Bizarre problem with ANY Wifi Adapter in XP sp3

A CF-28 with ANY wireless USB adapter will connect to any AP then immediately disconnect from any access point without even getting a DHCP assignment, in fact: looking at my DHCP server, I'm not even getting requests!

The odd thing is, I thought the adapter was bad, so I tried another, and another, etc. Different manufacturers, etc. It works fine plugged into ethernet.

I restored a disk imaged backup from 7 months ago when it was working fine, thinking something in windows networking got corrupted.

SAME CRAP.

Doesn't matter what type of encryption, (or none) etc, same deal. I'm at a loss. Any ideas??

Thanks.

Lee

Reply to
Lee Maisel
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That would be a Panasonic CF-28 Toughbook. That's usually a PIII

600MHz to 1GHz. Maximum RAM is either 384KB or 512KB depending on model. Windoze XP will barely run with 384KB and is slower than a snail with 512MB. It would be helpful if you would kindly disclose the missing details.

As I vaguely recall, the USB ports are USB 1.1, not 2.0. Some adapters and drivers don't like 1.1. With 1.1, you're also speed limited to 12Mbits/sec interface speed, which means that none of the

802.11g speeds will work.

Google does not find a wireless USB manufactory named "ANY". Could you be a bit more specific?

Windoze XP gets irritated if you overload the registry with too many serial and USB devices. You might try cleaning out the surplus devices.

There have been quite a large number of Windoze updates in the last 7 months. While most address security problems, they all tend to add to the bloat, which is slowing down your limited memory system.

Yeah, but it's not easily fixed. 512MB is not going to play with XP SP3. I suggest going back to W2K which is much easier on the hardware. Another possibility is Windows FLP:

There are also plenty of small footprint Linux distributions.

There's always Windoze Fixit:

Make an image backup of your existing XP SP3 install in case any of this goes awry.

If you insist on running XP SP3, you might try something drastic. Reset the IP stack with:

It will break a few things that jam themselves into the stack, but those can be reinstalled or repaired.

More drastic is Windoze repair:

It will roll you back to whatever SP level is on the repair CD. Updating from SP1 is a very long and tedious process. Not recommended unless you're desperate.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Thanks Jeff.

It's a Panasonic CF-28 with the bios upgrade running 768MB Ram. You are correct about the 1.1 USB, however, I've been using a USB 2.0 Cardbus adapter.

I would much prefer to run Linux, however the applications require actual windows. :(

The unit is vehicle mounted and that's why I'm using it. It's old and slow, but has worked just fine for what I'm using it for.

Network and WiFi were just fine for over a year, and suddenly this weirdness started happening. What's odd, is I suspected it was registry related, so I used windows restore tool to go back a month or so, and that didn't work. So I suspected corrupt drivers, and restored a complete disk image with clonezilla from about 7 mo ago, and I'm in the same spot. Very mysterious..

I did try the microsoft fix, but no luck.. I'll try removing old devices next and see if that helps.

Thanks for your help!

Reply to
Lee Maisel

By the way Jeff, I noticed you are AE6KS :) I'm W5LMM

And all the apps I refer to are the ones we like... :)

73
Reply to
Lee Maisel

I have several CF-25 laptops. Old and slow, but the touchscreen is so nice.

Ditto. I'm partial to Netgear WG511v2 cardbus cards (mostly because I have a few). With only one USB jack, wireless USB isn't a great idea. I've also tried to replace the internal cellular modem with a MiniPCI card, but ran out of time to make it work.

Yeah, I know the feeling. I just had to update a few APRS weather stations that were running W2K without any problem because the developer of the Winlink RMS server software built his software for dot net 3.5 which will not officially install on W2K. There's a workaround, but the few functions that won't play were the one's he used:

I won't bother to guess what software you're running, but I think you'll find Linux equivalents to most of the popular stuff.

Ok. See WinFLP for XP on old and slow. It also won't officially install anything over dot Net 3.0. SP3 for WinFLP:

Incidentally, we're using WinFLP on at least one laptop this year for Field Day logging using N1MM software. No problems so far, but the testing isn't quite done.

Not really. Assuming what you say is accurate, that leaves a hardware failure inside the CF-28. That's highly likely. I've mashed a few pins on the Cardbus connector on one of mine. I've blown out the PCMCIA controller chip by plugging in a flea market wireless card into the slot. Try inserting a CF to Cardbus adapter in the slot and add a CF memory card. Then, run a memory diagnostic. If that fails, you have a bad slot or connector.

One other really dumb thing to try. Remove the battery and reset the CMOS by unplugging the CMOS battery. I've had various laptops get stuck in odd modes, that power cycling doesn't fix. I had to remove the laptop batteries for at least 10 minutes to fix it.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Try booting one of the live Linux CD's and see how the hardware works with that. I like to use the the latest version of Puppy for most initial diagnostic work as it seems to support a broad range of network cards and such. If it works then at least you will have confirmed it's a Windows problem.

Reply to
GlowingBlueMist

Good plan. Here is an old list of some liveCD's and distributions known to work on the CF-28:

Looks like Puppy Linux is the right choice.

The CF-28 has a "hidden" MiniPCI slot:

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

It might pay to try running the USB adapters from a powered hub.

It could be that the USB ports are suspect and not supplying enough voltage.

+1 on the Linux distro as a hardware check.
Reply to
Group Captain Clive Bogwell V

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