3945ABG Wireless Card and problems with picture browsing+

Richard,

When you installed Windows 7, did you install the desktop/notebook utility and the chipset drivers first? If not, the rest of the drivers will fail to install. How to Install Drivers in Microsoft® Windows® on Dell Systems If you could not find Windows 7 drivers, did you try downloading the Vista (or XP) drivers and install them in the Compatibility mode?

Rick 

I have to say I didn't, no.  However, all the other drivers I have tried to install have worked successfully.  I installed Win7 then let Windows Update do its thing regarding drivers etc.  Would it not have installed the chipset drivers first anyway? 

Are you suggesting I might have to uninstall then reinstall to fix this? 

I have tried downloading the Vista drivers and installed them in compatability mode, yes.  Same result, unfortunately. 

Richard

Richard,

The chipset drivers and the Desktop/notebook utility usually had the drivers for the devices attached to the computer, like usb ports, webcam, wireless crads, etc. It usually shows to connect the usb devices, which seems strange but the drivers take care of this so it's not an issue.

Vista 32-bit drivers fr Windows 7 32-bit and Vista 64-bit drivers for Windows 7 64-bit, usually work in the Compatibility mode. I have a Dell Studio 1737 that came with Vista Home Premium 32-bit and have installed Vista Home Premium 64-bit and then Windows 7 64-bit and all the devices on Windows 7 installed using this method.  How to Install Drivers in Microsoft® Windows® on Dell Systems

Make sure the wireless adapter is enabled in the BIOS and also look in the device manager and tell if there are any yellow exclaimination marks or red x's. Try running Finding System Information and at the bottom it will tell the network adapters. See if it shows up there.

Rick

Rick

Have taken your advice and found an updated chipset driver from Intel (for Win7), which I've now installed.  Also put the NSS software on the machine. 

As far as I can tell, my machine seems to be 100% up to date for drivers.  However, nothing has changed at all in terms of my basic thumbnail and network drive browsing issues.  If anything, things might even have got a bit worse!  Sometimes it takes a while simply for Explorer to open a folder and display the items inside it, even before I ask to preview the thumbnails. 

I still have this curious phenomenon where file transfers are fast; it's just the browsing that's the problem. 

Device Manager is all clear - no exclamation marks or red crosses.

Just for further information, the browsing problem exists to other machines running Win7 as well as to the network drive. 

Racking my brains here...

Richard

Richard,

After installing the NNS and the chipset drivers, you then need to install the drivers, again for the rest of the items.

Rick

OK, I've had a go at that.  I just reinstalled the 3945ABG driver (13.3.0.137) after installing the NSS and chipset drivers. 

No change.  Thumbnail browsing still ridiculously slow.  And also it now takes an age to do anything with an item.  If I right-click it, then it takes a minute or so for the menu to appear.  If I double-click to open it, it takes 2-3 minutes for the application to open up and then show the photo. 

Do I need to uninstall all the drivers and then reinstall from scratch, do you think? 

Richard

Richard,

Usually when the drivers are not installed in order, just reinstalling them in order seems to work for most of the computers.

Rick

No joy yet I'm afraid.  I uninstalled just about everything and reinstalled from the bottom up.  Before I started installing again I tried to uninstall the chipset software and NSS, but I couldn't figure out how to do that.  So I left those two installed, and ran a reinstall process over them before adding all the other drivers. 

Result - same symptoms as before.  I'm going to try a Repair install of Win7 and see if I can figure out how to install the drivers I want, in the sequence I want!

R

 wetenhr,

No sure if this will help.

How to Do a System Image Recovery in Windows 7

Windows 7 Features: Backup and Restore

Rick

Progress at last. 

The drivers reinstall never did it for me; I think everything was working properly by the looks of things. 

However I did pick up something from another site suggesting that there is an occasional problem in the TCP set-up.  It's to do with the MTU value in the ipv4 settings; if it's set to 1500 (which is the default) it can cause problems with certain devices and network adapters.  Intel's 3945ABG is affected it seems. 

Good news; there is a fix.

- Open a command prompt as administrator

- type 'netsh interface ipv4 show subinterface' and note carefully the exact name of your wireless connection.  For me it was 'Wireless Network Connection'

- type 'netsh interface ipv4 set subinterface "Wireless Network Connection" mtu=1430 store=persistent' (using of course the correct name of your wireless connection)

You should get an 'Ok' response

- Restart

Apparently it's worth experimenting with other mtu values such as 1460 and 1492.  For me 1430 was best.  I haven't a clue what these really do so I have no idea if they can be tuned further. 

So that's the good news.  The less good news is that it still isn't exactly cracking fast.  With an excellent 54 Mbps connection I am loading perhaps 2-3 thumbnails per second (miles better than before) and opening a picture file takes perhaps 5-10 seconds depending on size (typically 2-3 Mb per picture).  This is a lot better than it was but I'd like it to be quicker. 

Further ideas would still be appreciated. 

Richard