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[Solved] PC freezes when Wi-Fi Ethernet cable not plugged in
Hello,
My ASUS N61Jq laptop worked fine up until last night when I put it into Hibernation mode, as I frequently do.
I started it up again the morning, and the PC simply froze while the desktop was loading. All the icons were able to load, but the right hand side widgets had not yet appeared, and the Wireless network icon was still searching for a network. I tried rebooting several times but it systematically froze shortly after Windows had started loading.
The same problem occured in Safe Mode with Networking. In fact, the freezing always seemed to happen while the system was searching for an Internet network. I have an Atheros AR8131 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller that I updated 3 days ago (driver version 2.1.0.12) and an Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (driver version 3.0.8.1). My wi-fi router was on, and my desktop PC was able to connect to it just fine, so the problem didn't seem to come from there.
I tried turning off the Wi-Fi button on the laptop, and all it did was cause the freezing to happen almost immediately after the User Account selection screen appeared.
The computer did work fine in Safe Mode, in which I ran CCleaner, Glary Utilities, performed a full Avast scan and a sfc/SCANNOW: no problem.
I tried disabling various non-system items in the Startup Group: no change.
Looking at the Event Viewer after a given crash, there weren't any error or warning messages logged.
What worked:
I plugged the wi-fi router to the laptop using an Ethernet cable, and Windows was able to run properly this time. It's been plugged in for over an hour, and everything works fine, including the broadband connection. The only thing odd is that the Network icon has a red cross on it, as if it wasn't connected to anything:
As I said above, the Ethernet controller driver was updated 3 days ago along with several other driver updates, but everything had been working fine up until this morning, that's why I haven't tried restoring the computer to a previous date. Could that be the problem?
As having the laptop stuck in one place with such a short cord isn't exactly handy for the work I have to do, any help to solve this would be greatly appreciated!
Many thanks in advance and have a Great Sunday :)
Last edited by Jind; 27 Dec 2012 at 09:43. Reason: Issue solved