A11 on Inspiron 1525 incompatible w/ Vista SP1?

Bill, If you confirm that the replacement of the Dell card is the solution, please do not forget the users ouside North America. Please tell us how we can all receive an Intell card.

grey-haired, when the PC should go to sleep based on the timer, what happens? Does it

- do nothing,

- display an error message,

- reboot, or

- anything else ?

Thanks.

Yesterday, the computer  crashed during shutdown. When I restarted the laptop it indicated that Windows failed during shutdown and searched for a solution. It then brought me to the webpage for downloading the updated driver and it automatically installed the new driver.

Prior to this update, I was forced to disable sleep mode when shutting the lid. If I let it sleep when shutting the lid it would not wake up again upon reopening the lid (I needed to hold the power button down to force a reboot).

After this driver update I enabled sleep mode when shutting the lid. I found I was able to wake up the computer after shutting the lid and opening it again by hitting the power button (I didn't have to force a reboot).

You can download the updated driver from the following website http://www.marvell.com/drivers/driverDisplay.do?driverId=175

 Just double click on the downloaded file to install it.

Jeiseman may be onto something here. Just after looking at his message Vista wanted to install updates on my Inspiron. I went to the list of updates and saw one download that was optional. Lo and behold it was 'Marvell-Networking Marvell Yukon 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Conroller' update. I selected to install it. I ticked the box to 'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power' on the Dell Wireless 1395 card. Afterwards my computer correctly goes to sleep and does not reboot. This may have fixed the problem. However, one caveat is that this is the third time I thought the problem has resolved only for it to return a few days later. I will keep you posted. But Well Done Jeiseman - this update may solve the problem!

Worth a shot .. But can't see how an updated driver for the ethernet network (wired) card, could solve a problem with the other Dell Wireless card that we've all been having. Would assume both have their own drivers?

Having said that, be nice if this is a solution! 

Hi,

I have the same problem with my one week old Inspiron 1525.

When I close the lid and reopen it, most of the time the laptop reboots. It's very annoying that after 5 months Dell continues to ship with this defect. Can't they adjust the power settings of the wireless card in their image?

I'll try the workaround and hope it works.

I was able to resolve the problem by installing the latest driver for the 'Marvell Yukon 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Conroller'. The latest version of the driver is 10.64.2.3 but the version on the Dell Support website is 10.22.6.3. You can get the latest driver from here: Marvell Driver

Once you install this version you shouldn't have to work around the problem by turning off power management on the wireless controller. I don't think Dell was aware that this was the cause of the problem (which apparently only shows up on some of the units). I sent this information to Dell technical support.

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@gray-haired grandpa wrote:

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@node123 wrote:

Bill, If you confirm that the replacement of the Dell card is the solution, please do not forget the users ouside North America. Please tell us how we can all receive an Intell card.

 

grey-haired, when the PC should go to sleep based on the timer, what happens? Does it

 

- do nothing,

- display an error message,

- reboot, or

- anything else ?

 

Thanks.

---

I have set the display to go off after a few minutes and the sleep function to kick in after 30 minutes. The display turns off at the correct time, but nothing obvious happens after 30 minutes (or longer) as far as sleep mode. When the power button controls sleep mode, the computer goes into sleep mode properly and wakes up when pressing the power button again. As I explained previously, hibernation works OK. I have not experienced the rebooting problem with the Intel card as of yet.

 

Another thing I will try (if the Intel card continues to work OK) is to update the driver software. The current version for the card is dated 2006. Other observations...the Dell wireless WLAN card utility in the Vista control panel no longer functions; the range of the Intel card is as good or slightly better than the Dell card (although this could be related to the weather or something else). 

 

I will continue to keep folks posted. By the way, I am not sure that the Intel card will end up being the recommended solution to the rebooting problem. I am hoping that there can be a software driver update made available for the Dell card that will resolve the issue. 

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Sep 11 Update...

The 1525 performance with the Intel card continues to be mostly good (no rebooting problems), however, there have been several spurious "hiccups". As previously mentioned, I had the power button controlling sleep mode and Fn+F1 controlling hiberation. Last night, the two functions mysteriously switched...when I pressed the power button, the laptop hibernated. I checked the settings in the control panel and sure enough the settings had changed themselves. I reset them to my originals, so we will see what happens.

Another interesting thing is that when the laptop comes out of hibernation, the Intel card does not automatically find my wireless router (the Dell card always did). I don't know if there is some setting on the Intel card that needs to be enabled, but I will take a look. When I initially installed the Intel card, it did not find the router. 

I am hoping the new driver for the wired Marvel ethernet card solves the rebooting problem. I will hold off trying that solution with the Intel card for the time being to avoid multiple variables.

I wonder if the not going to sleep just from the passage of time issue is different from the rebooting issue.  Since they both involved the sleep function I had assumed they were from the same source.  But my computer never goes to sleep by itself on the timer, with or without the power option checked on the network cards.  I did install the new driver from Marvel as suggested, and then reset the power options to allow the computer to turn off the device on both cards.  SO FAR there's been no rebooting (though like others have mentioned, in the past it sometimes took a couple of days for problems to appear), but the computer still does not go to sleep after the proper amount of time elapses.  

The only way I can get my Inspiron to properly go into sleep mode is by hitting the power button.  No matter what I have Fn+F1 set to it causes the laptop to hibernate.  I certainly do not have anything approaching a tech background, but I just don't see how all these problems could caused by the network card or its drivers.  I'm really starting to think there must be more than one issue here.  

Sharon

Again, thanks for this jeiseman. I let windows update install the marvell update and at first it solved the problem (see my message above). But today the problem returned. I saw your message and checked the version windows updated. The version was 10.51.1.9 dated 6/12/07. So I went to the marvel link you provided and installed the latest version 10.64.2.3. The sleep is now working without reboot. I don't know why windows update would send an older version of the driver.

Well, has it been fixed this time? My exprience is that the problem always appears around 48 hours later. We will see this time. How long has it been fixed for you.

I tried the Marvell driver and my machine still reboots after hibernation so it's back to the workaround. It actually did work okay the first time I tried it so I had high hopes but subsequent hibernations rebooted immediately so we're back at square one.

I personally don't think switching out with a new wireless card is going to be the final solution. It's obviously a software issue since Bill B's machine didn't have the problem--but did not have the official 1525 drive image on it. So, it's got to be some software deal.