Dell XPS M1530 wireless problems

Hi

I recently bought a Dell XPS M1530 (with preinstalled Vista). This
laptop has a Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945 mini card.

I installed Ubuntu 7.10 on it, but the wireless card didn't work very well, often I have to reboot 3 or 4 times to get it up and running. I have found that booting into Vista first, and the do a reboot, somehow wakes up this very sleepy NIC.

I suspect something isn't right in the BIOS since other laptops with Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG doesn't have the problems. On ubuntuforums.org I see other XPS M1530 users having similar problems.

dmesg gives this information: 

dmesg | grep -i 3945

I'd got the following messages:

ipw3945: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945 Network Connection driver for Linux,
1.2.2mp.ubuntu1
ipw3945: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
ipw3945: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection
ipw3945: MAC is in deep sleep!
ipw3945: Unable to int nic

It gets a little better if I add 'noapic' parameter to the kernel during boot (changing
the /boot/grub/menu.lst file).

If I switch to the iwl3945 driver I see the following in dmesg:
iwl3945: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG/BG Network Connection driver for Linux, 1.1.0
iwl3945: Copyright(c) 2003-2007 Intel Corporation
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:0b:00.0 -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:0b:00.0 to 64
wl3945: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection
iwl3945: HARDWARE GONE?? INTA == 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000ffffffff
iwl3945: HARDWARE GONE?? INTA == 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000ffffffff
iwl3945: HARDWARE GONE?? INTA == 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000ffffffff
iwl3945: MAC is in deep sleep!
iwl3945: Unable to int nic
iwl3945: HARDWARE GONE?? INTA == 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000ffffffff
iwl3945: HARDWARE GONE?? INTA == 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000ffffffff
 

My BIOS version is A07.

Regards

slyhne