fault with the receiver or antenna, so it must be software. However, this is a totally clean install of Windows with a clean install of the driver so it shouldn’t be a software problem.

4 thoughts on “Laptop wierdness.

  1. Is that the driver that windows wants to use or your one?

    I’ve had problems when using the manufacturers driver under Windows XP (where there has been a choice.

    • Windows doesn’t have a driver for the hardware, so it’s the manufacturer’s.

      It worked until the night before last when I was experimenting with the newer Broadcom driver designed for their reference miniPCI card with the same chipset. That driver didn’t work, so I reverted to the one supplied by Acer.

  2. Holly has a Toshiba laptop with Centrino wifi. It seems to crash my access point pretty regularly. Could it be somethign Windows is doing here rather than the driver?

    Grim

    • The AP’s OK and keeps working. Windows thinks everything fine. It thinks it’s sending packets. It thinks it’s not receiving any.

      I’ve run the hardware diagnostics the utility has and they all check out.

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