Hi Tech Mech heads,


Having purchased a new toshiba notebook with vista home premium, I here the moans already, connecting wirelessy is rather painful. At first everything was ok, it would detect the network and save its settings, but now it wont connect or even struggles to find a network. This behaviour is consistent with other networks also. I have tried enable /disable SSID, turning off firewall, updating wireless adapter driver, enable/ disable wireless adapter. Ethernet connection connects great. The main computer is running XP home edition if that helps. I did a intel adapter test or something and it failed 'radio test'. Oh, and its really slow with the hard drive only half full. Any help or ideas would be great. Thanks in advance....


Phatrolla

This post has been edited by phatrolla: Jan 17 2008, 04:51 AM

Hello Phatrolla,

Sorry you are having Vista Wireless problems with your new machine.

I am not a Wireless geek, but perhaps somewhere on this link may help you to find the answer.

I hope you find some assistance there. Please post back and let us know how you get on.

kind regards,

Hey, i sorted it for now but I dont think its fixed. I disabled the wireless adapter, it took bout 5 min to disable so I shut the comp of while it was disabling. Then restart and what do ya know!! its working now and has been for 2 days!! So.......not really fixed but hey, its a workin.....

Phatrolla

hey phatrolla

I don't know if this is the case with you, but I have had a few similar problems on some new laptops in my work place.
In our cases, it is the Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN adapter that goes bonkers in Vista. It appears that the "N" norm hasn't been "approved" yet and that the adapter has some trouble mantaining a usable link with access points/routers and shows that it is "connected" at 150Mb/s,(especially if you're using the old 11Mb "B" norm), like here:


(sorry for the screen in Portuguese, but that's what i work with )

Usually telling windows to "restart" the adapter (or if your laptop has a switch to manually turn it off and then on again) will solve the problem temporarily.
Recently Vista has identified this as a problem and the "solution finder" tool has recommended to download more recent drivers from intel (it provides the correct link too).
Ever since I installed the newer drivers, things seem to be working beter, though the problem still appears on rare occasions.

hope this helps

i appologize for the words in " " but, as you realize, I work with the PT version of Vista and the words may not be that way in the EN version.

This post has been edited by Ideafix: Jan 21 2008, 02:35 PM

Yeah ideafix, I think thats what its doing. The button to update driver connects to microsoft, I think, not intel in my case. Which specific updates are they? I am keen to try them out but dont want to make the situation worse than it already is. I did the driver update through windows and I have the latest one apparently.

After having several successful days with no problems, I decided to take the notebook to another wireless network and found the same problem. So, I brought it home to its network it should 'remember' and It couldnt connect to that either. After going through the process of disable adapter, restart, enable adapter, then enter in new network passwords it works ok for now. It seems like using multiple networks confuses it and it doesnt want to play with any. Oh... and when the adapter was trying to connect and failing it said 'authenticating wi-fi link' or something similar

Cheers to all those racking their brains on this one....

Phatrolla

This post has been edited by phatrolla: Jan 25 2008, 03:06 AM

hmmm... it's indeed strange that vista's solution finder points you to a Microsoft download and not to one from Intel. This could indicate that your specific problem is not with the adapter...

In any case, this is what it shows in our cases:



And the link it provides to download the driver is this one 4965AGN 11.1.1.0 Drivers

However, a much more recent version is avaliable at Intel 4965AGN 11.5.0.0

And additional tools/downloads for this adapter can be found here Note that these downloads are for Windows Vista only

hope you can sort your problem out...

P.S. - I am posting all these links because as you said that your laptop is new, I assumed that it came with the new 4965AGN adapter. please verify that it is. If you are not sure which model your adapter is, you can download the intel wireless identification tool from here. This tool not only identifies your adapter, but says which driver version you are running and provides a link to the downloads page for that adapter.

This post has been edited by Ideafix: Jan 25 2008, 09:32 AM

Yeah my adapter is the 4965AGN. I downloaded and installed the driver from the link in your post, the most recent one 4965AGN 11.5.0.0. It installed and ran straight away with non problems so after a few days I will see how it behaves. Thanks for your help Ideafix.

Phatrolla

I'm glad I could help

Post back if everything goes well.

I forgot to mention in my previous post that we also had reliability problems in our laptops that had the 4965AGN + Bluetooth combination (even with the 11.5.0.0 drivers).

According to intel, their PROset wireless range of adapters is prone to suffer terribly from interferences from the BT radio, especially if you're using an IEEE 802.11 2,4GHZ router/access point.

A solution is to use updated drivers from the BT device manufacturer (instead of microsoft generic BT drivers) if you need to use both Wifi and BT.

But the ideal is to use the wireless select switch/software and turn off the BT device while using WIFI (in our case this was responsible for a 95% increase in signal stability and the end of dropped connections)