Wireless Internet Hell On Toast!

lonelyhoneybear · 06-02-2005, 03:38 PM

Hellooo All... I’ve been scouring the Internet for a while for anything useful for my little problem, but haven’t turned up anything… hope you guys can help. For months my PC was working beautifully. Once I signed up with the ISP Wanadoo and got a wireless Internet adapter fitted via USB however a very annoying thing has been happening. At completely random intervals my PC will lock up and freeze. Nothing responds at all (Ctl.+Alt.+Del., Refresh, even the Cursor itself) and all I’m left to do is press and hold the secondary power button on the front of the tower unit. This is incredibly annoying, especially when doing important work (even though I auto-save). All the same programmes and software is installed, but now there is the additional Wanadoo software (which is not the problem) and MSN Messenger (again, not the problem) and the PC is not working. Although I do not know what is causing the problem, I know what it is not; trial and error over months has cancelled out numerous causes. All that I can find is that the USB Wireless Network adapter must be doing this. I’m hoping someone out there can help with this insane problem. Here are some of the specs of my PC and hardware:

System Related:
MS Windows XP with Service Pack 1 (Home Edition ’02)
Advent 3000 Series, AMD Athlon 64 Processor, 3200+, 2.00 GHz, 1.00GB of RAM.
Local Disks C+D 300GB

Wanadoo Related:
Wireless Network Adapter – Inventel Model No. UR054g (R01) V1.1

That’s the basics… But if there’s any other information required to help with this problem, please let me know and I’ll post as quickly as possible. I need to figure out some way to avoid this problem, and tonight I'm going to try out a Wireless PCI Card with ONLY the driver required (i.e. none of the intrusive Wanadoo software) instead of the USB adapter. As a student it would be kind of nice to get essays written without this happening, but besides anything else I’m a HUGE Red Sox fan and I’m missing out on the MLB TV subscription I paid for to watch the games!

**JamesO** · 06-03-2005, 04:37 AM

First guess is spyware/malware??

Do you have a firewall? Who's?
Do you have antivirus? Who's?
Have you checked to see if the USB driver is up to date?
Do you have the current XP SP1 up to date?
If you have MS Office, is it up to date?
Do you have any plans to move to XP SP2? If not, why?

Is there anyway you can disconnect the wireless USB and work on something offline for a while and see what happens?

While machine is working: Ctrl, Alt, Del, bring up task manager. Tell us how many processes are operating, what your CPU load is and how much memory is being used.

You may also need to do some house cleaning, but will wait until you respond to first group of questions before any further suggestions.

JamesO

lonelyhoneybear · 06-04-2005, 10:51 AM

Hello all...

Well, I've sorted out the problem with my buddy. It's not spyware, the firewall's fine, the antivirus is a-okay, the USB driver is up to date, SP1 was hunky dory - I had previously used SP2 but I didn't like the IE browsing changes.

Anyhoo... This link solved all my problems; http://www.wanadoo.co.uk/help/id/7118_page2.htm. It seems that after an inundation of emails and phone calls Wanadoo have put a couple of new pages on their website related to this problem. It's been the Inventel USB Wireless Network Adapter all along. Hope this is useful for anybody else with the same problem I had. Cheers everybody...

arnold508 · 08-01-2005, 09:12 AM

Hi lonelyhoney bear

Your problem exactly describes ours, I can't tell you how relieved we were to find your notes. Hoping you can help us a bit more if poss - you are obviously lots more knowledgeable and clued up than we are!

Reading through the prescribed Wanadoo link / fix -

We have a wireless router. Shoud we have an 'ON' button somewhere? What exactly do they mean when they say turn on the third party wireless device? Where would this be located? Or,do we skip this bit?

When we get to the bit that asks us to 'Change Wanadoo Wireless Network Settings' we find we only have the 'General' and 'Advanced' tabs, no 'Wireless Networks' tab to be seen! Does this mean we need to do something else first? Any ideas? We are exasperated and bewildered by the whole thing!

Cheers for anything you can offer, arnold 508

06-02-2005, 03:38 PM	#1 (permalink)
lonelyhoneybear Registered User Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: London Posts: 2 OS: XP	Wireless Internet Hell On Toast! Hellooo All... I’ve been scouring the Internet for a while for anything useful for my little problem, but haven’t turned up anything… hope you guys can help. For months my PC was working beautifully. Once I signed up with the ISP Wanadoo and got a wireless Internet adapter fitted via USB however a very annoying thing has been happening. At completely random intervals my PC will lock up and freeze. Nothing responds at all (Ctl.+Alt.+Del., Refresh, even the Cursor itself) and all I’m left to do is press and hold the secondary power button on the front of the tower unit. This is incredibly annoying, especially when doing important work (even though I auto-save). All the same programmes and software is installed, but now there is the additional Wanadoo software (which is not the problem) and MSN Messenger (again, not the problem) and the PC is not working. Although I do not know what is causing the problem, I know what it is not; trial and error over months has cancelled out numerous causes. All that I can find is that the USB Wireless Network adapter must be doing this. I’m hoping someone out there can help with this insane problem. Here are some of the specs of my PC and hardware: System Related: MS Windows XP with Service Pack 1 (Home Edition ’02) Advent 3000 Series, AMD Athlon 64 Processor, 3200+, 2.00 GHz, 1.00GB of RAM. Local Disks C+D 300GB Wanadoo Related: Wireless Network Adapter – Inventel Model No. UR054g (R01) V1.1 That’s the basics… But if there’s any other information required to help with this problem, please let me know and I’ll post as quickly as possible. I need to figure out some way to avoid this problem, and tonight I'm going to try out a Wireless PCI Card with ONLY the driver required (i.e. none of the intrusive Wanadoo software) instead of the USB adapter. As a student it would be kind of nice to get essays written without this happening, but besides anything else I’m a HUGE Red Sox fan and I’m missing out on the MLB TV subscription I paid for to watch the games!

08-01-2005, 09:12 AM	#4 (permalink)
arnold508 Registered User Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 1 OS: WinXP	Wireless Hell! Hi lonelyhoney bear Your problem exactly describes ours, I can't tell you how relieved we were to find your notes. Hoping you can help us a bit more if poss - you are obviously lots more knowledgeable and clued up than we are! Reading through the prescribed Wanadoo link / fix - We have a wireless router. Shoud we have an 'ON' button somewhere? What exactly do they mean when they say turn on the third party wireless device? Where would this be located? Or,do we skip this bit? When we get to the bit that asks us to 'Change Wanadoo Wireless Network Settings' we find we only have the 'General' and 'Advanced' tabs, no 'Wireless Networks' tab to be seen! Does this mean we need to do something else first? Any ideas? We are exasperated and bewildered by the whole thing! Cheers for anything you can offer, arnold 508

06-03-2005, 04:37 AM	#2 (permalink)
JamesO Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Fairfax, VA USA Posts: 2,289 OS: 98SE, W2k Pro, XP Pro	First guess is spyware/malware?? Do you have a firewall? Who's? Do you have antivirus? Who's? Have you checked to see if the USB driver is up to date? Do you have the current XP SP1 up to date? If you have MS Office, is it up to date? Do you have any plans to move to XP SP2? If not, why? Is there anyway you can disconnect the wireless USB and work on something offline for a while and see what happens? While machine is working: Ctrl, Alt, Del, bring up task manager. Tell us how many processes are operating, what your CPU load is and how much memory is being used. You may also need to do some house cleaning, but will wait until you respond to first group of questions before any further suggestions. JamesO

06-04-2005, 10:51 AM	#3 (permalink)
lonelyhoneybear Registered User Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: London Posts: 2 OS: XP	Hello all... Well, I've sorted out the problem with my buddy. It's not spyware, the firewall's fine, the antivirus is a-okay, the USB driver is up to date, SP1 was hunky dory - I had previously used SP2 but I didn't like the IE browsing changes. Anyhoo... This link solved all my problems; http://www.wanadoo.co.uk/help/id/7118_page2.htm. It seems that after an inundation of emails and phone calls Wanadoo have put a couple of new pages on their website related to this problem. It's been the Inventel USB Wireless Network Adapter all along. Hope this is useful for anybody else with the same problem I had. Cheers everybody...