I've done a clean install of windows 2000 on a sony pcg-
sr17k. Using the 3Com card for WiFi access, I was a
happy camper, until the system told me I had yanked the
card without properly stopping it first. That message
came as a surpise, since I had not ejected the card nor
even jostled the system.
While I fear I have a hardware issue here, I really
haven't been able to pin the issue down much in terms of
root cause yet. So I was hoping to get to the bottom of
this with some help from the usenet community.
After telling me the card had been inadvisably removed
without having been stopped first, I've then been
presented with re-auto detection of the wrong card.
Specifically, the found new hardware wizard would tell me
it's found a new device (when in fact it is really just
terribly confused about the same 3com card).
So what is happening that is casueing the computer to
think its pcmcia card has changed when in fact it
hasn't? One thing I thought of, was I know the 3Com card
has some power management features. Perhaps when the
3com card goes into it's own power saving mode, the sony
bios is getting confused? I could try turning that off
from the 3com drivers.
After this pcmcia train wreck at the windows level
happens, I'm unable to properly get the system to see the
wifi card until after a restart. Another piece of
interesting info, when restarting, if I leave the card
in, the system posts a PCI conflict error during POST.
Pulling the card, and letting the system boot, allows
everything to boot normally. I can then insert the card
with windows 2000 loaded, and it properly detects the
card and brings up the wifi.
From the Bios PCI error on reboot, I get the feeling the
system (windows?) is managing its resources in term of
irqs and interrupts and what not, and somehow creating a
conflict such that the system needs the card ejected to
refresh at a hardware level.
Could be red herring, but I wonder if this PCMCIA sony cd-
rom related patch is casuing these problems with the
pcmcia wifi card..
http://ciscdb.sel.sony.com/perl/swu-
download.pl?template=EN&upd_id=852&os_id=6&mdl=PCGSR17K
I installed that sony patch assuming it was in my best
interest.
Unfortunately, the last time the system told me the card
had been improperly removed, I figured it was actually no
longer visible to the system and yanked it.. obviously
it was still visibly, becasue upon yanking the card, the
system immediately blue screened and my user profile was
seriously damaged in the resulting crash. Looks like I'm
left with a .bak of my profile that resided in
C:\Documents and Settings, and I have no idea what
happened to the registy (if the OS scrapped it and
started fresh) My Maxthon install isn't working now..
I'm sure I could re-install, but now I'm wondering if I
should just reformat. Can things from my damaged user
profile be safely recovered?
-Thanks for any help you can offer,
Ethan
Similar Threads
