Problem and solution to wifi/wireless blue-screen on T42

[jayk]

I recently had some trouble with the wireless lan adapter on my T42. The machine would boot up, I could log into Windows, and just as it got the desktop drawn it would blue-screen (I forget the codes it printed, but I rebooted several times and it was always the same). Messed around with it for a while and then I remembered years ago having some blue-screen trouble related to the wifi, so I disabled the wireless in the BIOS and it started up just fine. I upgraded the drivers to the latest version, re-enabled the adapter and still got the blue-screen. So I took the whole thing apart and re-seated the wireless adapter (just unplugged it and plugged it back in - might have been worth cleaning the contacts but they looked good already). I also took the opportunity to blow out some of the dust accumulated over the past 5 years. Put it all back together and now it's working great. Fixed a similar problem on a Dell a few years back by reseating the hard drive. These are laptops, after all - they get banged around and connectors are a good place to start for hardware problems.

MOD EDIT: Moved from T6x to T4x forum.