Can anyone help? LAN driver/device caused my computer to crash.

robertsaunders,

What the Microsoft reply is suggesting is that the drivers for the Dell wireless card in your system aren't current, and need to be updated. How to do that is discussed in the Dell Support link they sent you in the section entitled "Download a File According to the System or Component Type".

You can also download drivers from Dell Support using the "Product Support/Downloads & Drivers" link at the top left corner of the Forum window.

Without more details about your system, including which Inspiron model you have, what operating system it's running, what service packs are installed for that operating system, what network adapters are installed in the machine, a bit more detailed description of what was in the error message displayed when the crash occured, and what changes were made to the system before the problem began, that's about as specific as anyone can get. You may find this link illustrating a Windows XP crash message helpful. What's specifically needed from the crash message is the entire contents of the two lines beginning with three asterisks in the image (under "Technical information").

Jim

Thank you Jim.

I have uploaded the exact error message to: http://www.rodneysaunders.clara.net/error.jpg

 My computer is a dell inspiron 5100 and I am running windows XP pro.

My computer seems to crash with this message about 2x a month, and has done ever since I've had it (2 years). It usually goes about a month without happening and then happens twice in fairly quick succession.

Any further advice that you could give me would be very much appreciated.

Rob

Rob,

Thanks for the picture of the crash screen! "bcmwl5.sys" is indeed part of the drivers for several different Dell wireless adapters. The name comes from the fact that the wireless chipset on the adapters is made by Broadcom, hence "bcm".

It would be better to know exactly which Dell wireless card you have in your 5100, but if it's any of the ones listed below, the same download handles all of them:

Dell TrueMobile 1400 Internal Dual-band WLAN Card , TrueMobile 1300 Internal b/g MPCI, TrueMobile 1300 b/g PCMCIA, Wireless 1350(b/g)WLAN miniPCI Card, Wireless 1450 (a/b/g) Dual-Band WLAN miniPCI Card, Wireless™ 1350 WLAN (b/g) PC Card, _Wireless (US) WLAN Network Adapter Card, Wireless 1370 (b/g)WLAN MiniPCI Card, Wireless 1470 (a/b/g) Dual-Band WLAN miniPCI card, v.3.100.35.1 / 3.100.41, A06
Release Date: 03/18/2005

If the wireless driver version that's currently installed is older than the versions and dates listed above, download the new one, and follow the instructions given in the download page to install it. Note that the version is for the US only. If you need a non-US version, you can locate it through the "Product Support/Downloads & Drivers" link at the top of the Forum page.

Jim

Rob,

The differences between US and UK wireless drivers involve the regulatory wireless channel range. The US permits channels 1-11, and (if I recall right!) the UK range is 1-13. But I've encountered another situation where the US wireless drivers simply didn't work at all on a UK system, so I wouldn't suggest trying that.

It sounds as if you may not have quite followed Dell's instructions. You said you disabled the 1300, but they said to uninstall the driver completely, then boot to normal mode, and let XP re-detect the drivers. Try uninstalling the wireless driver completely, then reboot, and see if re-detection, and hopefully reconfiguration of the driver, changes the symptom.

Stepping back a bit, did this problem begin suddenly? Were there any hardware or software changes made to the system right before the problem began that could have triggered the problem? If not, the board itself may have failed in some way. Can the problem be prevented, for example by having no wireless signals from an access point or router within range of the system? I ask that because while searching Google for BCMWL5 problems, I encountered one case where the problem only happened if the card received an 802.11b signal, but not if an 802.11g signal was received.

I checked the Broadcom Web site, and they state that they do not provide drivers for the OEM chipsets such as the one used on the TM1300. So they're not an alternative source of UK driver downloads. I'm verysurprised that Dell's UK support site doesn't have them available.

(edit) I may have found drivers at Dell's European Support site. I had to check under "Previous Versions" before I found them. Here's the description:

Release Title:

Network: Dell _Wireless (Except US,Japan) WLAN Network Adapter Card, TrueMobile 1300 b/g PCMCIA, TrueMobile 1300 Internal b/g MPCI, TrueMobile 1400 Internal Dual-band WLAN Card , Wireless 1350(b/g)WLAN miniPCI Card, Wireless 1370 (b/g)WLAN MiniPCI Card, Wireless 1450 (a/b/g) Dual-Band WLAN miniPCI Card, Wireless 1470 (a/b/g) Dual-Band WLAN miniPCI card, Wireless™ 1350 WLAN (b/g) PC Card, Driver, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Multi Language, Multi System, v.3.100.35.1 / 3.100.41, A06

File Name: R94825.EXE (16 MB)

File Date: 15/03/2005

File Format: Hard-Drive

Download this driver unless you reside in United States or Japan. This release supports the Dell Wireless 1350, 1370, 1450 series, and Dell TrueMobile 1300, 1400 series MiniPCI and PC Card devices (not USB).

Here's the link for that file.

(edit #2) I found the same thing to be true at the US download link I initially posted. If you click on "Previous Versions", all the non-US ones are listed! Very odd...

Jim

Message Edited by jimw on 06-03-2005 05:24 PM

Message Edited by jimw on 06-04-2005 12:22 PM

Thanks for your reply again Jim. I did repsond to this but it doesn't appear to have been added so maybe I forgot to click submit or something.

Anyway, in answer to you quesiton, the problem has occurred ever since I bought my computer (about 2 years ago). I happens about twice a month, typically I might go about 4 weeks without it happening and then it might occur twice within 2 or 3 days.

The reason I didn't uninstall the driver was twofold:

1) I had v little confidence in the dell support adivce, given that I appeared to have been directed to the wrong driver, and I am concerned that if I uninstall my drivers and the new driver doesn 't work, I will be left without interent access. Would I be able to use system restore to get them back after uninstalling?

2) When I tried to uninstall the first driver on the list, it came up with a message saying that it had failed to uninstall it because it was needed to restart my computer.

 

I haven't tried running the system without the wireless card for a prolonged time because I need it for just about everyting I do on the computer.

 

Since you reply, I have received another email from Dell support, which states, "The driver version that I sent in my previous mail will work for UK as well. Please do download the drivers."

 

Any further advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Whilst I am keen to resolve this problem, the last thing I want to do is end up without access to my wireless network.

 

Rob

Rob,

You indeed had described the history of the problem before. I wanted to be sure there wasn't some pattern to the failures that might shed more light on its possible origins. Unfortunately, there really isn't such a pattern, other than the distressing longevity of the problem!

Microsoft have greatly increased the "safety" of certain update operations like driver installation by adding the System Restore and Driver Rollback features to XP. But even with those, there's no absolute guarantee of a problem-free driver installation, so you should always be prepared for the possibility of having to recover the system and your data from an initially unbootable state after an update. Manually creating and testing a restore point before installing the new driver should minimize the risk. Also note that "bluescreen" system crashes may leave damage to the filesystem in their wake. In the very rare cases when I have to do a forced restart of a Microsoft system, or have experienced a bluescreen crash, I always run "chkdsk /f" before resuming normal use of the machine.

Note that the installation instructions for the wireless driver I cited in a previous post don't mention uninstalling the previous version of the driver before updating it. I have no experience with XP driver updates, but I've updated the Truemobile 1150 driver on my Win2K laptop successfully by just installing the newer copy over the existing copy. But since XP has the system restore feature, I would indeed create and test a manual restore point before updating the wireless drivers.

Which file (by name - the one in the link I posted is R94825.EXE, or by URL) did Dell Support suggest you install? I'll see if I can find the one that Dell Support suggested, and see if I can determine what the differences between the two might mean.

I agree that it's best to get a "second opinion" regarding advice concerning critical installations - that's one of the benefits of the open format of the Dell Community Forums. While normal etiquette suggests that others not post in a thread, if there seems to be a problem developing with advice the original poster is receiving that could cause severe problems, it's likely that someone will take note of that and either post to the thread or send the responder a message explaining the potential risk if the responder's advice is followed.

There's another fallback path if the update were to result in a non-functional wireless adapter. That would be to obtain a USB or (better still) PC card wireless adapter in case problems arise.

Jim

Rob,

Sheesh. That's clearly annotated as the US ONLY version of the release, just like I'd noted earlier!

Jim

Rob,

As I'm sure you appreciate, that's a hard question to answer, because I can't really assess all the things that go into an analysis of the risks from your perspective. One of the elements is how difficult it would be to recover from one of several levels of having the update fail. They range from the card driver still crashes afterward, the system crashes as soon as the card driver initializes, to the system won't even boot. It takes planning and ingenuity to make sure you're as ready as you need to be (note relative risk judgement there!). Another thing I can't assess is your level of experience with potentially messy things like problems with system updates and recovering from system crashes. How comfortable are you that you could recover no matter what software problem results?

I've reviewed some of the trouble reports found by searching Google for bcmwl5.sys blue screen, and there were many in mid to late 2004. Clearly the drivers have been updated since then, and some of the reports indicate that getting a later version of that file, even though it wasn't available yet from their system vendor, resolved the problem. I also searched the Dell forums for bcmwl5 with no board or time limits, and found only one relevant thread. It's here, and describes a crash involving bcmwl5.sys and a TM 1300 - but it's from late December 2003! There was only a "me too!" reply in that thread.

So it's likely that the driver problem has been fixed. But you've got to be the judge of whether or not you want to proceed with the update.

Jim

Rob,

Congratulations! WHEW!!!

I'm glad everything worked, albeit not quite the way Dell's directions said it would. I'm also relieved that the US version is functional. As I said earlier, I've encountered one case where that wasn't true. The channel and power regulatory differences ought to be able to be stored in some data tables, and those should be the only differences.

Hmmm...Versions...

Non-US:

File Name: R94825.EXE
File Date: 15/03/2005
Driver Version: v.3.100.35.1 / 3.100.41, A06

US:

File Name: R94827.EXE
File Date: 03/15/2005
Driver Version: v.3.100.35.1 / 3.100.41, A06

Other than the date format difference, they seem quite similar!

Anyway, now you're in the statistically mandated waiting period. Hopefully there won't be any more blue screens.

Jim

Rob,

Oh dear...two steps forward, one step back. :smileysad: There have been other reports of problems with signal strength loss after driver updates, but I don't recall that any of those pertained to the TM 1300! I'll search for other posts about the 1300 here and in the Wireless Networking board, and will post back if I spot anything. You might also want to see if you can find anything in those boards.

Also check to see whether the driver update changed the power settings for the adapter. If it did, set them back to the maximum value.

Jim