my 11b cards are talking back at me...

[merlocka]

I just installed a Linksys WPC11 v3 802.11b card into my HP Pavillion n5310 laptop. I notice a mild (but clearly audible) "popping" sound during network activity... I'm assuming that the card is coupling energy onto the audio of the laptop, but I still hear the noise even if I mute the speakers.

So, perhaps the Linksys card sucks (well, it might suck for other reasons, but I'll address that later), so I pick up a Cisco Aironet 350 card. Same noises.

either this laptop sucks or I can hear at 2.4ghz... thoughts?


edit - update - it's much louder with the Cisco.

Also, I must say that WinXP (home) makes wireless so easy. I dig it. All I did was plug the Cisco card in and click on the wireless network and I was done. No driver install, nuthin. I'll probably have to dig a little deeper later to make sure encryption is on and such, but they sure made it easy to get connected!

 

[ktwebb]

We had that problem with a particular model of Toshiba laptops we sold with our classroom in a car solution. In this case it had to do with power management settings in the BIOS. Not saying it will work for sure for you but you might play around with it just to see.

Also, you might want to go get the latest driver for the Cisco card. Firmware as well. Cisco has tweaked both about as far as they can go now but the XP native driver is several releases old. Definitely make sure you have current firmware even if you dont update your driver.

 

[merlocka]

Latest FW/Drivers didn't fix it so I sent it back to HP (the CPU fan was dying anyway, so I killed 2 birds with 1 stone). They ended up flashing the BIOS and the noises are gone.