Laptops with Broadcom Wifi Devices

[timbo343]

Does any one else have the same problem as me, if you have a laptop with the broadcom wireless card in and you configure the wireless, turn off the laptop for the night, come back to it in the morning and try to log on to a domain without connecting with ethernet cable but making sure that the wireless is turned on, you get a 192.168.1.1 address and you dont get any drive mappings, but if you did the same procedure with a laptop with a intel wireless card, the laptop logs on fine with drive mappings.

Can anyone explain why this happens? Ive also noticed, that first it was fujitsus that had this problem and thought it was only common to them, but then we have just bought a HP laptop and found out that these are fitted with broadcom wireless cards.

 

Tim

[plexer]

Most of my new laptops including HP ones have broadcom wireless nics in them but they connect to our wireless network and allow domain login just fine.

 

Ben

[Joanne]

check you have the up to date driver and maybe check firmware on your AP too?

[timbo343]

Checked everything... Still no joy

[Joanne]

is it with two completely different laptops?

 

do they act the same way with different access points?

 

I had a funny laptop before and I had to send it back for the wireless card to be replaced.

[timbo343]

Its the same AP, different types of laptop (HP and Fujitsu) all with the broadcom cards, where as the toshibas have the Intel cards... they dont have any problems.

[Joanne]

what access points do you have?

[timbo343]

Linksys WAP54

[Joanne]

have you checked the linksys website to see if they have any conflics with broadcom cards?

[SYNACK]

Just a question, are you certain that one of the access points is not running a DHCP server. If the card was getting a 169.x.x.x address then that is from no DHCP detected a 192.168.x.x suggests that there is another DHCP running.

 

The broadcom drivers may be picking up an address that is offered by one of the APs before the main network can offer up an address.

 

You could check to see where this address is being assigned from by doing an ipconfig /all and checking out which IP is giving you the 192.168.x.x address.

[beeswax]

have you checked in the bios that the wireless nic is set to run from the off? Have you configured the card to "Use Windows to configure my wireless network settings"?

[timbo343]

Ill check the linksys site...

 

and APs dont give off DHCP addresses.

[SYNACK]

Ill check the linksys site...

 

and APs dont give off DHCP addresses.

You're right I was thinking of routers but it still sounds like a rogue DHCP server from somewhere to me, perhaps on the cable network or on someone else's wireless. You should check your wireless connections fallback settings:

 

Adapter Properties > TCP/IP properties > Alternate configuration tab

 

If 192.168.x.x is not your internal subnet because that address has to be coming from somewhere and I doubt that it is the driver.

[timbo343]

Hmmm, still not too sure.. im sure its a fault with broadcom stuff.

 

Ill see what it is like in the morning while the laptop has been off all night..

 

Cheers for all the help tho

[chrbb]

Did you ever resolve this?

I've spent the afternoon trying to sort out a similar wireless problem with a hp laptop. We have 3 idential ones in school 2 are fine, it will either fail to acquire a network address or connect to the wireless without a problem but as soon as you access the internet or a mapped drive the connection drops.

The wireless adaptor is working because the laptop spent a night at my house on my wireless network, if I give the adaptor a static address it is fine but won't connect to the internet or the domain. Updated driver rejoined to doamin, checked settings in other laptops but nothing!