TrueMobile 1180 Mini PCI driver problems - freezes and blue screens

I have had the exact same problems as you, but am waiting for a solution (i.e. update drivers) from anywhere... I am running dual-boot WinXP and Win2K and it freezes both my OSs.  Dell, you can help anytime now.

I spoke with Dell yesterday and they're sending me a new card. After I get it installed I'll post the results. (I have a hunch that there's nothing wrong with the card. )

I had the exact same problem on an 8200 2 days old.  It happened twice, locked the whole system up solid.  After rebooting the system detected two new "PCI Devices" and wanted the software for those (what ever they were).  In Device Manager there was a yellow exclamation mark over the 1180 Truemobile Wireless card, and not I did (including reloading the drivers) seemed to work.  Even after uninstalling in Device Manager and going into BIOS after a reboot, somtimes it would detect the wireless card and sometimes it wouldn't.  When I diabled the internal wireless and popped in an Orinoco Gold PCMCIA Wireless Card everything worked fine.  Even the onboard integrated NIC work.  After Tech Support twice (they were helpful) and a couple days of trying to fix the issue I finally called and requested an new exchange.  Sorry, but at $2.8k everything should work.  Tech Support did say it could be the internal card, the seating of the card or possibly the MB.  Anyway, I hope this next one works but if it doesn't then it goes back and a full refund will be requested.  And I like Dell, maybe I should have gotten the 1150 card instead of the 1180, from all the threads it seems the 1180 has the issues.  Good luck.

Bill 

I too have had the same problem on two brand new 8200's with the 1180 card.  What I find very interesting is that I can place the two computers side by side and they will blue screen at exactly the same moment.  I have an exchange in the works and I hope this resolves it.

I disabled the 1180 and put a Linksys card in the card slot and the computer works fine.  Is Dell aware of this problem?  Their tech support people seem to be in the dark.

I don't know if they qre in the dark on this or not, I would think not because there certainly should be plenty of tech support calls placed as I did twice.  If this is a common problem then that means my new exchange replacement (due to arrive in a couple days) is going to experience the same problem........ugg.  That means I'll have to go through all the same procedures again.  It appears no one is having the BSOD's with the 1150 card.  Mine is so messed up now that the system somtimes recognizes the card and sometimes it doesn't, when it does it also detects two additional unknown PCI devices....two with red x's and the 1180 with a yellow exclamation mark.  When I install a wireless Orinoco Gold PCMCIA card all is fine.  I have the Linksys BEFW11s ver1 wireless router and modified SSID.  I just want the system to work the way it's supposed to out of the box.  It worked just fine for two days and then it all started.  If it is a driver issue (which I think it might be) I really hope they post a fix soon as I would hate to send the second one back, but why spend $2,800 for a system that doesn't work as ordered.  I mean I shouldn't have to disable some new hardware and use a PCMCIA card I already have, if I had wanted that I wouldn't have ordered the system with the 1180.  And I like Dell and their systems, I have three.  Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm, bummer.

Bill

Odd.  I have the 1180 MiniPCI in my machine, but it's an Inspiron 4150.  All posters here who mentioned these problems have 8200s.  I imagine there is some compatibility problem between the two but what it could be escapes me, as well as why it would work fine in a 4150...

Gen An,  Interesting.......out of curosity what OS are you running and any OS patches installed?

Thanks,

bg

To all customers:

Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum.

Dell is aware of this issue and currently looking into a resolution.  When a solution is found, I will post it here.  Please continue to work on this collectively so that the solution may be found quickly.

Bob T,  That's certainly good news that Dell is aware that there is a common problem related to the Truemobile 1180 card.  However, I just received my new Laptop exchange and now leery of starting it up in fear I will start experiencing the same issues.  I would've reordered with an 1150 card but I don't think that works on an exchange and I think everything must be the same as originally ordered.  I guess I could shut down the LAN, fire up the new Laptop and disable the 1180 and wait for a fix.  I think I'll gamble and hit the go button and see what happens.  Please hurry up so I don't have to go through any more grief.  I was wondering if the XP SP's had anything to do with it, you know like changing anything in the registry to bump the 1180 ?

Thanks for your post..

bg

 

Well, I finally got my replacement 1180 card today. (I never got the first one they said they'd send. I had to call back and make a second request. Even then, it took 2 days. So much for overnight express...) I installed it this morning. So far, I've experienced one freeze - I had the 8200 in the port replicator and I closed the display. I noticed that the power light didn't indicate that it had gone into standby mode. After a couple of minutes I opened the display - it was dark and the machine was locked up. I restarted and I've been working with for the rest of the day without any problems. We'll see how it goes from here. I'll post an update in a couple of days (or sooner if I have problems). I'm not optimistic - I think this is a driver issue and all I've done is replace one perfectly good    card with another.

I hear ya overlyk.....if it does it too many times it will detect additonal PCI devices and you'll be hard pressed to get it configured correctly.  Sometimes my bios would detect the 1180 enabled, sometimes not detected it and othertimes detect it but was disabled.  Maybe it was the controller.  Anyway I received my new exchange machine today and in fear of going through all the same problems I intentionally killed the LAN (wireless router) before firing up the Laptop just to check it all out.  I think I will disable the 1180 in device manager and use my Orinoco Gold PCMCIA until a fix is discovered but that's a bum way of using a new wireless machine.  What OS are you running and did you notice these BSOD and total lockups after installing any WIN patches?  just curious  cause I have the right 1180 drivers and they were installed.  Trying to figure out what's doing all the bumpin.  Maybe you should've asked for the 1150 card ....doesn't seem to be any issues with those.

bg

bgoodz, I'm running WinXP Pro SP1. I had BSOD and lockups both before and after installing Win patches. It still seems to me that this points to the 1180 driver. It's been ~24 hours since I put the new card in and I've only had the one lockup... tick, tock...

Overlk...thanks for the update and keep us posted.  I was curious because mine started soon after installing XP Pro SP2 but that now sounds like it was a coincindence.  I should have ordered the 1150 card but sale inferred the 1180 might be a better option related to distance.  I guess I should try the new exchanged wireless system to see what happens but I really don't want to go through all the hassles until Dell hopefully posts a fix.  Right now I have the LAN turned off so I could start the new system and check everything out, maybe I'll diable the 1180 and use the Orinico PCMCIA .....I'm gun shy at this point after spending numerous hours of my own and a couple with Dell Tech, not to mention the system exchange routine (the system exchange did go very smooth).

Keep us posted..

bg

I have an 8200 with an 1180 and have also been suffering from many freeezes (50+) and a couple of Blue Screens from the time that I turned the machine on.   When the card has not crashed it functions perfectly with a Dell 1184 router with WEP enabled.  The machine is wonderful with the 1180 disabled on a wired network.   I am running XP Home w/SP1.

The error always looks like this in the event log after the machine crashes:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: BCM43XX
Event Category: None
Event ID: 5005
Date:  12/8/2002
Time:  7:27:18 AM
User:  N/A
Computer: LAP1
Description:
\DEVICE\{405891A4-3F6B-49BF-AD12-5E04E09C3C12} : Has encountered an internal error and has failed.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 00 00 04 00 02 00 5c 00   ......\.
0008: 00 00 00 00 8d 13 00 c0   ....�..À
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ........
0028: 1b 00 00 00               ....   

Dell Tech Support History:

1) Reinstall the 1180 driver
2) Remove the LAN Bridge????
3) Replace the 1180 card

I had to wait about 2 weeks to get a replacement card from Dell.  Of course, swapping cards had no effect.  I was so relieved when I saw this thread, as Dell support had told me that the next step would be to rebuild my machine.  Now I will sit tight and wait for the driver fix.  It would be nice if Dell would post an ETA for this.

I am wondering if this problem is triggered by other wireless networks or some kind of radio interference.  There are usually one or two other SSID's listed as available networks in my location.

After all of the time I have already waisted on this, I think it would be fair if Dell gave me an extra year of support!

Note to Dell: DPS # (Service Request #):030701158

---

@doctorjay wrote:

I have an 8200 with an 1180 and have also been suffering from many freeezes (50+) and a couple of Blue Screens from the time that I turned the machine on.   When the card has not crashed it functions perfectly with a Dell 1184 router with WEP enabled.  The machine is wonderful with the 1180 disabled on a wired network.   I am running XP Home w/SP1.

The error always looks like this in the event log after the machine crashes:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: BCM43XX
Event Category: None
Event ID: 5005
Date:  12/8/2002
Time:  7:27:18 AM
User:  N/A
Computer: LAP1
Description:
\DEVICE\{405891A4-3F6B-49BF-AD12-5E04E09C3C12} : Has encountered an internal error and has failed.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 00 00 04 00 02 00 5c 00   ......\.
0008: 00 00 00 00 8d 13 00 c0   ....�..À
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ........
0028: 1b 00 00 00               ....   

Dell Tech Support History:

1) Reinstall the 1180 driver
2) Remove the LAN Bridge????
3) Replace the 1180 card

I had to wait about 2 weeks to get a replacement card from Dell.  Of course, swapping cards had no effect.  I was so relieved when I saw this thread, as Dell support had told me that the next step would be to rebuild my machine.  Now I will sit tight and wait for the driver fix.  It would be nice if Dell would post an ETA for this.

I am wondering if this problem is triggered by other wireless networks or some kind of radio interference.  There are usually one or two other SSID's listed as available networks in my location.

After all of the time I have already waisted on this, I think it would be fair if Dell gave me an extra year of support!

Note to Dell: DPS # (Service Request #):030701158

---

 Drjay.........you can reinstall the drivers until your wear your fingers out, we've tried that. As far as the lan bridge suggestion I've never had one installed and #3 you've been there.    I've never had anyother SSID's listed except mine (live in a small town) and there is no other radio signals operating in my house (i.e. phones, microwaves etc.) so iy again boils down to the message related to the driver.  After Bob T from Dell's posting about Dell looking into it I emailed Bob T and asked the question about ETA or progress, I have yet to receive a response.  As you may have read I requested a replacement machine and have been using that for the last few days with an Orinoco Gold PCMCIA card just to avoid the issues with the 1180 which is a sad thing to do with a brand new machine.  However, I did get bold today and configured the 1180 and it did function correctly.  I only functioned in that mold for about a short while before I  chickened out and disabled and went back to the PCMCIA card.  I mean I'm making allowences in order not to have to send this one back........now how's that for logic?  I'll get braver as I eek up on the 30 day limit then what nust be must be.  I feel for you with the amount of lock ups you have been having.  I've only read about one guy who has had no problems ...yet.  There must be numerous 8200's out there with 1180 cards and I wonder why they are not experiencing any problems?  If it is any consolation to you and an option of your choice, there doesn't appear to be any same issues with the 1150 cards (available and an option when ordering).

Good luck and keep us posted if you receive a fix so I can quit fretting.

bgoodz