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Blue screen crash with latest Intel WiFi 5300 driver
I get (repeated it twice) the blue screen of death when trying to update to the latest driver for Intel Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300 that's listed on Dell's support website for my computer (9/21/2009, tic157696, A04, file R227037.exe). After the blue screen and auto reboot, the wireless connections have dissapeared, and the roll back driver button is greyed out in device manager....
Dell, please test this and update the driver to a safe state!
The reason for trying the update in the first place is that with the driver my computer shipped with, the WiFi connection does not always connect after power up. It seems to timeout , so I need to disable and enable the WiFi STA to fix it every time it happens. Irritating, but no blue screen, I guess.
I have a two week old Dell Studio 1737, 500 GB HD, 6 GB of RAM, and Vista 64-bit.
PudgyOne
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October 3rd, 2009 03:00
BC42,
I have a Studio 1737 that came with a 5100 wireless card. Did you try using the driver from Intel's Website?
If that didn't work, then did you try using system restore and go back to the time before you installed the drivers?
Do you have many files and folders on the computer? If not, maybe consider using the Dell Factory image to start over.
Restoring Your Computer´s Software to the Factory Settings
Rick
BC42
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October 3rd, 2009 11:00
Yes, the first time I got the blue screen I did a complete F8 restore from the advice by Dell support.
"The driver is fine as it is posted on the Dell website. Something just went wrong, you need to do a system restore and try it again."
Well, I tried it again and it failed a second time.
What was surprising was that the support engineer recommended another driver as the latest one, different from the one posted the Dell website, but that one could not load "Unable to downgrade driver to earlier revision". The engineer did not see the driver on the Dell webite among his support docs. Granted, the driver is pretty new (9/21/2009), but they should know, eh?
I was also adviced by the Dell support engineer not to use the drivers from the Intel website, and they were not tested and approved by Dell?!
I tried to get someone at Dell take a serious look at this driver issue. I mean, my laptop is factory default, except for some automatical Windows updates. It should be fairly easy to for Dell support to repeat. (Anyone from Dell reading this, please check).
Since then, I did one more experiment (after yet another F8 restore....sigh): After the third time blue screen, I just ran the driver install once more. And this time there was no blue screen. On the other hand there was no "finished" message either, so I am not sure how well the update stuck. At least the device manager now reports all WiFi connections and they seem to be running OK. What more is, is that my WiFi connection now always starts up after power down which was my original reason for the update! I am just worried that the install is unstable or has some unknown side effects with other applications.
Anyway, I will try what I have now for a while and see what happens. If encounter instability, I will just have to go back to F8 restore again.
So far, so good. But it would be great if Dell could come out with a new certified driver.
Does anybody know how I can email Dell my core dump data. The silly email support option is just a limited form.
Thanks