AR5001X+ based card causes freezing, DPCs when not connected with an AP

[xylofoam]

Hey everyone,

this is my first post to these great forums! Laptopvideo2Go has been my No1 Laptop-drivers related ressource on the web. Thanks to everyone who's here working so hard.

Now for my actual problem. I got a rather old system, a Toshiba Portege M200 from five and a half years ago. Its running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition with SP3 and all current updates.

The thing has an Atheros-based wireless LAN card, based on the AR5001X+ a/b/g chipset. Im using the latest modded drivers for XP from LV2Go with that card (atheros_v7.7.0.259_v1.26).

Now the curious thing is that when the card is NOT connected to a wireless network, it freezes my laptop for about half a second, every 5 seconds or so. If that happens, Process Explorer shows that there are a number of Deferred Procedure Calls, taking about 5% CPU time (as opposed to none when the card is connected to an AP). The card also cant find any access points during this time, even when the AP is running perfectly. Disabling the wireless card stops the freezing, but in order to get the thing to see my network and connect to my AP, I might have to restart my computer a couple of times.

My Atheros card shares an IRQ with my USB controller, the onboard Sound, the SD Card interface and the PCMCIA controller.

Does anyone have any ideas how this problem could be resolved? Does anyone know what causes the actual problem? Are there some advanced settings of the card that could be changed in order to get it working more smoothly?

Thanks in advance for all of your advice!