lee harvey

Ever since applying the latest Windows Critical Security Updates from
mid-August via the Windows Updates website to my Toshiba Satellite M30X[1]
running Windows XP Pro, my Atheros AR5004X (a/b/g) Wireless Network
connection has been hanging, locking-up, and stalling -- and it never used
to! It's very frustrating.

Specifically, I can be surfing wirelessly perfectly fine for about 2
minutes, then the next thing I know, all Internet applications (MSIE, FF,
Opera, OE) all hang for about 60 seconds! When I do a netstat from a
command prompt, I clearly see a SYN_SENT that just hangs around until I'm
able to surf again.

When the hangs, lock-ups, stalls do occur, I notice my wireless networking
icon in the system tray notification area is NOT blinking, nor lit-up.
Nothing gets sent from the computer! I even enabled logging on my router to
confirm this. Which leads me to believe the problem is solely with this
laptop networking setup.

FWIW, I do have another wireless laptop (an Acer) with the same updates
applied, and it does NOT experience these hangs. Of course, it's using a
completely different built-in wireless card.

One more possibly important point: I have the Cisco VPN client software
4.0.4 installed, that requires the "Deterministic Network Enhancer" network
service to be enabled. However, temporarily stopping the "Cisco Systems,
Inc. VPN Service" and disabling the Deterministic Netowrk Enhancer has NOT
helped any.

The Critical Security Updates include:

Security Update for Windows Media Player 10 (KB917734)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB922616)
Update for Windows XP (KB911280)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB921398)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB914388)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB914389)
Update for Windows XP (KB916595)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB920670)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB920214)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB917159)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB918899)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB918439)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB917344)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB921883)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB917537)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB917422)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB917953)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB919007)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB920683)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB920685)
Update for Windows XP (KB920872)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB925486)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB922582)

I tried manually uninstalling 2 specific updates (KB917953) and (KB920683),
but it made no difference. Thus, I revisited Windows Update website,
noticed a new AR5004X Wireless Network driver and 7 more critical updates
(probably related to the fact that I uninstalled the previous 2 updates), so
I downloaded and applied all of them (with the exception of the new driver,
they are included in the list above).

Short of uninstalling every update listed above, is there something easy I
can try to make my Atheros wireless connection rock-solid once again? Oh
yeah, nothing else has changed in my home or outside, and the lock-ups even
occur when the laptop sits next to the wireless access point.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

--
[1] Intel Pentium M 1.8MHz CPU
1GB RAM
40GB free disk space
a/b/g wireless
broadband cable connection

littlemoo

If you have downloaded any updated drivers for any part of your wireless
network from Microsoft Update, then I would recommend that you perform a
driver rollback on the drivers in question, then get the updated driver(s)
from your computer manufacturers web site. It's not a good idea to get your
hardware driver updates from Microsoft Update, as they aren't specifically
released for your system, like in the manufacturers web site.

Secondly, this could be an issue with Windows Defender. In some cases it is
known to cause network lag like what you are describing. If you have it try
uninstalling it and seeing if that cures your problem.

Here is some information on it from Mark Russinovich's blog (he co-founded
Sysinternals and Winternals):
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussino...31/453100.aspx

-Dan

lee harvey

Unrelated, since it did not impact the problem at hand. And partially
untrue for some manufacturers, since they do not update their websites with
WHQL-certified drivers as frequently as Microsoft does. Even so, the
version may in fact be the same, since it's dated last March, and I perform
Windows Updates monthly -- but this is the first time I saw it.


Nope. Windows Defender is not installed on my Windows XP Pro (SP2) laptop.


Yeah, know who Mark is (sell-out). However, if you read the article, his
conclusion states:

The delay only happens under very specific circumstances where:

- The system is running Windows XP 64-bit for x64 or Windows
Server 2003 SP1
- Windows Defender Beta 2 is active
- The system is domain joined, but has not connected to the
domain in the current boot session.

None of these conditions are true for my 32-bit Windows XP laptop.
Likewise, the article was specifically written for "Process Startup Delays",
which none of my Internet applications are experiencing.

Any other suggestions?

littlemoo

Well, I'm in the dark on this one. I did have a problem a couple of weeks
ago where any web browser I tried to use (IE, FireFox, Opera) would take
about 40 seconds to load a page, then it would work find for a minute, then
it would hang again. This happened because I updated my wireless drivers,
which turned off the WZC Managed Ethernet feature on my card. Maybe it's
possible that one of the updates changed this setting on you, although I
know that this is a long shot because we use different wireless hardware.

Other than this, maybe the fragmentation and rts thresholds are too high
(doubtful though).

What happens if you try your other wireless card in this computer?

-Dan

lee harvey

Thanks for the pointers.

I went into Device Manager, and showed All hidden devices. I found a few
old, errant entries that I either removed or disabled. Next, I remembered
that I had recently tried locking-down MSIE using some Administrator
Approved ActiveX settings, so I disabled/unconfigured those. Next, I
remembered that I recently applied the latest Spybot Search & Destroy
immunization database, with SDHelper, so I undid that. Finally, I tweaked
some unused services from Automatic startup to Manual startup, and decided
to reboot. Yeah, I know, I did too much, right? Well, after rebooting,
this machine feels like new!

I'll surf with these settings over the weekend, and if the problem recurs,
I'll post back. But so far, so good. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Thanks again for your pointers. At the very least, it forced me to rethink
some things I've done recently to this machine. Let's just hope my computer
security doesn't suffer for it. Only time will tell. Cheers.

littlemoo

That's quite the list. Glad to hear that it's working fine now. Fingers
crossed that it will keep working fine.

-Dan