Geek assistance part THREE, separate problem

[taimatsu]

Ok, so it's AVG causing the BSOD, and tomorrow I will work out which of the six drivers it is, and reinstall things and stuff. Thank you all for your help and advice.

However! In my computer-fiddling, I made the grave error of updating the driver for my Netgear wireless card, via the Windows website, and it DOESN'T WORK ANY MORE, which *really* pisses me off. What happens is that when I start up all is well, but the icon for the driver utility software which is usually in the system tray, and turns green when it connects to the network, is not there. I can start the utility from the Start menu, and the icon appears (in red, not green) and the program comes up, telling me it's 'Associating...' and then 'Scanning...' but then it disappears and closes itself down after about ten or twenty seconds. It just exits, over and over. I found the Windows 'driver rollback' feature, but the previous driver has not been backed up, so I can't use it.

It worked before! Why would updating it make it fail? I am so cross! Anyone got any ideas? All I can think of is to uninstall it entirely and then make Windows find it again and download the driver from the web. But presumably it would install the same updated driver...

Comments

Drivers

[(Anonymous)]

Although drivers from windows update are all nicely signed, they can occasionally be a bit weird when they update over drivers that came directly from the manufacturer. I would recommend looking on netgear's site for a big whizzy installer type driver, which may well be newer than the one on windows update.

baldy

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

My message does not get here. Try system restore in system tools. I messed up my computer as well and brought to my training centre. I should have tried that first. I am not sure if it will help.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Check your network connections and see if the network card has been rolled into a virtual network bridge. XP is a bugger for doing that. If it has, remove the connection from the bridge and then delete it (the bridge, not the connection).

[kisai.livejournal.com]

Better solution, download the -newest- driver, use it to overwrite what windows installed, if that fixes it, great, leave it. If not goto the manufacturer (of the computer)'s site and get their version which will be very out of date.

From your description it sounds like you might have the Atheros driver, which IS a serious pain in the ass to update as it breaks the windows login manager when updated with the manufacturers driver. and you have to find the latest driver on forum discussions about it.

Intel's drivers can be found on their site easy

Broadcom, dunno.

and that covers the big three.

so you say netgear... lemme see.
http://kbserver.netgear.com/downloads_support.asp , not sure which one you have, but the descriptions talk about SuperG so it sounds like Atheros.

The point I'm making is that windows version of the driver (from windows update) only works with the XP wireless utility, where as the manufacturer specific version gives you the option of using it's utility or disabling it's utility and using XP's. so you probably have a mismatch between the utility version and the driver version.

[bringeroflight.livejournal.com]

I've been getting BSODs since I got AVG, no matter what version I use. I suspect it is AVG causing this...

How do I get rid of it?