Windows 7: Update Driver for Broadcom wi-fi = flawed

Updated gave me a recommended update for Broadcom Wireless 802.11g driver. It caused my laptop to hang intermittently requiring a hard reboot. Rolled back to previous vista driver I was using and everything is fine. Just a heads up to folks getting this update.

here is the driver I am using that works:

Hi thedpt and welcome to the forum!

Thank you for posting your experience. I'm sure that this will be useful for the others. Oh, don't forget to send feedback if you haven't done so

I had problems with Broadcom drivers, in all areas, and I settled on driver version 4.170.77.3 dated 3/21/08. The problem I was having was having the connection disconnect and getting instruction to reset the router. This driver works for me.

Does that wireless card have a Ralink chipset? There seems to be intermittent hangs/freezes with every Ralink chipset-containing-device on 64bit OSs. Though this wouldn't explain the seemingly smooth running on Vista. My Ralink-based card hangs in both Vista and Windows 7 64bit OSs when sharing is enabled. With sharing switched off it is fine.

hello architeck and welcome
these are broadcom chipsets

and i can further confirm this (on a Broadcom n mini pci-e)...
for me though both the vista broadcom (the one made by my OEM) and the 7 ones cause a disconnection on standby but the driver wont release or even realize there was a disconnection...
while i have concocted a workaround that will be done once and from then on will do the work for you it will done shortly....

I know this thread is a bit old by now but I just installed Win 7 RC and I too have problems with Broadcom drivers. thdpt, you wrote that version 4.102.15.61 is working on your system, but when I use that version I get disconnected when I download at higher speeds (at least that seems to be causing the disconnection). Do you have or had similar problems with that version?

Try a newer version :

v5.10.91.4

Broadcom 943xx Driver v5.10.79.5 - nVision

Also disable power saving features from the driver settings in the device manager.

netRAT.

Broadcom Wireless LAN Driver 7.20 REV:A for Vista

Agreed - I have no idea why Windows Update is pushing out-of-date drivers.

The version 4 Broadcom drivers have appalling performance on my WiFi 802.11g card compared with the version 5 drivers. The signal is always 100% and 54Mbps when I use the v5 drivers, but the v4 drivers only give me 75% signal and 32-48Mbps.

The WinQuall process must be a good year behind the driver release cycle for this to be happening. I'm going to ignore driver updates via Windows Update now, but think of all the people who don't know any better....

I'm running 5.30.21 and it seems fine...

That said, I have to manually connect to the network on reboot or awake as the auto-connect is not happening...?