Thinkpads Forum

Hi, I've been searching the internet trying to figure out what this means but once in awhile (usually about once or twice a week...sometimes if I'm having a bad week it happens once a day) I get the blue screen of death with the Driver IRQL Not Less or Equal error that indicates a problem with athr.sys. I tried restoring my X60s to original factory settings but it still pops up once in awhile. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what could be wrong? Thanks.

a lot of times it means bad memory stick, or some other hardware problem

Device drivers usually cause this problem. In your case it appears to be the Atheros wireless adapter driver. I really haven't seen others report this problem with the Atheros driver. Strange.

You might try uninstalling Access Connections (if it is installed), reboot then uninstall your wireless driver software. Look in Add or Remove Programs. Reboot again then install the latest Atheros driver software for your system. Reboot then reinstall Access Connections (if you use this software).

Edited typo.

I'm getting these same BSODs (athr.sys) every other day or so with a T60p. I'm using the latest wireless drivers from Lenovo.

That definitely looks like a driver problem, then. If there are no newer drivers available, you might want to try an older one.

As a last resort, there is the option of switching to an Intel card ...

I've had the same problem with my new Toshiba U300-NS1.

BSOD, dump file states it's due to athr.sys., random crashes every few days, then twice in a day, etc...

Tried calling Toshiba technical support. They were useless as always. Brought the laptop back, got a new one and it did the same thing.

Here's what I did yesterday. Opened up my computer, found the network card and clicked on "update driver". It found a new driver online and updated itself.

I hope that this does the trick. I feel good about it. I'll keep an eye on the situation and keep you posted

I just got the BSOD on IRQ... citing athr.sys too, for the first time, on my X60s. Telling Device Manager to update the driver didn't yield any new driver. I wonder if it's a driver that was automatically updated (either via the Lenovo auto-updater or the Vista auto-updater) recently but is faulty.

I've also often enough been frustrated by the Atheros 802.11x NIC's propensity to hang (requiring a disable/re-enable) or even to simply not work until the computer's shut down and restarted. I'd love to swap in an Intel NIC. Is that possible? Where can one be bought, and is the swapping easy?

Ok, I thought updating the driver fixed the problem but I just got another BSOD.

What is going on with athr.sys??

I had exactly the same problem with my x61 tablet 7764CTO. My tablet crashed twice in the last two months.

For the record, Device Manager reports my athr.sys driver (under "11a/b/g Wireless LAN Mini PCI Express Adapter") to be
Provider: Atheros Communications Inc.
Date: 18-Jun-07
Version: 7.3.1.42 built by WinDDK
Signer: microsoft windows hardware compatability publisher

crates wrote:I'd love to swap in an Intel NIC. Is that possible? Where can one be bought, and is the swapping easy?

For a ThinkPad, you'll need to buy an official IBM one - take a look at the Hardware Maintenance Manual for your model for the part number.

Be careful, though - there's a specific order of installation that must be respected when installing the wireless driver, the power manager, the hotkey driver, and Access Connections, if you want Access Connections to work with an Intel card. I haven't found the order yet, though, but I've been told it's in the readme for one of those things. The good news is, the one laptop that I had to do a fresh install on that had an Intel card, the user doesn't need Access Connections (The Atheros card isn't as picky.)

Myself, I haven't had a problem with the Atheros card, and we've got almost 40 of them at work.

The driver on my machine is:

11a/b/g Wireless LAN Mini PCI Express Adapter
Driver Provider: Atheros
Driver Date: 2007-04-05
Driver Version: 5.3.0.35
Digital Signer: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher

I'll have to check the machines at work, they've been through a round of driver updates.

I have the exact same problem with my new ThinkPad X61 (Win Vista business) with Atheros 802.11x. My network connection occasionally shuts down and it is not possible to get it working again (Repair doesn't help) except if the computer is restarted.

And the last few weeks I have been getting BSODs - first two in only two days, and after that another two or three BSODs. Like was the case for Crates, the problem was IRQ... citing athr.sys. Which means the Atheros wlan card.

I found a report on this problem and a suggestion on how to fix it (http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r186595 ... less-cards), but I am not sure I will do it. For one thing, I cannot find the exact number of my wlan card - so how do I know how/what to install?

Also, I'm not sure about the site with driver update linked to (http://www.atheros.cz/download.php?athe ... 8&system=4) - it doesn't look too trustworthy (but I don't know, really). Since this seems to be a common problem with Atheros I think there should be an update available from ThinkPad - so that we know how and what to install.

Anybody found anything else? Suggestions?

I have a Lenovo X60 tablet and get this BSOD error too. It usually happens after I've been running the machine for a while and there's some heat build-up. Getting to the network will become unreliable for a while and then there'll be a random BSOD.

I'm testing the hypothesis that it's a hardware issue. Anyone else with this problem notice the card getting hot? For folks with X60's the card is right under the S/N sticker.