Carl’s Blog

In my previous post about my laptop I had described some stability problems. I was finally able to figure out what was causing it. I found eventually that it is most likely the Netgear WG111v2 wireless USB network adapter. It all started when the computer crashed occasionally. Originally I thought it was the new memory that I installed. I ruled that out after I installed some different memory. The strange thing was that the blue screen was sometimes not showing any driver and sometimes showing synTP.sys (touchpad), wg111v2.sys (wireless usb), and a couple others. I detail below my process for figuring this out.

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Quick update on my new Dell B120 laptop. CompUSA had a sale this past weekend on Netgear 802.11g USB adapters so I picked one up for $30 (after rebate). I also got 512MB of off-brand memory, which I returned last night to get some much cheaper Kingston memory from CircuitCity ($40 after rebate). Everything seems to be going okay so far. I’m trying to do this “the right way” by having a user account and an administrator account. It’s actually a real pain in the ass to have to jump over the admin account all the time to do any installing. At least fast user switch is accessible with WINDOWS-L.

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My old laptop has been on a steady decline so I finally decided to jump on a deal from Dell. I got a refurbished Inspiron B120 for just over $400. It is their lowest end budget model but it should last for a few years. It’s a 14-inch widescreen 1.4GHz Celeron M with 256MB of RAM, a 40GB drive, and a CD-RW & DVD combo drive. Unfortunately this computer didn’t come with built-in wireless and it doesn’t have a PCMCIA slot. It only has an ExpressCard slot and there are no wireless ExpressCard products yet. This leaves me with either getting a USB wireless adapter or a Mini-PCI wireless card. Unfortunately if you don’t order the internal wireless, Dell doesn’t bother to put in the internal antenna. I found some instructions on how to install the antenna into a ThinkPad so I may give it a shot. Of course I should wait until my 90-day warranty is over. For now I’m using a Linksys WGA11B that I don’t with my TiVo anymore.
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