HI Tim
Tim W wrote:
Adrian Brentnall
wibbled on Monday 04 January 2010 09:12
HI Folks
The new 'net connection came complete with a wireless router -
so was playing with the idea of getting rid of the wired network
connections between the three (dell desktop) office pc's (winxp) and the
router and loacting the router at the master socket.
Bought a couple of 'Newlink' Wireless 11g 54Mbps PCI cards (CPC) &
installed them. Wouldn't install under Windows' 'found new hardware'
routine - had to use the manufacturer's own utility to install.
Anyway - they seem to be working - but one of the PCs is losing its
wireless connection intermittently, and both were in a 'very
unresponsive, mouse cursor not responding' sort of place, this morning.
-needed rebooting to get any life...
That sounds like a Windows issue. The WIFI going tits up will not cause
those symptoms per-se, unless:
a) you are running a remote screen over WIFI (eg VNC, rdesktop, Citrix).
b) You have a server on the other end of the WIFI link that the PC depends
on, but even then I've not seen those symptoms before - only applications
accessing network shares tend to go bad in the worst case.
If it's only just happened it make be the fault of the WIFI driver (which is
different to it being the fault of WIFI).
Yes - happened today - wifi installed yesterday....
Looking at the diagnostics on the wireless cards - both are showing
100% signal strength (can't be more than 10ft from the pc to the
router!) - and (only?) 60 - 80% link quality.
Totally normal. Those numbers are a general indicator only. Think fo a
temperature scale that runs 0-100. All you can be reasonably sure about is
80 is hotter/better than 60.
Ah - right - thanks
The detailed stats show (amongst other things) rx retry of 20% -
and a whole bundle of RX CRC errors..
OK - I have 36 RX errors out of 1224798 and 5 dropped TX packets. Yours
sounds higher.
Looking at this card (I've already switched my wife's PC back to a Cat5
connection) I see the following
TX ok 125970
TX error 5
Tx retry 1259
Tx beacon ok 0
Tx beacon error 0
RX ok 179473
Rx packet count 179473
Rx retry 44375
RX CRC Error (0-500) 5051
RX CRC Error (500-1000) 397
RX CRC Error ( 1000) 12570
RX icv Error 0
Whatever that might mean ! g
There's no troubleshooting info with the PCI cards - and no means of
contacting a tech support organisation - the instruction leaflet says
'contact your vendor' ..... (CPC! - yeah, right)
It does sound more like bad drivers. Perhaps some other windows experts here
(I do linux mostly) have come across these? Especially as the driver loading
procedure seemed broken - expecially as you have XP - there is no excuse for
stupid driver loading procedures. MS for all their faults have had
standards for driver writers to follow for years now, same as applications.
Are the cards made by the company perchance and is this the actual card you
have?
http://www.newlinkproducts.co.uk/pro...D=2&prodID=251
Yes - that's the one
In which case their contact details a
Domain name:
newlink.co.uk
Registrant:
Newlink Products Limited
Registrant type:
UK Limited Company, (Company number: 4483417)
Registrant's address:
10 Stadium Business Court
Millennium Way Pride Park
Derby
DE24 8HP
United Kingdom
You should be able to dig out a phone number.
You'll have noticed the complete lack of a 'support' button on the
website ? - bit poor that.
Presumably it's just a warehouse full of far-east-manufactured kit -
not ideal....
The other option is will CPC take it back so you can buy a better card (I'm
thinking Linksys: expensive, or Netgear: cheap).
I've got an even better idea g
CPC can take it back and I'll plug the Cat5 back in !
They'll not love me - I had a wireless mouse (Trust) from them before
Christmas that refused to work on any of the 4 PCs here -
so they sent the man in the van out to collect that one as well....
So - 'Dear Marge - is this normal ?'
No, it's not normal. Either your card and/or its driver are crap (most
likely) or you just got unlucky and Windows decided to go mental
coincidentally.
My thought was 'drivers'.
They also supplied the drivers on a mini-cd - which, whilst being 'cute'
and saving the company a penny per CD, meant that it was impossible to
load the driver CD-let on my wife's slimline dell tower unless you laid
the tower over on its side.... - plain silly !
If so - I think I'll just dump the wireless idea and go back to good old
cables!
No - as I mentioned, just get a decent brand card. Doesn't have to be
expensive - the Netgear WG311 on on Dabs is all of 17 quid - but what I
would do is check some reviews first to see if that card has thrown up
hoards of problems or not.
Couldn't see anything on a quick scan -
think I'll ditch the idea as adding just another layer of unnecessary
complication g
Thanks
Adrian