Killer Wireless Discussion Thread - Look for Solutions and Ask Questions Here

Hello , i have same issues with my killer card as well and i don't have any options to chose 5ghz on my router so i'm planning to change it . Anyone can give me the specs i need on my future router to help overcome these issues ? Also my options are only cisco / linksys and D-link routers.

 

After 6 months of struggling with the Killer i am jumping ship.

Intel here i come. I am sorry ,but constant lagapikes and freezes, every time something like that happens i check like 10 thing to see if its my card or the isp. I have no faith in any connection while gaming.

Cool name, bad performance. :/

 

Then I'm pretty sure that I will go with intel card. I think that I read somewhere that they are faking it, could anyone direct me to the link that says how to know if its a fake one?

 

Havent heard anything relating to a fake wireless card. I doubt it dell are getting fake cards so they will have to replace them again and again

Its just the drivers are so bad, i have to run with s generic one so i get no drops, just lag spikes. And that is my replacement. The first one was worse

 

But if you are going to buy it from any other seller you could get a fake one.

 

bought mine off amazon directly from the killer folks and haven't had a single issue ironically.

 

Hi Everyone,

After using the stock Windows 8 driver for months, I decided to try the latest Killer drivers. I have tried both the ones from Dell Support, and the latest ones on Killer Gaming :: Home, and both have the same results. After they install, the drivers do not load (Code 31 in device manager). A couple of times, they did not Code 31, but in those cases, it still didn't work. So after several system restores, I am back up, still using the stock Windows 8 driver. Has anyone else seen this Code 31 problem? Thanks!

Rich S.

 

Hey guys,

Quick update: There is a new Killer driver on the website for Win 7x64. ( havent checked the others )

Just wanted to let you know Will test it myself today too.

 

Double post... Meh

 

Does anyone know how to fix the conflict between the Killer Wireless drivers (the ones from the website -- not the Windows default ones) and the VMWare virtual adapters? I know that you can workaround it by removing one of them but with them both I get a system crash during the logon process and I have no idea why. This only happens on Windows 8.

 

Been running OK for me on win 8 x64. (latest windows 8 drivers, they just came out of BETA as well).

 

A miracle has happened. The new driver actually works without any problems so far. Watching a 720p stream and downoading a torrent without any drops for an hour. How amazing is that !?!?

On top of that the pingtest was amazing. 1 ms jitter and very low ping ( compared to the old one ).

I must say my faith is a bit higher for the awesome named wireless card

I urge everyone to try it

 

How's the performance so far on Win 8 via the new Beta? Man.. I just bought and installed the Intel N6300 (running smoothly now) after 8 months of struggle with my Killer.. I wonder if I should just sell it. Any benefit I can get out of the N1103 over my N6300 now? tks guys

 

The newest drivers for are just normal non beta now. No performance difference really just more stable. If you need the bandwidth control then the 1103 is the one for you, otherwise I wouldn't worry about it and keep your n6300, they both are 3x3 anyways.

 

I actually still disable the bandwidth control every single time. Since it was the main problem of so many drivers i am OCD about it

One day i might give it a shot and turn it on. One day

 

Looks like I am keeping the 6300, let me see if I can find someone to take over my Killer

 

Unfortunately, even with the new driver, I'm still experiencing drop outs. Not during normal use, but during really heavy use. For example downloading a steam game which takes the full bandwidth. Browsing the internet with a torrent in the background seems to work fine.

 

I was having issues downloading a Steam game the other day with the new drivers too. I was not having the connection go into "Limited" status as in the past, but the download stopped several times and I needed to pause and restart the download to get it going. I'm thinking this is more of a Steam issue than something having to do with the Killer drivers, but I could be wrong. I wonder if anyone with other cards is seeing the same issue.

 

I don't have that issue with the Windows 8 generic driver.

P.S. - I don't use the killer built driver since it (at the time of beta) conflicted with virtual adapters installed by VMWare causing a BSOD during boot.

 

So when I was buying my laptop I decided, for the extra $50 or so, that I may as well get the Killer Wireless-N 1103 adapter in my new Alienware M17x R4. Taken in by all the sales talk such as "exclusive Advanced Stream Detect to automatically classify and prioritize latency-sensitive network traffic for online games", "Wi-Fi Direct peer-to-peer technology to ensure maximum flexibility for mobile gamers" and " Faster downloads, smoother online gaming" I thought to myself "why the hell not?"

I was even convinced by the Tom's Hardware article here:
Killer Wireless-N 1103 Review: Can Qualcomm Take On Centrino? - Killer Wireless: Is It Able To Usurp Intel's Centrino?

When I first bought my laptop I was really pleased with my investment. Everything worked fine, games ran smoothly and flawlessly and everything was good.
Then around 3-4 months in I started having problems.
Buying the Killer Wireless card? What a stupid decision that was.

Since I've had my Alienware M17x R4, I've been really impressed by it's performance - provided you only want to play on your own.
Some days the wireless connection will be fine. I can ping my server and/or router on my local network and the latency is perfect.
As soon as I launch a game - *BOOM* - after around five minutes it starts spiking to between 1500ms and 3000ms:





If I then update or change the network drivers then either the problem continues or the connection drops out entirely:





If I connect to my router using an ethernet cable the problem does not occur - so this is definitely a wireless issue.
I am absolutely sick to death of this now. I have tried EVERYTHING under the sun to try and resolve this.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Disabling the NetworkThrottlingIndex registry setting
Windows 7 Ping Spikes [FIX] - Steam Users' Forums

This, at first, worked flawlessly. I thought my problem was sorted and everything was all good. That was until I found it that it didn't entirely work as the problem then returned.

- Trying different settings in the Killer Network Manager (TCP No Delay, Gaming Optimization, Application Control)

This did absolutely nothing to resolve the issue.

- Closing down the Killer Network Manager entirely

Exited the application, rebooted - same problem.

- Using the WLAN Optimizer from the following website:
Home-WLAN Optimizer - Optimize wireless gaming, audio and video streaming...

I thought this was the solution. Installed, disabled the background scan, enabled streaming, rebooted and left it running. No dice.

- Disabling background scanning in the adapter properties in device manager

After looking into the driver settings for the adapter I saw this entry which was set to 'On'. Turned this off, rebooted - same problem.

- Updating wireless drivers to the latest version on the Killer website (v6.1.0.395)
Killer Gaming :: Support :: Driver Downloads

It's worth noting here that these drivers absolutely screwed over my wireless card, basically rendering it unusable. The connection would drop every five minutes (although it still showed as being connected in the system tray) and refused to respond.

- Updating the wireless driver to the Qualcomm/Atheros drivers (v10.0.1.242)
Qualcomm, Atheros, Zidas, Attansic, Intellion drivers, firmwares

Installed the drivers from this site and the wireless continously drops out as above.

- Reverting to the wireless drivers from the Dell website (v10.0.1.71, A00)
Drivers & Downloads | Dell US

Installed the drivers from this site and wireless continously drops out as per the Killer and Qualcomm/Atheros drivers.

- Reverting to the wirelss drivers from the Dell website (v9.2.0.320)

Back to exactly the same problem - the high ping spikes return and games consistently lag.

- Replacing the entire wireless and ADSL router (dual band 2.5GHz and 5GHz)

I bought a Netgear DGND4000 dual band gigabit wireless router thinking it could be a WiFi issue and this did bugger all to resolve the issue.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As you can see I have tried absolutely everything and anything to resolve this with the Killer Wireless N 1130.
So, how did I solve my problem?

Simple - I bought one of these:
Intel® Centrino® Ultimate-N 6300

For the sake of $50 it arrived in three days, installed in the laptop, installed the drivers and not a single dropout or disconnection issue.
Just goes to show - don't believe the hype...

 

To be fair, after I got my Intel 6300 2 weeks ago, it worked fine till I upgrade to the latest driver 15.8.0.x, I play LOL and I will have crazy ping lag once in a while. Reboot the machine, first game will be fine. It also won't connect at 450Mbps (or drop back to 300 or 360 quickly) After playing it different versions of drivers for hours. I finally got the card working nicely with my new apple AC router at 15.7.x.x driver released in April. Connection stable at 450mbps.
I just don't understand why we all have to deal with driver issues with these 'mature' wifi cards... I never had these problems with my mid end apple macbook pro...


Oh well. Now is good.

 

Had the same issue, reverted to 'windows update' driver. I compeltely uninstalled all drivers and then when there is no history of them (where the adapter is not installed) then use an ethernet connection to download the windows update version, those seem the most stable for me.

Driver version :3.0.0.119
Driver data :28/02/2012

 

Few things.
Just put a 1103 into my m17xr4. When I try to run speed test (in the killer app) it says I dont have flash.... installed flash, still doesnt work.

But, not too much of a issue.

Now, second thing. When running speed test from the website (that works)
My m14xr2 with 1202 card gets a 5ms ping while the m17xr4 with the 1103 gets a 25ms ping (both run at the same time)
Download speed is double on the 1103, but the upload is half on the 1202.
Example:
1202 - ping 5ms - dl 6.72 up - 7.23
1103 - ping 25ms - dl 9.34 up - 3.04

Going to try one of my m11xr1s tonight with a 1102 card installed and see what I get out of that.

 

Has anyone managed to sort this issue out or has heard anything from Killer in regards to a fix?

 

It's not necessarily the drivers that are at fault all of the time. It sometimes can be with certain hardware vendors that don't try hard, but I tend to think more along the lines of it being garbage like Windows 8, Secure Boot, new chipset and immature platforms. A mature and stable piece of hardware thrust into a completely new environment is no longer able to boast about its maturity.

I might be assuming too much about what OS you are running, but there were never any Intel WiFi driver issues for me before they starting trying to make stuff work well with Windows 8. Seems like the experience started going downhill from there for some hardware devices, including Killer WiFi. In some cases using an oldy-moldy driver with a mature OS is a better approach than always trying the latest driver to fix problems that don't exist. (The typical exception is video drivers.) There's no problem using a driver that is 2+ years old with things like a WiFi adapter and taking the approach "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" is a good one. Enter new combinations of hardware and software and that stability can easily change with new drivers that are being written for new products.

Apple has basically one platform and more or less one current OS to deal with at a given point in time. They're mostly cookie-cutter products. They still have problems now and then, but fixing a bug on one generally fixes most or all of them at the same time because they are mostly mass production clones of identical machines (with some variations here and there). With the PC products, there are wide varieties of hardware configurations, a plethora of brands and variations of operating systems that the hardware needs to play nice with. I'm sure that makes the job of writing good drivers more difficult for hardware vendors.

 

Killer 1202: On a clean Windows 8.1 installation (tried Windows 8 as well) without ANY CUSTOM DRIVERS BLUETOOTH WORKS PERFECT (all devices found and paired) and WiFi not recognized.
WIFI driver installation:
manually extracted .INFs from installer (Version QUALCOMM/ATHEROS KILLERWireless N Suite 1.0.26.1227 Station-Drivers - Qualcomm-Atheros). One INF (signed) was causing BSOD with DRIVER_OVERRAN_STACK_BUFFER and the second (not signed) got installed in Test Driver Signing Mode.

Now with BOTH devices powered, WiFi is working unstable, connection gets lost as it's being reported here on the forum (periodically one time for ~6 s in 20 s or more often) and Bluetooth is somewhat flickery as well.

With disabled Bluetooth (Software Switch in Windows 8) Wifi works BETTER! but still some problems, more while actively transmitting.

Installing full Suite (1.0.25.1224) gives firstly comfort experience with WiFi but Bluetooth works wrong (because of Custom Bluetooth Stack in compare with Standard Windows Stack on fresh Windows installation): Speakers are recognized as Headphones with a microphone and Speakers+Headphones cannot be connected simultaneously, not saying about the lagging every 2 seconds mouse...

In "bloatware" from Atheros there was a service: ZAtheros Bluetooth Wifi Coexistent Agent. Maybe it is worth trying experimenting with it, but having read what people are writing here I'm already looking for a Intel Wireless adapter. Really seems like an overhyped stuff

No response from KillerWireless support.

On my old vaio with Intel I've never had such problems...

 

lol, this guy has more rep then posts made... haha...

when I get my machine, il see what its like in terms of software/connectivity, and I might have a few things to say.

however, maybe lowering your MTU to say 1300 or something might help.. try using a different band or switch radio from 1-2-3 etc..

also, try eliminating interference.... signals going through the air travel like little waves, but when they pass through conductive things they stick and cause interference etc.. and they can clash into eachother, each wave has its own frequency usually, but when they are close in range /width they overlap and hit...

anyways, aside from sticking a giant house sized conductive mesh around your house.. see if your using AC band or N band.. using 3 signals or 2... 2 would be 300mbps 450 would be 3.. and even n can do 450 with dual bands at 5GHz (makes it odd to have a AC standard...) a/b/g go from like 1-10/5-40+/44+ etc.. so, a lot of things could be related to your router/switches/wireless hotspot/repeater etc..

maybe for the heck of it, try half duplex mode, which only sends or receives one at a time...(albeit very fast), again inside the device manager/driver settings/hw settings/ go to power options and select full power / theres a multitude of power options on any card in there... could be the issue right there...

 

I currently have generic Windows 8 drivers installed for my 1103 and it seems the only times it gets disconnected is when my torrent client is downloading something. It doesn't seem to matter when it downloads, what or how many torrents I'm downloading. I could download gigabytes of data at one time while streaming video just fine, but I start downloading some torrents it disconnects within a few 30 minutes to an hour. Granted the transfer rate seems to fluxuate a lot for some reason.

Here's a graph of my transfer speed while I'm downloading one file:



You can plainly see how much it fluxuates in just one minute.

 

Gents, I see some people here discussing whether Win 7 or 8 is a factor, it is not.

My Killer cards were miserable to use under either.

Intel 6300N installed and running fine for months now. No trouble at all.\

My 2c.

 

And my card has ran fine under both OS's, so I agree with you.

Sent from my Nexus 7 (2013) using Tapatalk 4

 

Anyone have issues with the Killer 1103 connecting to 5Ghz networks? I know it's meant to be dual-band and I CAN connect, it just takes ages and it is hit and miss. The card won't detect the network and when it does, it does for a split second before it disappears again, it takes like 10 tries to get it to work. It's frustrating because my neighbourhood is heavily congested with 2.4Ghz spectrum and the 5Ghz is empty. It's really driving me dippy and I'm really tempted to just throw it out and get an Intel 6300.

 

If it doesn't work - it doesn't work. It's 21st century and testing a device on a fresh installation does not result into fully functional device, it does not belong to your pc.
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 worked for me after getting killer 86'd just perfect :thumbsup::

1. Without extra drivers.
2. Three Bluetooth devices paired and working, WiFi pings excellent (DSL~20).
3. One time lost a connection, but it must be a fluke.

DON'T BUY KILLER, READ FORUM FIRST. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME trying to fix what proved by others not to be working. DON'T BECOME A VICTIM OF HYPE, Please! Peace.

Going to test WiDi, probably custom drivers, but the time will show.

Have a nice day, guys. :hi2:
Gruss

 

Mines ok, how far are you from the network? and is the network named differently compared to the 2.4ghz network?

Mines been ok, range isn't amazing with 5Ghz (I lose 1 bar of signal being around 5-10m away from the router/ceiling) I suspect interference or poor signal penetration or bad reception. Best to let your name for 5ghz be the same as your 2.4ghz network, its been ok for me and will automatically select the best compromise for me.

I run generic windows drivers which see the card as a Qualcomm Osprey Wireless card rather than the killer 1103. Been rock stable for me, even under load.

 

Hi Everyone,

I have been "fighting" with the Killer 1103 since the release of Windows 8, last October. I purchased my M17xR4 with Windows 7, and free upgrade to Windows 8. The card worked fine under Windows 7, but the problems started when I installed Windows 8. The first problem was a network incompatibility with Parallels Workstation 6 (which is no longer available BTW), which forced me to "upgrade" to VMware Player. Windows 8 (on my M17xR4 at least) works just fine under Windows 8 using the "stock" Osprey drivers, but once the Killer drivers are installed, a number of issues have crept up. However, it seems that all of my issues stem form the combination of a VMware and the Killer drivers. On an irregular basis, the card will Code 83 and just quit working. This was with all versions of the Killer driver and VMware Player 5. When the driver Code 83s, you can uninstall it from Device Manager (don't delete the driver from the hard disk), and then do a "scan for new hardware" and let it reinstall, has made it work again each time for me. I just upgraded (today) to VMware Player 6, and had two things happen after it was installed. First my Bluetooth keyboard did a Code 83, and then after a reboot the Killer did it too. The previous mentioned trick worked again. So for those of you with problems, do you have a Virtualization product installed, and does the problem go away when it is uninstalled? Thanks!

Rich S.

 

All is good with the Osprey drivers at the moment. 5Ghz gets detected fine. Hopefully this will continue.

 

Hey guys, looks like I'm having troubles too. After becoming tired of Windows 8, I moved back to Windows 7. Fortunately, the stock Windows drivers worked just fine with my 1103. Unfortunately, I have never had such success on Windows 7. Does anyone have an idea of which driver is the most stable on Windows 7, and where to get it? I'm on the latest version, and my connection constantly drops. Using the internet on my M18x R2 is almost impossible at the moment. I don't care about the custom software, I just want it to work. If I can't get it stable, I'll probably pick up an Intel card.

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks

Sent from my Galaxy Note II

 

Hmm, maybe try the earliest version of the stock drivers, just cmopletely remove them, and then use windows update to install whichever version might be in the microsoft catalogue.

Suprised the stock drivers ain't doing very well, .437 might be ok? or maybe try the ones direct from dell.

 

Go here:

Drivers for Atheros AR9380 and Windows 7

Scroll partially down the page and click "Click for Download" it will load a new page and will take a while but a zip (or rar) file will load. Once downloaded, extract that to a folder.

Now make sure you have uninstalled all previous drivers. Open up Device Manager, click on the Unknown Network Card and go to Properties and then to Drivers, click update drivers. Use the browse my computer method and point the browser to the folder with the extracted driver files. Let it install.

Worked for me. Might work for someone else.

 

From earlier in the thread, these ones seemed to work fine for me......

 

To be fair, I should also add, that under Linux, (where I believe it got an Atheros driver), I had wonderful performance with the Killer 1103.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

The Osprey drivers worked at first, but then the card started to drop connections again. I'm downloading the drivers Steve suggested as I type this.

 

Hope they work, Bro - as far as my memory goes back, they were pretty stable with Windows 7.....fingers crossed.

 

well i got the same problem, and installing these driver solve all my problem .

 

I've been using the drivers you linked to me for a few days now. It seems that I finally have one that works! As always, thanks for your help amigo. :thumbsup:

 

Funny you should post - I was wondering how you were getting on with them. Glad they are working well for you - good job I recalled that they were the last set of drivers from Bigfoot that I used that actually did the job.....

Nice work! :thumbsup:

 

Funny you should say that..... Because I'm having the opposite experience.

I got the Intel 7260, and I'm having dropping issues with it. Not only that, but this is my third computer manufacturer, third wireless brand, and second wireless manufacturer that has these dropping issues.
2 Intel cards and an Atheros. Though I haven't tried the Killer yet.

Thus, I think it's an industry issue with the new Wireless N and certain routers.

See my post here for more info.... http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi...-20c-technical-issues-thread.html#post9381493

BTW, see the post a couple after that one, I actually discovered that the only way to stay connected is with my settings (Highest or Lowest Roaming and otherwise) and continuously pinging the net.
I've also discussed this issue at the Intel Forum, you can look up my username there for my post.

 

From my experience, all killer Products, be it desktop PCIe cards, onboard chips or WLAN cards have been having these problems unless using very old drivers. Although the problems seem to be at least managable with the wirless pendants if you follow the steps I've posted in an earlier reply.
I've decided to slowly migrate away from Killer products, however, putting Intel Pro/1000 PT Server Adapters into my desktops that had the Killer E2100/2100 inside.
All my connection problems are completely gone no matter what I do, speeds are way better although my ping in games has gone up slightly (but is way more stable now, so it actually feels better).
I still have the wireless one inside the M18x-R2 as it hasn't been giving me any trouble yet since following the steps I posted above at all, but i'm still thinking of replacing it with a solid Intel AC card once they are readily available and they get positive hands-on reviews and I also get a good AC router to go with it.

 

I can say hand on heart this is a driver issue I had sim one not so long ago on my pc specialist build lappy I downloaded lastest driver from killer site and bam problem fixed but as already said in this thread make sure always to do a clean install make sure old driver is completely removed as then u will not be in any doubt !!! use ccleaner to remove all old reg entery and I hope this helps u out. Oh one last thing the version I am currently using is 1.0.35.1273 it may help not sure but I hope it does

 

I had a Killer card in my m17x-R2 and I currently have one in my m18x-R1. I never experienced connection problems with either one, nor have I experienced any problems with the Intel 2230 in both of my m18x-R2's. However, the Killer 1103 is clearly faster than the Intel 2230 for me. I used the R1 for several weeks between home, work and school; I then switched to the R2 with the 2230 and the same tasks/files on the same networks at the same times loaded noticeably faster with the 1103. I have considered swapping an 1103 into my newest R2, but it seems like too much of a hassle for what could ultimately be a minute benefit since the 2230 still works quite well.

 

I finally replaced the Killer Wireless 1103 adapter I had in my laptop. I installed an Intel Centrino Ultimate 6300 AGN adapter in its place. On Windows 7 I had issues with network dropouts when transferring large amounts of data with the OEM driver. After removing the driver the issue cleared. Now with Windows 8.1 I have it again but now with the generic driver. After swapping to the Intel adapter I get no more drop outs. Now granted the speed dropped a few megabytes per second I can live with it.