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System lock-up / Onboard wireless adapter toast (Read 32924 times)
Rad
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System lock-up / Onboard wireless adapter toast
Apr 17th, 2010 at 10:13pm
 
hi.

[ 5-year-old gateway laptop - wxp - all latest MS patches ]

i started getting hard-locks today. ctrl-alt-del doesn't work/help.

can only reset by holding down power-key for 4 secs.

restarts no problem.

since lock-ups are ofter related to hardware conflicts, i searched around in device mgr.

once i saw 3 yellow exclamation points .. 1 at wireless broadcom controller, 1 at unknown pci device and 1 at Texas Instruments flash media controller.  But all exclamation points went away upon normal restart.

also, during 1 reboot following hard reset, i saw error at bios start up saying:

resource conflict - PCI on motherboard Bus:06, Device:09, Functions: 04

Never saw THAT error before.

But that too disappeared upon reboot, and never appeared again.

any ideas what's happening and how i might troubleshoot this wierdness?

Seems like ~ 1/2 hour following boot-up, I hard-lock and can do absolutely nothing but hold down the power buttton for 4 secs. The screen stays the same. No blue screen of death.

twice i was working in dreamweaver when it locked. another time dreamweaver wasn't even open, and i was just opening a folder. another time i searching in google in ie8. twice while i was away from laptop, doing nothing. so no clear patterns.

hope my pci controller is not dying.

Normally this little laptop is quite the trooper, if not the fastest thing around (Celeron). I've put a lot of hard miles on it.

At first I thot it might be related to the new NOD32 anti-virus 4.2.42 cuz it gave me a warning upon update saying something about stability problems due to no Windows logo testing, but i installed anyway.

Have since gone back to 4.0.474 and same problem.

Tho I've been working for ~ 45 minutes now with no problem.
 
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Rad
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Re: System lock-up
Reply #1 - Apr 18th, 2010 at 1:13am
 
more info.

seems like there's a problem with my wireless broadcom 802.11g network adapter.

all these problems began after i started having trouble connecting to the net.

thot it was my isp, but after a while i 'repaired' my wireless connection and everything worked fine.

now, i've been noticing a yellow exclamation point over broadcom wireless 802.11g network adapter when my internet goes out.. after it has been working for a while.

windows cannot repair. no way to fix.

sometimes a reboot works, other times not.
 
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Rad
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Re: System lock-up
Reply #2 - Apr 18th, 2010 at 1:14am
 
err, now i was able to restore internet connection by 'repairing' the wireless connnection, by right-clicking on the wireless icon and selecting 'repair'.

very weird. must be an alien in my machine.

whenever i get the yellow exclamation point over broadcom wireless network adapter, i also get another one over 'security digital host controller standard compliant.

and sometime the boroadcom goes away entirely and shows up as an unknown pci device.
 
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Re: System lock-up
Reply #3 - Apr 18th, 2010 at 2:06am
 
i am having to repair wireless network connection more, but it is working now, where before it wasn't.

been up a couple hours no lock.

dang gremlins.
 
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Re: System lock-up
Reply #4 - Apr 18th, 2010 at 2:37am
 
another 'repair' required. but worked.

maybe my isp or their router is on the fritz?
 
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Rad
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Re: System lock-up
Reply #5 - Apr 18th, 2010 at 3:05am
 
1 time it locked at the desktop, after load.

that sux.

maybe if i disable onboard wireless and try a pcm-cia nic?

i pushed back the start of the start-up virus checks to the END of the boot process .. to give the wireless adapter a little breathing room to get properly assigned.
 
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Re: System lock-up
Reply #6 - Apr 18th, 2010 at 4:27am
 
after lock i can hear cpu fan kick into high, like when usage = 100%.

so maybe bad infinite loop?

but i can never recover. need to hard reset. infinite loop should clear, eventually, right?

i have a month-old image.
 
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Re: System lock-up
Reply #7 - Apr 18th, 2010 at 12:58pm
 
downloaded and re-installed broadcom drivers. can't hurt, right?

repaiing the wireless connection is easy. hard-locks sux big-time.

if this doesn't help, i will try running the laptop with the wireless adapter disabled, and see if that is able to stop the hard-locks.

if it does, i could try a pcmcia wireless card, or even go wired.
 
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Rad
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Re: System lock-up
Reply #8 - Apr 18th, 2010 at 1:45pm
 
i am on wired connection now. works fine. the wireless is not even SEEN by the computer. it calls it an unknown pci device.

question now > will the hard-locks continue?

does it seem odd the wired adapter works fine while the wireless is failing? i mean, aren't they both on the same chip? or not?

now the wireless adapter is nowhere to be found, not even unknown pci device.

tho now i have yellow exclamation point at 'secure digital host controller' .. does that sound normal? it's the only yellow i have in dev mgr.

so far, no hard-locking on wired connection.
 
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Re: System lock-up
Reply #9 - Apr 18th, 2010 at 2:49pm
 
now the secure digital host went away and all i have is yellow exclamation point at "other devices - pci device'

i am using this:

http://www.asokausa.com/Ethernet-Adapters/Products/residential-pluglink/menu-id-...

no software. just plugged it in and it worked automatically. tho they DO have an installlation cd.
 
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Re: System lock-up
Reply #10 - Apr 18th, 2010 at 4:35pm
 
no lock ups in a long time. think the lock problem was fixed by eliminating wireless adapter.

seems like my onboard wireless adapter is toast.
 
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Dan Goodell
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Re: System lock-up
Reply #11 - Apr 18th, 2010 at 9:55pm
 
So, you had a month old image but did not revert to using that, right?  That might help diagnose whether the problem is failing hardware or a software problem.  (I'm assuming you had no problems a month ago.)

If you rolled back to that image and the problems went away, that would suggest some recent software update went awry.

If you rolled back and still had problems, that would point to a failing wireless device.  If it's on a miniPCI card, that's an easy replacement.  Or just leave it disabled and add a USB wireless adapter.


Rad wrote on Apr 18th, 2010 at 2:49pm:
no software. just plugged it in and it worked automatically. tho they DO have an installlation cd. 

We've previously discussed those powerline adapters here.  I've used similar devices from other brands, and found them to be reliable and drop-dead simple.  None of them require drivers because everything is done externally--conversion to/from ethernet is all done outside the laptop, so as far as the laptop is concerned it's just like any other ethernet cable coming in.  What the "installation CD" is for is probably only to install an app that provides password control to those boxes, so that only boxes with the right password can talk to each other.  (Imagine you're in an apartment building... you don't want the neighbors to be able to plug one of those into their wall outlet and gain access to your network.)

 
 
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Rad
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Re: System lock-up / Onboard wireless adapter toast
Reply #12 - Apr 18th, 2010 at 11:06pm
 
Dan Goodell wrote on Apr 18th, 2010 at 9:55pm:
So, you had a month old image but did not revert to using that, right?

yeah. first i would have to create a current image .. in case the old one did not fix the problem (which i don't think it would).

and i wasn't getting stability long enough to do that.

now i keep images from at least 2 different software programs .. including ghost, clonezilla & ifw.

coulda also ran a linux boot cd. a wireless hardware problem would've affected that too.

thanks for filling in the blanks on the install CD.

this cable is faster than my wireless. out here in the guest house, my signal strength was not great.
 
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Dan Goodell
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Re: System lock-up / Onboard wireless adapter toast
Reply #13 - Apr 19th, 2010 at 5:48am
 
Quote:
first i would have to create a current image [...] and i wasn't getting stability long enough to do that.

But with the wireless device disabled, that shouldn't have been a problem, right?


Quote:
this cable is faster than my wireless. out here in the guest house, my signal strength was not great.

Yeah, I think powerline adapters are underappreciated devices.


Where is the wireless device on the laptop?  Is it on a miniPCI card?  If so, those are often cheap (around $10-30), and as easy to replace as a ram module.




 
 
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Re: System lock-up / Onboard wireless adapter toast
Reply #14 - Apr 24th, 2010 at 12:48am
 
@
Rad

Saw you posting all those reports about the problems you were having--I didn't have anything to suggest to help--sorry I couldn't reply with something at the time.

Quote:
yeah. first i would have to create a current image .. in case the old one did not fix the problem (which i don't think it would).

and i wasn't getting stability long enough to do that.

Seems like a good argument to have at least one *cold* imaging solution available in case your Windows based *hot* imaging solution can not be used because of Windows stability preventing enough time to create a backup image!

TeraByte's group of Image for Windows, DOS, and Linux would give you two non-hot imaging options with the DOS and Linux versions--and their image files can be used with all three versions of their program.

I think Ghost 15 now has a cold imaging option from the Recovery Environment when booted to the installation disc.

ShadowProtect Backup and Disaster Recovery Software I think has a DOS option--I can't remember for sure--I've not kept up with that software.

And, Corp Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 would have DOS Ghost 11.5--or older DOS Ghost versions, if compatible with your current hardware and OS set up are other possibilities.
 

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