SP2 + Wireless = sux

MediaMan

It sucks. Just plain sucks. I spent 5 hours trying to get a wireless NIC connection working in SP2 that was working in SP1 but 10 minutes before I attempted the whole mess.

Just plain sux.


sux sux sux sux sux sux sux.



sux.








Sux.










sux

primesuspect

works fine for me. SP2 actually sort of improved my wireless connection - not the actual signal, but the interface with intel's promon set..,.

TheSmJ

I set one up earlier this week with a couple of super cheap wireless NICs. Had no problems at all.

MediaMan

I knew that someone would waltz in here and say "works great for me!"


grrrr.



I think my SMC wireless NIC is just old...it's a two year old SMC2602W 802.11b card trying to connect to a new SMC 2804WBR. No matter what I did it would not find an IP. I enabled/disabled set/unset everything I could find including wireless zero configuration

- with and without SSID.
- with and without WEP 64 bit.
- with and without WEP 128.
- with and without INFRASTRUCTURE.
- with and without ADHOC.
- with and without ADHOC 802.11b.
- with and without DHCP enabled.
- with and without FIREWALL in XP and on ROUTER.
- with and without SMC drivers.
- with and without SMC utility.

Thrax

Disable bluetooth collaboration in the advanced card properties via the device manager..

ryko

are you using a laptop or desktop? i had a similar situation with an older pIII compaq laptop and a smc wireless-g pcmcia card. i thought it was a bad pcmcia card, but when i tried the card with a different laptop, it worked perfectly. It seems that the pcmcia slots on my compaq can't provide adequate power to the wireless card.

might be a similar situation with you...

MediaMan

Thrax wrote:

Disable bluetooth collaboration in the advanced card properties via the device manager..

Doesn't exist to try.


ryko

Desktop. Worked in another SP1 system hours ago but not this one with SP2.


Set SSID on both router and NIC the same.
Tried AUTO, and various other negotiation speeds.
Tried several channels always the same on both router and NIC
Tried with Wireless Zero stopped and started in XP services console.
Tried with Universal Plug n Play dis/enabled in router


Must be that old 802.11b technology. Guess I have to trot down to the store tomorrow for a new 802.11g NIC.

Thrax

That's a shame. Linksys network cards, atleast my model, don't even obtain an IP unless you disable bluetooth collaboration.. Which is on by default. I have never figured out why this is so, and I wanted to throttle the Linksys driver engineer who came up with this nuisance after I spent 9 hours trying to figure it out once.

MediaMan

I'll take one more kick at the cat later tonight.

- disable wireless zero configuration
- turn off firewalls in both machines and router
- set same channel both router and nic
- set ADHOC in NIC
- set SSID the same in both router and nic
- Will try unpnp enabled in both OS

And we'll see what happens.

Funny thing though...my wireless MS mouse starts to "stick" with the NIC enabled even though the NIC isn't connected. The NIC wills sometimes find an IP address and default gateway but nothing else.

The limited or no connectivity message keeps popping up too.

The NIC was working before but in an SP1 system with the same hardware.

Could be one of several culprits

A) Something in XP SP2 that I'm missing
B) Moved from a 7004AWBR SMC router to the new 2804WBR SMC router.
C) The NIC chose that exact moment to die.

It's either easy (As Prime stated) or it's a frustrating bug hunt.

keto

After finally upgrading to SP2 somewhat reluctantly, I spent most of last Friday off and on trying to get my laptop to connect to the net. Eventually I got it, tho I still can't access any of the other computers on the network...it SEES them fine, all permissions *should* be set right as all 5 other computers can get in and out of one another....but none can access the lappy and it can't access the others. I gave up and have been using a thumb drive to transfer files.

How did I get the internet? I ANGRILY clicked disabled enabled every piece of hardware, checkbox, property box that I had no idea what it was in a blind fury, couple of CFL distance punts and walla. Internet. You might want to try that. :banghead:

Edited to add, Mozilla no longer works from the lappy tho IE6 works fine

ryko

have you tried a different pci slot? I know it's stupid, but sometimes it works....

MediaMan

UPDATE:

Boring holes in walls. Running CAT5. Nuff said.

lukejackson-luteck-com

I am having issues as well with my Toshiba Tecra S1 there was a patch issued that was suposed to remap the irq's but it didn't work I disabled bluetooth and still no go. It realy pissses me off that Microsoft thinks it can just do sh%# like this and just not care at all. I plan on using my support at Toshiba to get out of this one but they are currently no on the clock so looks like tomarrow they will get a call from me.

P.S. Which channel should my router be set too?

I notice diffrent times and results when I switch channels by default my linksys router was set to 6.

Which is the best?

Thanks

Thrax

I generally prefer channel 11, but the radio white noise of your area will determine what's best for you.

b0wz

Another good tool, is Network Stumbler, lets you see who all is on, and what channels they are using, got so bad in my hood, on 802.11 b/g, I finally bailed out to the 5ghz band running sp2 on all machines, but the linux box.