Dell 1150 Truemobile Wlan card 'cable unplugged' on W2K

I have just fallen foul of what turned out to be an old chestnut. The
card produces a network connection which reports that the cable is
unplugged.

I installed the client manager, which reported that the RF connection
was fine, and the latest driver (which changed the layout of the
dialogues wherein the WEP is entered, but was otherwise unsuccesful).

A google search showed that this is a very well known problem indeed,
but it appears that not everyone has come across the answer. The
answer is, actually, in a Dell knowledge base article, but not one that
Dell's search utility was keen to reproduce. You need a 3rd bit of
software to take the place of the cable between the radio modem and the
pseudo ethernet port - it was true, the "cable" was not connected.

http://tinyurl.com/6xfme tells you what's missing, but the method of
finding it given is not right - you actually have to search the
download page not the page given. http://tinyurl.com/46wa5 is what you
want.

I ended up with 3 things to install. R22540, R43778, R46012.

The problem is with W2000 and the allocation of interrupts. The
mini-pci slot is trying to use an interrupt that W2K can't allocate
with a simple driver definition file.

I'm glad to have sorted it, but There have been hundreds of people
inconvenienced by this in the past. They have gone up blind alleys
with patching both the driver and hardware to sort ot things that
should not have gone wrong in the first place. It took me at least 5
hours of hunting before I found it on the Dell web site, whose main
points of entry assume you are using XP. I still don't understand why
this code had to be downloaded separately.
Anyway, I hope this helps other people.

robertharvey@my-deja.com

wrote:
> I have just fallen foul of what turned out to be an old chestnut. The
> card produces a network connection which reports that the cable is
> unplugged.
>
> I installed the client manager, which reported that the RF connection
> was fine, and the latest driver (which changed the layout of the
> dialogues wherein the WEP is entered, but was otherwise unsuccesful).
>
> A google search showed that this is a very well known problem indeed,
> but it appears that not everyone has come across the answer. The
> answer is, actually, in a Dell knowledge base article, but not one
> that Dell's search utility was keen to reproduce. You need a 3rd bit
> of software to take the place of the cable between the radio modem
> and the pseudo ethernet port - it was true, the "cable" was not
> connected.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/6xfme tells you what's missing, but the method of
> finding it given is not right - you actually have to search the
> download page not the page given. http://tinyurl.com/46wa5 is what
> you want.
>
> I ended up with 3 things to install. R22540, R43778, R46012.
>
> The problem is with W2000 and the allocation of interrupts. The
> mini-pci slot is trying to use an interrupt that W2K can't allocate
> with a simple driver definition file.
>
> I'm glad to have sorted it, but There have been hundreds of people
> inconvenienced by this in the past. They have gone up blind alleys
> with patching both the driver and hardware to sort ot things that
> should not have gone wrong in the first place. It took me at least 5
> hours of hunting before I found it on the Dell web site, whose main
> points of entry assume you are using XP. I still don't understand why
> this code had to be downloaded separately.
> Anyway, I hope this helps other people.

repost to alt.sys.pc-clone.dell?

Q

Quaoar

Quaoar wrote:
> repost to alt.sys.pc-clone.dell?

Well, it's a thought. I chose the 3 groups with the highest original
traffic about the problem. I don't like crossposting too widely, it's
rude, and a google search should find it with any luck.

robertharvey@my-deja.com

I just want to add that it takes it nearly 2 minutes to connect after
booting, but that's the sort of thing I've come to expect with windows
systems...

robertharvey@my-deja.com