Comments on: Why are MSI Wind netbooks crashing Apple routers?

By: Jeff Brown

Jeff Brown — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 05:48:11 +0000

Fix for Win XP SP3 and Ralink 1T2R Mini Wireless card.

This is it, a winner. In WinXP, go to the Device Manager, Network adapters, Wireless adapter, Properties, Advanced tab, scroll down to Power Saving Mode, and change to CAM.

By: Leigh

Leigh — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:36:31 +0000

Going to the Ralink Wireless Configuration Utility and UNCHECK “Power Saving Mode” and ENABLE “CAM (Constantly Awake Mode)” really does work.

Yup.. I was having the same issues. I followed Dan’s instructions above and now, we are good to go.

By: Lex

Lex — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:16:16 +0000

I swapped my Wind’s WiFi Realtek card from the get go. This was done way back in August of 2008, when there weren’t any OSX drivers for the Realtek yet. I bought a used Apple Airport Extreme card for around $28 on eBay, and it’s worked great.

It may not only be cheaper than “returning” your unit, but if you really like the Wind, and want to rid of your router problems, this may be the smartest little upgrade you’ll ever do.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:44:49 +0000

this is a late post, but there’s a fix for this problem, posted here on the Apple forums:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8766006

Here’s the text:

“Going to the Ralink Wireless Configuration Utility and UNCHECK “Power Saving Mode” and ENABLE “CAM (Constantly Awake Mode)” really works. My airport extreme is not crashing anymore. The msi wind work fast and beautiful.I can go to websites without crashing the airport.
The steps are: go to control panel, click on systems. Click on hardware, click on device manager.Click on network adapter.Click on the wireless adapter. click on the advanced tab and under property, scroll down and find for “Power saving mode”, change the value to CAM(constantly Awake Mode). Click ok and That’s it. The msi wind will work now without crashing the airport extreme. Good Luck! ”

I tested it, and it worked. It also works if you are using the Windows configuration. Right click on your network connection in the notification area, choose ‘status’ of your network connection. Click ‘properties’ in your status window, then ‘configure’ in the properties window that opens. Choose the ‘advanced’ tab, then the ‘power saving mode” item, then pick “CAM.”

(In fact, you can make the change using the Windows method even if you are running the RALINK config utility as your primary connection method – since it seems some versions of the RALINK utility don’t offer the power saving CAM option.)

In any case, it has been working for me!

- Dan

By: Sascha

Sascha — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 22:29:26 +0000

Hi i have the same problem with a new out of the box WIND U100 with the “n”-card (Ralink Chipset).
When the box is booted, wireless LAN with the current AEBS with “n”-Support dies out. If i look at the wireless indicator of my iPhone i can see it disapearing once the U100 wireless is swiched on. It acts just like an wireless LAN jammer. I too have WPA2 personal swiched on.

By: carmen

carmen — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:56:01 +0000

it would be newsworthy if dlink/linksys/netgear routers didnt crap out on a regular basis due to connection-overload, overheating, RFI

get used to it!

By: johnx

johnx — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:28:18 +0000

This is by definition a problem with the Apple router. The netbook might be triggering this problem, but the router should not be crashing under any circumstances. Keep in mind the 2.4GHz band is fair game for *anything.* Routers have to deal with analog phones, running microwaves, and other wireless networks. You could even think about this as a potential vulnerability to a DDoS attack.

By: Michael Horowitz

Michael Horowitz — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:51:42 +0000

Kevin,
Did you check that your Apple router and Dave’s were at the same firmware release level?
Some other things to try for people having a problem:
-Try no encryption, WPA and WPA2.
-Chances are that WPA can be used with either TKIP or AES, so try them both.
-WPA passwords can be up to 63 characters or so, but maybe there’s a bug, so try a short password as a test. Short passwords, in general, are bad things, I’m only suggesting it as a test in case there is a bug somewhere with very long passwords.
-Finally, there are some oddball parameters for a Wi-Fi network connection that I don’t understand. Things like the length of the header. All I can suggest, if nothing else works, is to experiment with these too.
-When testing things, its probably best to reboot the router between each test.

By: Tim Ednie

Tim Ednie — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:00:41 +0000

I honestly believe this is a Airport extreme problem. I have a Time Capsule and recently got a Aspire One netbook. Despite driver changes etc, my AAO will not maintain a constant connection to the apple router. It continually just stops working, yet shows everything is okay. My 2 other notebooks connect and maintain connections fine.
Thinking it was an AAO problem, I decided after multiple updates of drivers to try one last thing. I enabled the wireless on my DSL modem which has a built in wireless router that I had previously disabled, and voila, problem solved. No more disconnects. Reconnect to the Apple router, trouble again.
Even though not exactly the same as the Wind, very similar in that wireless problems are creeping up with netbooks. (The AAO uses Atheros drivers.) I think we need a firmware update soon to resolve these problems.

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:20:25 +0000

One more point of reference… I too run WPA2 and had no problems. The Wind I had was the b/g WiFi card, not the b/g/n. Not sure if it makes a difference.