Detect the campus wifi network? Time to BSOD

[DisgruntledVirus]

This has to be the weirdest thing I have ever attempted to troubleshoot.

My Acer TravelMate C112 Tablet I have had for 5 years, 3 of which it's been used at college as well as home. This year, I come to class and it BSODs on me at bootup. After troubleshooting a bit, I realize that if I disable the wireless in the BIOS it no longer BSODs. So, for some reason when the tablet boots windows (not even getting into XP, just starts booting windows itself) it BSODs and reboots when it is in the presence of the campus network.

I've tried reformatting the tablet to the base config and still happens so it's not a borked driver/windows/etc.

The only thing that has changed from last year to this one is how they do their wireless network. They used to use a different SSID, using LEAP authentication with your college username/password. Over the summer they switched it to the new SSID using PEAP authentication and WPA2/AES security.

Any ideas?

 

[spidey07]

Maybe some really weird client incompatibility or the card is bad? I'd call the school help desk.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

The helpdesk is kind of useless. One of my friends had her laptop not connecting to the network and took it there. Still wouldn't connect online. Turns out there was a static IP assigned. They didn't even check to see if their "fix" worked....

 

[spidey07]

Wireless intrustion measures can do certain things to your client if it thinks the client is doing something wrong. Possible the driver doesn't like that? You can actively attack clients the wireless systems sees as threats.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Wireless intrustion measures can do certain things to your client if it thinks the client is doing something wrong. Possible the driver doesn't like that? You can actively attack clients the wireless systems sees as threats.

Well, this is literally within 1-2 seconds of Windows loading. AFAIK the driver wouldn't be loaded at that point would it?