I bought a used Panasonic Toughbook that cam with a working 802.11g pcmcia card. Because I would benefit from being able to use an external antenna I bought an Orinoco Gold 8470-WD 11b/g card.
Problem is that the card would not work. I always had an error in Device Manager of "Card cannot start, Code-10", which Proxim said was an incorrect installation. After several uninstall & reinstalls they said they could only suggest to try the card in another laptop.
Shortly thereafter while trying the un-re route again the laptop locked. When I rebooted the card began working! I had uninstalled the card control utility but installed the driver. I noticed that the card was being controlled by the Windows Zero Config utility. I unchecked the box directing its use and reinstalled the Proxim card control utility. Rebooted, at first did not work, then it did! This utility allows a lot of control the Zero Config does not.
I immediately saved a system restore point.
All worked well for two days until I went to plug in the external antenna. I could not get the little rubber cap off the card so I removed it to get better access. The cap off I plugged in the antenna and reinserted the card. Original problem back! Card cannot start, Code-10.
I have tried everything I can think of, though I am no expert. I removed the antenna. I tried uninstalling=reinstalling, uninstalling+reinstalling driver only, uninstall+reinstall all then going to msconfig and not loading zero config, tried using pc management to start, stop, disable zero config. Went back in system restore to the save I made while all was working. No success.
Proxim feels my short term success means their card is fine and this is a Windows problem, which is not theirs to fix. So their support is done with me.
I'm using XP Pro. Any ideas?
Possible Clue? This is a previously owned laptop. For two months it booted straight to Windows. A week ago it suddenly came up with a name and pw entry. I ignored pw and clicked to continue and loading continued every time. I went to User Accounts and saw no names there. I created an Admin for myself, but on booting it still came up with the other name. After my long session with Proxim the laptop suddenly began booting to my name,asking for pw which was non existent so ignoring I'd click to continue, which it did. It was in this boot config that the card began working about an hour later. Still boots this way. And it was this setup that was working with the card when I created the restore point. But as mentioned that restore does not solve the problem of the card no longer working after being removed and reinserted.
The original card does still work.