Linksys WAG300N-UK ADSL Router and WMP300N-UK PCI wireless issues

As posted on linksys forums to help others who have difficulty........

First off thankyou to all the people who have posted suggestions and help on this board. Its at least been a help to see Im not the only one to have had issues.
In short its taken me at least 7 hrs to get a working connection between card and router.

I hope to post some of my experience here to help others. Many of the suggestions are from other posters....

I bought a
Linksys WAG300N-UK ADSL Router
and the
Linksys WMP300N-UK PCI Adapter recently.



Router setup went fine using a std network cable.
All hell broke loose when I installed the PCI software and card , BSOD , hangs etc but then we all know that :-)

My PC spec

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+
ASUS A8N-SLI DELUXE ACPI BIOS Revision 1011
2GB DDR-SDRAM
Marvell Yukon 88E8001/8003/8010 PCI Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] SP2 up to date
NOD32 AV
Spysweeper

This worked for me........

Step 1 : Upgrade Firmware of Router to Version: 1.01.01

downloaded WAG300N_Firmware_Upgrade_Utility.zip from linksys website
Run UpgradeUtility.exe (router connected via a cable)

Step 2 : if PCI card installed then uninstall it via device manager
download STA_WMP300N_EU_1 1 .0.0.15_20061016.zip from linksys website
extract to directory of your choice
reboot pc
should show new hardware detected
select advanced option , and point at the Drivers directory of the software you just unzipped.
DO NOT INSTALL THE LINKSYS SOFTWARE under any circumstances.


Step 3 : Change settings of router to following

Network Name (SSID) : yourSSID (you pick this but dont leave it as 'linksys')
Radio Band : Wide - 40MHz Channel
Wide Channel : 9
Standard Channel : 11 - 2.462GHz

Security Mode : PSK2-Personal
Encryption : AES TKIP or AES
Pre-shared Key : myvalidk (you pick this)
Key Renewal : 3600 seconds

Save changes to router

(Additional step that may help any conflicts)
Step 4 :
Disable current network card (and disconnect the cable) you used to setup router (right click 'disable')
It can be turned back on at any time if you wish.


At this point you should try and connect using the wireless connection.
I could only achieve 300Mbps with no security or the settings above.
Changing to other security types showed a speed of 58Mbps
HOWEVER I have a sneaking suspicion that the displayed speed value isnt of any real use !

I still get the odd 2 sec temporary hang (which coincides with a 100% CPU spike ;-)) but no BSOD or total lockup.

Hopefully this is of use.
Previously I tried other drivers and fixes described on here but none got me a working / stable connection with no lockups and reboots reqd.

Remember this is for a UK card and Router.

For now its working 4 hrs uptime and stable.....will post again if it fails.
In fact if its doesnt work after this then its going back to the shop.

HTH
JohnO

[UPDATE 6th Jan 2006]
Looked to be going so well then at 5hrs uptime the machine crashed!!!!

'IRQ NOT LESS OR EQUAL' (remember windows xp has various settings which you can toggle on how it deals with a major problem. The most useful thing to do is turn off the auto reboot so you can write down the error....)
(Found in My Computer , right click 'Properties' , Advanced tab , Startup and Recovery, uncheck 'Reboot Automatically')

Now Ive seen this before in XP so I had a look in Device Manager to see what IRQ 's were being used/shared
In fact my Linksys PCI card was sharing 16 with a 1394 (Firewire) chipset.
Now sharing IRQ's is something Windows XP does for you automatically (when ACPI is on) and usually its fine.(In fact the you cannot assign IRQ' manually I would have to move the card to another free PCI slot to get another IRQ)
Anyways Im not using the Firewire so I disabled it in Device Manager.

In summary , disabling devices is a workaround and NOT a long term solution , its quite clear that the Linksys stuff needs some further driver updates.
However , I no longer get any freeze ups (however short) , the connection is solid at 300Mbps and to date its been running a total of 24 hrs without a dropped connection or XP hang.

So fat so good , fingers tightly crossed........