Wireless card freezing pc - vista x64

Samfau2

Samfau2

Samfau2

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I have recently bought a D-link G510 pci wireless adapter after reading that the rev C version (which i have) supports vista 64 bit.

However I'm having a few problems. My whole computer sometimes freezes i.e. no mouse movement, sound loops, no hhd activity and i have to restart. This seems to happen when i am performing network intensive tasks such as bittorrent or, another good example is if i open up steam and click the servers button, it will start to refresh the list of servers but will then freeze pretty much instantly.

I had this problem with a previous wireless card but i thought it was just because it was a cheapo unit.

I have tried installing the drivers from the disk and also using some from the D-link.au website that seem to be for specifically for 64bit, i get the same problem with both. Sometimes i think i might have fixed it but soon enough (a few hours or the next day) the prob returns.

Help me out!!

Is this a problem with the card(s), vista x64 or my motherboard??
 
just been searching google to see what I can find for you.

Notice that a number of torrent users report problems with wi fi cards and vista.

couple of suggestions are as follows

I have found the solution, and as many of you will know from my previous posts, I have tried everything known to man.

With Windows Vista x64 certain 3rd party wireless configuration OR information tools will cause the torrent system hang we have all been experiencing.

If you use the Ralink utility, or another utility that loads at startup, remove it from your startup list in control panel. With Vista it will automatically use the built in wireless configuration utility to connect to your wireless access point.

Remove your 3rd party wireless apps people. Strip 'em out, but leave the driver.

Also what firewall are you running. It seems that users are reporting that zone alarm and firewall has issues with torrent software, causing vista to freeze, so that may be something you can look at too. How much Ram does the system have too, as a number seem to report a similar problem, and they solve this by reducing system ram to under 3gb. just another avenue to explore


In addition found this too


I think I have solved this problem. It has been haunting me for more than a year, and it seems to be a common problem with people who (1) are downloading torrents (but have no problem with direct peer to peer such as Soulseek) (2) Have XP or Vista installed (i think from XP service pack 2 onwards) and (3) Have a wireless modem.

There seems to be some kind of conflict between XP, torrent and wireless modem drivers when the torrent tries to access the DHT network. Some modems have updated drivers but not all of them do - mine doesn't. One option -apparently - is to swop your USB to modem cable with an ethernet/network to modem cable. Another option - apparently - is to disable hyperthreading in the BIOS. (For some reason, I can't get into my BIOS menu so I couldn't try this).

But the easiest option simply to switch off DHT networking in your torrent client (utorrent, bitcomet etc). I did this about three days ago and haven't had a crash yet, after constantly crashing on two different machines for more than a year.

I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure that this might a universal solution and I haven't seen one yet.
SO - the SIMPLEST WAY TO STOP SYSTEM FREEZE WITH TORRENTS is to make sure the "Enable DHT Network" checkbox in your Torrent Agent is unticked. This will mean that thinner torrents might download more slowly but I haven't had any speed problems - but then I don't have a very fast connection.

Sincerely hope that work for everyone. Inexplicable system freezes are sooooo frustrating.
 
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Thanks a lot ill try some of the steps in your post.

The thing with my problem is that its not just torrents. When i start up online games like team fortress 2 or left 4 dead it freezes as soon as it loads. Also, in steam, if i click the servers button and it starts to compile the list of servers it freezes too.

I only use the windows firewall but do have 4gb of ram. Ill try it with less and see if that solves anything.
 
first thing i tried was removing a 2gb stick of ram as id had problems before with bluescreens until i upped my northbridge voltages.

So far no freezes. I used my little test of refreshing server lists in steam and it worked perfectly.

However, it has worked ok on the odd occassion, as i mentioned theres been times when i think ive fixed it and then it returns, so we'll see how it goes.

Nice shout tho mate, could have done the trick.
 
I have same wireless network card for my parents XP machine which has been working daily for 3 months without any crashes. However the PC isn't used for bit torrent, nor gaming.

Obviously as I use a diff OS, this might not be much help. However, one of the suggestions above says to only install the base driver and not the supplied software. This is the case with my XP machine as I used windows to manage the wireless.
 
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yeah, the card is only compatible with vista 64 bit if you download the driver from the australian d-link website.

Then you just have to install the card in vista using the driver files so there aren't any other utilities or system files installed.
 
ok well if it works with just the 2gb ram, then we are still not solving the problem, but only given you a short term fix.

Done some more investigation and every site I've read where people have a similar problem to yourself, seems to involve the Ralink chipset, which apparently is used in the wi fi card you have. Now it would appear that there are new drivers for the chipset, that ralink have, that not all network card manufacturers have as the latest available for downloads, so this may be something work investigating further, as those who have this driver seem to be reporting some success.

cant give you a link to where I read it due to competitor rule but im sure a google search will bring the forum up :)
 
hi again, thanks for you help mate.

Do these new ralink drivers support vista x64? Care to pm the link to me?

So far here are my results from testing. In each case i simply boot up and try refresh the steam server list.

1. single 2gb stick - everything fine, refreshed list and played tf2 for half an hour no problems.

2. retried both 2gb sticks (4gb total) - instant crash when clicking server button.

3. both 2gb sticks with northbridge voltage upped from 1.2v to 1.3v - no crashes so far.

Things are looking hopeful but i wouldnt be suprised if it sprung a sudden crash on me despite the recent sucesses

EDIT: just froze with 4gb and altered voltages, still seems ok with just 2gb though.
 
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I would remove the wireless PCI card and test your onboard NIC with an ethernet cable to your router/modem with 4GB of ram installed and see if you still get the crash then. That way you can rule out the wireless PCI card as being the problem if your PC still crashes.
 
ill read through that thread, might provide some useful info.

I can try with an ethernet cable later put ill have to move my pc downstairs to get to my router. I'm fairly certain it will work fine with ethernet, I had the same problem with my last wireless card and for a while I used my laptop as a bridge with an ethernet cable running from my pc to laptop and then my laptop connecting to the router via wifi, this worked just fine

And no im not overclocking at all.
 
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ive just found out that this is drastically affecting my internet performance, even with just 2gb installed i only get about 1.5meg download speeds whereas my laptop gets around 6/7 meg.
 
If you're not overclocking then why are you upping the Northbridge voltage?

As for the internet performance - is your laptop wireless as well? Try a wired connection - it will help eliminate whether the wireless card is even at fault.
 
that shouldnt affect your internet speed tho, it may give a perceived reduction of speed, thru the use of various programs like IE etc, but your actual link shouldnt be any different.

When you had the 4gb installed what speed did you get on that pc.

Also as suggested by Sentinal, you need to test network with a wired connection, must admit I presumed this had already been tried. I still think from everything I've read its a chipset issue with the wireless card, but obviosuly the more potential issues that can be confirmed as eliminated the better
 
FWIW I just bought a partially built PC from Chillblast and they said they have yet to find a Wireless card that worked reliably with Vista and so were not putting them in their PC's
 
Sentinal_ said:
If you're not overclocking then why are you upping the Northbridge voltage?

As for the internet performance - is your laptop wireless as well? Try a wired connection - it will help eliminate whether the wireless card is even at fault.
Click to expand...


My system bluescreens with the full 4gb installed unless i up the northbridge voltage,

About to try wired connection to router, gotta take everything downstairs first, so will repot back with results from that.

Regarding performance, i think ill forget about that it seems to be back to normal now so was probably just my router playing up, which it is known to do (orange livebox = pure crap)
 
Ok here is an update on recent developments.

After uninstalling and removing all traces of the drivers the reinstalling and fiddling with a few things i have somehow managed to get it stable with 4gb installed, i.e. it hasn't frozen...YET. I wouldn't be at all suprised if it started to soon but at the moment i haven't been able to get it to freeze for some time.

However, a strange new problem has presented itself.

I've moved my rig downstairs so its only 2m from the router, allowing me connect via ethernet. I have been testing for freezing and running speedtests for each of the following 4 situations.

1) 4gb ram installed, wireless connection
2) 2gb ram installed, wireless connection
3) 2gb ram installed, wired connection
4) 4gb ram installed, wired connection


Now, download speeds seem fine for all 4 scenarios and the internet is fairly fast even using the problematic 1st scenario. This is pretty much ideal so im not that fussed if i cant get the following little issue sorted out.

In all but the 1st scenario (wireless + 4gb), upload speeds are registering in speed tests (using a number of different websites) at around 500 kb/s, which is good.

But, when using a wireless connection with the full 4gb installed they barely scrap 100 kb/s.

I will start a speed test, the download section will go smoothly and register a respectable speed, then when it moves onto upload it just hangs at 0 kb/s and doesn't start for some time, after about a minute it finally gets going and jumps around from about 0 - 100 kb/s, sometimes hanging for a few seconds on a certain value and then eractically jumping to another, never really reaching anything over 100 kb/s.

I have no idea how to start trying to sort this out now so any help would be appreciated.

With any luck the freezing problem may be gone for good but if it returns, maybe its somehow related to the issue I am having now.

As I said, this upload problem doesn't happen with the wireless if i take out the second 2gb stick and doesnt happen at all when wired regardless of the ram installed.

NOTE: this thread might want to be moved to networks and internet connectivity as its straying away from just a hardware issue.
 
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as I said earlier I still think its an issue with the wireless card and incompatability between using Vista and 4gb of ram, other than my previous suggestions, it will be up to someone a lot wiser than me to help here I think :(
 
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