USB wireless adapter reboots computer?

[SpeedRazor]

A friend of mine has a Linksys 802.11g USB Adapter that he's been using to connect to his wireless router. Anytime he turned on his system, it would get to windows and reboot right away. Among other problems he was having, I did a clean deletion of his partitions, formatted and installed WinXP Pro.

Got back into Windows, installed everything else and then plugged in the USB adapter. Seached for drivers, and the second the drivers finished installing, instant reboot. When the computer comes back to windows it continues to reboot until I unplug the USB adapter. This goes for any USB port I put it into.

Ran virus scans, clean. Ran spyware, clean. Brought the USB adapter home and it installed just fine on my computer and connected to my wireless network.

I really don't understand why it's causing his system to reboot and Google hasn't been any help so far. Anyone have any ideas what could be causing this?

He has an Athlon 64 machine, 3200 I believe with 512 of RAM and a ATI Radeon X700, onboard sound card.

 

[traycee]

Couple of thoughts...you can run to Staples or somewhere and purchase a new linksys usb wireless device and see if it works...maybe the current device has something wrong with it...if it doesn't solve the problem, you just take it back to wherever you purchased it. Second, go to Linksys's website and download the latest drivers for this device. Third idea, is he using the Windows Pro x64 version of XP....because for some devices to work under x64 you HAVE to have the 64 bit device drivers.

 

[SpeedRazor]

I don't think it's the device though, because it works just fine on my computer. I've downloaded the newest drivers from Linksys as well as tried the old drivers from the CD and both options crash the computer as soon as the drivers are fully installed and the device is plugged in.

He had no problems using the device before, this problem just came up recently and he doesn't know what caused it.

 

[rvnguy]

SpeedRazor,

Your orig post indicates that thee were problems that led to your re-formatting and installing XP Pro.

What were the problems before the re-format?

Was this the OS he had before?

Did this ever work on his system?

Does his system have an onboard NIC? Is it disabled in BIOS?

I know alot of questions but your post is kinda like
"I have got a problem, Can you guess what it is?"

If it worked before, there must be other changes that you either do not know about or are not posting.

If it never worked, this behaviour is indicative of a hardware or software conflict. Actually, in either case this is what it sounds like.



rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[electronicsfreak]

Maybe bios update?

 

[SpeedRazor]

I reformatted originally because we were not able to get into windows at all, it just continually rebooted. Going back to that, I think now that it was probably due to the Network adapter being plugged in and if I would have just unplugged everything I would have found out the network adapter from the start.

He needed a format anyways, he had a lot of junk preinstalled from emachines on there he just wanted to wipe out. Previous version of Windows was Home edition.

This problem just sprung up. At first, he had no problems connecting to his wireless router. Then one day he was having trouble with his PS2 connecting to the internet so he reset the router and modem. Went upstairs and the computer was no longer connected to the wireless network but was instead connected to the next door neighbors "Default" network.

He searched for the connection to his network again, found it, hit connect and the system rebooted. Tried a couple more times, more reboots. Then it just escaclated into a big reboot session anytime the computer got back to Windows.

There is an onboard NIC that I can try to disable and I'll check for a BIOS update. If anyone else has any other ideas while I try that, let me know.

 

[ceh4702]

This may be a hardware issue. XP is very bad about Hardware Errors. There should be a setting in the BIOS about Halt or Reboot on Error. It is worthwhile to check this out. There may also be some kind of settings for USB that are wrong. Then there is the Detect Virus setting in the BIOS. Did you use the same USB Cable?

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[ceh4702]

I thought of something else. When you run the install, is the device plugged in or not? What does it say in your instruction manual about this?

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[SpeedRazor]

Device is not plugged in at the start of the driver installation per the request of the setup program. Says to start install first, then plug in when prompted.

I'll dig around the BIOS tonight, hopefully I can find a solution.

 

[Nelviticus]

If you don't want Windows to re-boot on errors, the setting you need to change is withing Windows, not in the BIOS.

Right-click 'My Computer' and go to the 'Advanced' tab. Click the 'Startup and Recovery' button and un-check 'Automatically reboot'.

If you do that then when you have a major error you might be able to find out what caused it.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[BKStarr]

I am having exactly the same problem also with an eMachines computer. The Netgear 802.11b 2.4 GHz MA111 wireless USB adapter worked fine for about 3 months and then the computer wouldn't boot up. I did a system restore and eventually found if I simply unplugged the Netgear stick the computer runs fine. I have plugged the same Netgear stick into my laptop and it works perfectly, and the one normally plugged into my laptop also causes the desktop to shut down, so it can't be the USB stick itself. Also I have plugged other USB devices into all 3 USB ports on the desktop and they work fine, the Netgear stick causes the desktop to reboot no matter which USB port I use. I have re-insatlled the wireless adapter software several times (the stick was not plugged in per User Guide instructions) and there is no change. When I disable the auto reboot function and plug in the Netgear stick I get a blue screen saying windows has been shut down to protect the computer BAD_POOL_HEADER with technical info: 0x00000019 (0x00000020, 0x8601D670, 0x8601D6A0, 0x1A060001). SpeedRazor, was there ever any resolution to this problem? Did you receive the same error message?

 

[SpeedRazor]

After hours of troubleshooting and trial and error, I completely uninstalled all instances of Universal Serial Bus controllers from Device manager and installed new drivers from a Windows XP disk.

Fixed the problem right up. If drivers from the Windows XP disk don't work, I might have got them from the eMachines website but finding drivers for his specific computer on that website was like pulling teeth.

Good luck!