WIreless card is causing my Notebook drive to run constantly...

[loudernhel]

Help me Obi-Wan you are my only hope!

I have an IBM thinkpad T21 running WIndows XP pro.

I have a ViewSonic wireless pc card. My network runs great. It's fast and was pretty easy to set up.

My only problem is the Wireless card makes the hard drive run CONSTANTLY. This is not good for my battery life.

I am sure it is the wireless, because when I disable the card, the hard drive quits running constantly.

Can anybody help?

[UrbanMoth]

Do you have constant network traffic as well ?
If so - I suggest you run a virus scanner and a spyware killer on your machine

[bAdWaYz]

I can't think of why your wi-fi card would cause your hard drive to spin all the time. As suggested above you may want to run a virus scan and spyware scans to rule out any trojan or spyware related activity. Other than that you can go into the LAN properties and check the box beside "Allow computer to turn this device off to save power" and the computer will turn the adaptor off when idle.

[loudernhel]

I appreciate the two of you taking the time to reply.

Full scans by the latest versions of Ad-Aware and AntiVir show no infections.

I have power saving turned on.

Here is a little additonal:

I've been screwing around, installing and uninstalling the card.

The card comes with a program called "wireless Monitor" that installs when you install the card. This program controls the connection, rather than the stuff built into Windows XP.

A couple of times I've been able to right click ont eh "wireless monitor" icon and get the option of "enable zero configurtion" and exit out of "wireless monitor" this makes the card connect through the regular Windows software.

The good news: when I did this, the hard drive no longer ran constantly and I had connectivity.

The bad news: when I did this I was only able to connect at 11mbs. Also now that I've uninstalled/reinstalled the card again, I can't get those options to come up when I right click on the "wireless monitor" program.

This suggests to me that the "wireless monitor" program is the culprit. I've tried to dink around in that program and see if there is some type of logging I need to turn off or something, to no avail.

Does any of this make sense? We exceeded my level of computer knowledge quite some time ago.

[bAdWaYz]

Alot of times having wi-fi software that comes with the adaptor and Windows Wireless Zero config running will cause problems. Since this hasn't happend I'd say you are pretty lucky. This is just me here and if you don't want to I can understand but I would uninstall the software that came with the adaptor and just use Windows Wireless Zero config. All you really need for the adaptor to work with windows are the most up to date drivers. Load those and leave out the software monitor. You may need to adjust the network adaptors lan properties to get more than the 11mbs. This is a wi-fi G adaptor yes?

[loudernhel]

Badwayz,

I think you have hit on a good solution and that was what I was trying to do as I installed and uninstalled the card multiple times.

The thing is, there are no driver's per se on the disc that came with the card. There's an install program that installs the drivers, that also installs the "Wireless Monitor" program.

I can't figure out a way to install the drivers without installing the "Wireless Monitor" program.

I looked on ViewSonics website for just drivers, but all they have available for download is the same setup program that is on the cd rom.

I sent ViewSonic an email about the problem. I'm not holding my breath for a response.

Is there a different way to get drivers for this card?

Regards,
David

[bAdWaYz]

Go HERE (http://www.cybertechhelp.com/download/file/everest-home-edition) to download Everest Home ed and install it. Once you run it you can past what it says your network adaptor is. Post everything it tells you from make, model, ver. Besides being able to tell you info on your network card its will show you just about anything you want to know about the guts of your computer its a handy little tool. Once we know what you are working with as far as the network card we can look for drivers.

[loudernhel]

Ok. The everest program tells me I have a

Broadcom 802.11g wireless adaptor

now what?

[bAdWaYz]

Are yoiu sure what you have is onboard wi-fi? Check out this link HERE (http://www-3.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-4JSQHB) I don't even see wi-fi support of any kind for a T21. Are there any more model numbers before or after T21 for example like T21 6436 or something? Maybe post a link to your exact laptop?

[loudernhel]

I have a IBM thinkpad T21. I bought a Viewsonic WiFi card that plugs into a PCI slot on the side of the computer.