laptop crashes when connected wirelessly; stable when wired

stevieray · 01 Sep 2013

The patient: Compaq Presario F700NR, Win7 x86

The symptoms: Crashes quickly when connected to internet wirelessly. Usually goes straight to boot, but sometimes (about 1 in 10) gives me a bluescreen.

Seems to be stable when the wireless network card (Atheros AR5007) is disabled or removed and it is connected thru ethernet cable.

Attempted fixes: Updated drivers. Rolled back drivers. Replaced wireless card. Repair installed OS. Clean installed OS.

Curiously, after the clean install of Window 7, three devices came up in device manager as "unknown devices". They turned out to be the Ricoh Memory Stick Host Controller, PCI IDE Controller, and the wireless network card. I had installed Windows 7 on this laptop twice before and never saw that either of those times.

I ran all of the minidumps thru the debugger. got a bunch of driver IRQL not less than or equal to errors, with a hardware error or two thrown in as well.

I think I've got a hardware problem masquerading as a driver issue... perhaps the pci bus is shot, but I'd like to see what the experts think.

Here is the zip:

Arc · 02 Sep 2013

Hello stevieray.

The BSOD is caused by Atheros driver.

Code:

BugCheck D1, {30, 2, 0, 8e45f8a5}

Unable to load image \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\athr.sys, Win32 error 0n2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for athr.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for athr.sys
Probably caused by : athr.sys ( athr+428a5 )

Followup: MachineOwner
---------

And the driver is too old.

Code:

8e41d000 8e52d000   athr     T (no symbols)           
    Loaded symbol image file: athr.sys
    Image path: \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\athr.sys
    Image name: athr.sys
    Timestamp:        Tue Jun 09 23:34:52 2009 (4A2EA444)
    CheckSum:         0011A043
    ImageSize:        00110000
    Translations:     0000.04b0 0000.04e4 0409.04b0 0409.04e4

I can understand why you have disabled it.

No code has to be inserted here.

You need to update this driver, rather disabling. Get it from Drivers for Atheros AR5007 and Windows 7

Version: 10.0.0.251
Release: 2013-05-27

Apply it ..... let us know the results.

stevieray · 02 Sep 2013

Wow... I can't believe it worked! I tried newer drivers from HP, from cnet, from softpedia... none of them worked. I kept seeing links to that site, but I didn't trust it; it looked kind of sketchy to me, so I skipped it. Oh well... sometimes life is like that.

I wonder why the driver from 2009 doesn't work anymore. That is the driver that came on the Win7 disc when I did the clean installation a few weeks ago. It worked fine back when I first installed seven on this machine in 2010. Another mystery for another day.

Thanks arc!

Arc · 02 Sep 2013

You are welcome mate :)

The link I provided is the official website to download drivers for Atheros devices, the only trustworthy link. Older drivers fail to work. That is why there are updates. Dont take it as a mystery, its the regular phenomena. Keep your drivers up-to-date, but get the drivers from the official site only.

stevieray · 02 Sep 2013

But it says "The Unofficial Atheros Czech Drivers Site" right there at the top of the page. That's why I avoided it.

derekimo · 02 Sep 2013

stevieray said:

But it says "The Unofficial Atheros Czech Drivers Site" right there at the top of the page. That's why I avoided it.

QUALCOMM bought Atheros,

Qualcomm Atheros - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Probably why it is technically Unofficial

stevieray · 02 Sep 2013

derekimo said:

stevieray said:

But it says "The Unofficial Atheros Czech Drivers Site" right there at the top of the page. That's why I avoided it.

QUALCOMM bought Atheros,

Qualcomm Atheros - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Probably why it is technically Unofficial

Well... now I know.

The debugger kept telling me it was the driver, but after I spent many hours trying driver after driver, only to watch each and every one of them crash and burn, I figured it had to be something else. Fortunately, I kind of like futzing around with computers, or else I'd be pissed at the wasted time.

The saddest part of all this? No matter what driver I put in there Windows Device Manager was pleased as punch with it. It always told me I had the best and brightest of all earthly drivers installed... even when I rolled back to one from 2007.

derekimo · 02 Sep 2013

It does look like a shady site.

I guess it was happy till it started using it.

Arc · 03 Sep 2013

Still Atheros updates all its drivers there, other than Killer Gaming :)