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WiFi adapter causing problems


CamTron

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I just obtained a HiRO H50069 Wireless adapter, and installed it on my Windows 98 SE machine. I installed the driver and utility, and the device works fine after a reboot, and I am able to connect to the internet. However, if I reboot after having the adapter work, I get a BSOD on the next boot, and every subsequent boot after that results in an endless splash screen and it never gets to the desktop. The only way for me to fix this is to go into safe mode and remove the device from Device Manager. If I reinstall the driver, the same thing happens. Machine works fine for one boot, then BSOD, then no desktop. How can I troubleshoot this?

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Yes, I installed the drivers from exactly that zip file. Device Manager says that there are no devices which conflict with the card, though I don't know much about IRQs and that kind of stuff. I can try booting it again and post some logs if that would help. Also, the wireless utility is very unstable and crashes frequently, but this really isn't a problem since I don't have to change settings all the time. It is strange that the device would work once, then prevent my PC from booting afterwards, which seems like malware behavior. Are there any good virus scanners that still work on Windows 98?

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Perhaps the utility changes default registry settings that affect the second boot.

Perhaps a "RunOnce" is installed that actually needs to be run every time.

Remove the autorun entry for the utility.

Check and compare boot logs.

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I believe I've found the cause of the problem, but it seems rather unrelated to the WiFi adapter software. I did a step by step confirmation startup to see if any VXDs were the culprit and found out that disabling the Sysinternals NTFS driver that I was using to read my Windows XP partition allows the system to boot normally. I know that that driver loads a lot of Windows XP components to read the filesystem, and some part of it seems to be conflicting with the WiFi adapter driver during load time.

After disabling the NTFS driver, my system boots normally and the wireless utility no longer crashes every minute! :thumbup

Edited by CamTron
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Probably the driver and the utility check for the presence of certain NT-only components in the system and they modify their behavior on-the-fly accordingly. Which means you can't have both the wireless and the NTFS driver at the same time.

 

Do you happen to have KernelEx installed on that machine? If so then try to set explicit 98SE compatibility to the utility and any related driver library that allows it. But that's a long shot.

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I did turn off KernelEx extensions for the utility, but that wouldn't have affected anything because the utility starts after the desktop has loaded. I don't know if KernelEx even applies to .sys drivers. However, I also had problems with Ollydbg locking up the system when trying to debug a multithreaded program, which I don't now.

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Not turn off, but set explicit compatibility. I had an issue with some application where it wouldn't work with compatibility disabled and required strict 98SE compatibility.

I just checked, apparently sys files can use KernelEx compatibility mode. Do try setting it to 98SE.

 

Such kind of issues may be the reason I stopped using NTFS driver long long time ago - can't even remember if it was Sysinternals' or the other one (forgot its name).

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