PCTech Forums

OK, so I took the wireless nic out of my comp (so I know it works), and put it in another computer I just reformatted. The new system is running stable, vista 32 home premium, and everything loads up fine.

But here is the problem. After I connect via the d-link dwa-542 wireless nic it crashes, hard, after 30-60 seconds. No blue screen, not shut down, a series of diagonal lines appears on the monitor and all input devises are frozen. The system is locked until I do a hard power down. If I boot it back up everything runs fine, until the MOMENT I connect via the wireless nic. But it occcurs only after connected and there is successful traffic.

I tried different drivers, a different pci slot, and different wireless control software. Now I'm stumped.

Please, I need to fix this asap. Any wisdom would be appreciated.

What OS is on the first PC , same Vista 32? If not, make sure the wireless card is Vista compatible.

You can try remove the wireless card away from the 2nd PC and install the latest chipset driver on the 2nd PC that you have reformatted. Must reboot the 2nd PC after chipset installation.

From the 2nd PC windows, install the wireless driver again after reboot.

What mainboard is on your 2nd PC and what exact model number is your wireless card? you may need to look for the incompatible hardware issue as well.

Hope this helps!
Bill

I thnk that may be of help, I will cetainly look into it.

Both systems use vista 32-bit, but I didn't think to update the system board (likely a rookie mistake) and that sounds like a great idea. The nic is a d-link dwa-542, and I'll post the make of the system board tomorrow if I am still having troubles.

I have no reason to believe the card was damaged in the transfer (I was grounded while handling it) but if it was, could that cause a malfunction as severas I describe? what could cause a malfunction of that magnitude?

Thanks for your reply, Testcard

Sounds more like driver compatability issues. As stated before, may want to update chipset drivers or bios even. Could be something slot related.

D-Link to the rescue!! The manufacturer, in response to my e-mail, sent me new drivers that work great. Runs perfectly now.

A huge thanks to both of you for trying, you guys rock too.

"Both systems use vista 32-bit"

Although a little weird that both PC running same OS but the same LAN card work on one but not the other, glad you got your Lan card working using the new driver on the other PC.

Cheers!
Bill