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Irritating problems with flaky Atheros LAN-Express chipset


Guest James

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Hello.

I have an old Sony PCG-V505DC2P laptop with "LAN-Express AS IEEE 802.11g miniPCI Adapter". The other computer specifications are as follows:

Pentium 4 M 2.4Ghz

1GB DDR SDRAM

80GB HDD

Windows XP Professional with SP3 and all updates.

The above wireless chipset with driver version 7.6.1.160.

I have a TrendNET TEW-432BRP (802.11g, WPA-PSK, 50ms beacon, full antenna transmit power) router which is not giving any problems with any of the (newer) other laptops in the house. It is only about 10 feet away from the laptop.

I am facing some problems:

1. The wireless seems to disconnect and reconnect at random, 5-6 times a day. The reconnection is instantaneous without my intervention. I'll be surfing and then suddenly I see the tooltip saying "JWireless is now connected".

2a. Sometimes, the taskbar icon will show a good connection but I will not be able to surf or anything, with page requests timing out and my IM clients disconnecting. Initially I thought this was a DNS problem, but I tried using OpenDNS and the same thing happens. To rectify this, I have to repair my connection. I have to do this 3-4 times a day.

2b. Whenever I try to repair the wireless connection, it gets stuck on 'Renewing your IP address'. My IM clients connect fine and I can surf and download normally 15-20 seconds after clicking on Repair, but Windows never 'finalizes' the repair.

Both the above events do not exhibit any pattern of occurrence including with respect to each other.

I don't know whether this is a hardware or a software issue, or both! I have tried many things including changing driver versions and settings on my router. In an attempt to replace the wireless chipset with a better one that supports WPA2, I even opened up the laptop but could not identify the chipset (maybe it is a part of the mobo and not separate?). Please help!! :)

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I'm having similar issues but with Vista.

Surfing is just so stop starty, loosing connection quite often.

I'll try some older drivers to see if this fixes the issues.

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Having better luck with 7.6.1.111 which in XP terms = 7.6.1.140

Very early to tell

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James here. Thank you for your replies, friends. Please note that my laptop is old (3 years old). I am tired of dealing with this crap.

Can you guys please let me know any replacement wireless solution for this? My laptop model is PCG-V505DC2P. Can some knowledgeable person find out and tell me whether the wireless chipset in this laptop can be replaced with a newer one? I would also like WPA2 protection... the current card does not support it.

I really appreciate your help. Thank you very much.

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Head on over to Oxfordtec and then to the miniPCI cards (not pcie)

You can use any of the cards listed there.

I would stay away from Atheros based models but head on over to Ralink based.

I reviewed a miniPCIe model the other day (scroll down the news page)

Ask for Chris and tell him I sent you :)

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Thank you for quick reply. So Chris will give me a discount if I tell him mobilenvidia sent me? :)

I see only 2 products for MiniPCI 54g... both are 'SparkLAN' brand. Are they Atheros based?

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It says in the titles what chipset they are based on, one is ralink and one is atheros

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Thank you for quick reply. So Chris will give me a discount if I tell him mobilenvidia sent me? :)

I see only 2 products for MiniPCI 54g... both are 'SparkLAN' brand. Are they Atheros based?

54g why that ?

54g is went down with the Titanic.

Get your self a 11n card, much better range as they are Mimo.

Your router may only be 54g but you should still get better throughput and range.

Don't know about discount, but he'll look after you.

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