PCMCIA wireless card insertion -- crash

Question

Hi - I've been using an ORINOCO Silver wireless card for a year without problem. Out of the blue, the computer won't boot properly with the card inserted. Halts at the Windows introduction screen (the one with the moving bar underneath the Windows logo). If I take the card out, all is fine. I have another card and it does the same thing (and the original card works fine in another laptop). Tried reinstalling the ORINOCO software, but no help. Could the PCMCIA slot be bad? Any suggestions very welcome.

Thanks.

speedstep · Answer

WIN2000 SP1 and XP SP1 or higher disable IRQ Routing so that the card may hang. Does it do the same thing if you insert AFTER removing the Card from the device manager and RE-FINDING IT?

arthurstone · Answer

Thanks for answering. I'm using XP. And, Yes, no combination of booting and Inserting before or after works. And the weird thing is that it was working fine for many months, and then, out of the blue, kaput. BTW, the PCMCIA slot comes up as working fine in the system check of it, but I have doubts....

shawz1 · Answer

arthurstone,  did you ever clarify this problem?  I have the exact same problem currently.

speedstep · Answer

@shawz1 wrote:
arthurstone, did you ever clarify this problem? I have the exact same problem currently.

Recently ran across this on an Inspiron 7500 with windows XP.

Inserting a card freezes the machine.

After Enabling PCI to ISA IRQ routing it did not help.

Downloading and instaling WIN98 and disabling parallel and serial ports to free up IRQ's I was able to update the firmware to 8.72 which seems to have solved the problem.

I had to update the firmware from WIN98. XP and the updates kept telling me that there was no way to communicate with the card via the driver.

Used this driver and Firmware with WIN98
ftp://ftp.wavelan.com/pub/software/ORiNOCO/PC_Card/Firmware/R7.0spring2001/

Then got the 8.72 firmware from Proxim.

http://www.proxim.com/support/all/orinoco/software/dl2002-oricli-win-sr-02.html

Follow these steps to install or upgrade the software:
Download the software that corresponds to your computer's operating system.
Use an Unzip utility to extract the files to a folder on your computer.
If performing an upgrade, launch the Client Manager (if installed) and

click File > Disable Radio to disable the adapter.

Close the Client Manager program when finished.

Run Setup.exe (found in the download's root directory) and follow the on-screen instructions to install or upgrade the driver.

Open the Client_Manager folder and run Setup.exe. Follow the on-screen instructions to install or upgrade the Client Manager.

Open the Firmware folder and run WSU10872.exe. Follow the on-screen instructions to update the client firmware.

Launch the Client Manager and click Help > Version Info to confirm that the latest software has been successfully installed.

outback22 · Answer

i have a c600 lat... similar problem... winXP, bios A23... used several different cards.. they worked in the beginning than started losing signal, drop offs... loading card hangs though ejecting card os loads..... though i switched HD to one with win98, worked sporidically than nothing.. does not hang in 98.

is your solution to not use XP and switch to 98?? and then follow your steps??

many thanks... this has been a very irratatiing problem.

speedstep · Answer

My solution was to switch to WIN98 in order to upgrade the cards to Firmware Version 8.72

Then installing the Latest Drivers for the card fixed the hang problem on my inspiron 7500 with XP SP1 and the registry hack for ISA to PCI IRQ Routing.

Now everything works as it should.

Locked Topics – Laptops General

PCMCIA wireless card insertion --> crash

Was this post helpful?