Wireless drivers need to be reinstalled after rebooting

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Guest

I've been using Vista Ultimate for two months now, on a wireless network. My
computer connects through a Belkin 802.11g wireless card. However, in the
past few days, every time I reboot the computer, the wireless connection
stops working. The card stops showing up in device manager, and I need to
reinstall the drivers from the CD in order to get it working again. To my
knowledge, nothing about my computer set-up has changed, and I have run
various virus and malware scans, all of which have given my computer a clean
bill of health. Does anyone have any ideas what could cause this? It's
getting rather annoying, as the drivers can only be installed on a reboot, so
I basically need to turn on my computer twice every time.
 
sounds like you are using XP drivers on Vista (what drivers are on
this CD you mention?)

can you update the driver for the wireless card from windows update
and see if you can get the latest Vista driver that way?

if you are using a Belkin utility to manage the wireless, you may
want to uninstall it first and let windows manage the wireless
instead.



I've been using Vista Ultimate for two months now, on a wireless network. My
computer connects through a Belkin 802.11g wireless card. However, in the
past few days, every time I reboot the computer, the wireless connection
stops working. The card stops showing up in device manager, and I need to
reinstall the drivers from the CD in order to get it working again. To my
knowledge, nothing about my computer set-up has changed, and I have run
various virus and malware scans, all of which have given my computer a clean
bill of health. Does anyone have any ideas what could cause this? It's
getting rather annoying, as the drivers can only be installed on a reboot, so
I basically need to turn on my computer twice every time.
Click to expand...
--

Barb Bowman
MS Windows-MVP
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/meetexperts/bowman.mspx
http://blogs.digitalmediaphile.com/barb/
 
The XP drivers being incompatible with Vista turned out to be the issue. I
searched on Windows Update, but found no upgrades. I then searched online,
and found the following posts on another forum:

"The version 4.0 drivers work fine as long as you do not restart Windows
Vista. Shutting down the system causes a memory conflict and/or corruption of
specific files that Vista needs when it reboots."

"HP/Compaq finally released the complete Windows Vista drivers for their
notebooks using Broadcom wireless network adapter cards. Well, the drivers
are available, but if you have an older notebook like me you probably won't
see them on your notebooks home product page on the Compaq Web site. HP, in
their infinite wisdom, has decided to add the Vista driver links by some
strange notebook priority. Newer notebooks get to see the Vista drivers first
— second-class HP citizens like me have to wait."

To sum it up, XP drivers for Broadcom wireless adapters (which includes
Belkin wireless PCI cards) get corrupted every time Vista shuts down. New
Vista-compatible drivers have been released, but only for new HP notebooks.
However, these drivers seem to work fine on all computers using Broadcom
wireless adapters. I uninstalled the XP drivers and replaced them with the
HP drivers, and my computer hasn't had a problem since. Hopefully these
drivers will see wider release and end up on Windows Update in the near
future, but until then just go to HP's website and search for "Broadcom
Wireless LAN Driver for Microsoft Vista." You should be downloading version
5.00B

Thanks for the help,

Richard Taglieri
 
If you do a clean install of Vista, there are Broadcom wireless
drivers "in the box" for most Broadcom chipset wireless cards. I
suspect that having the XP drivers installed confused the issue.

In any case, glad the HP Vista driver resolved the issue.

To sum it up, XP drivers for Broadcom wireless adapters (which includes
Belkin wireless PCI cards) get corrupted every time Vista shuts down.
Click to expand...
--

Barb Bowman
MS Windows-MVP
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/meetexperts/bowman.mspx
http://blogs.digitalmediaphile.com/barb/
 
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