SmartWi Killed my Wireless 4965agn Card !

Hello Guys,

I’m having such a really weird problem. I got a laptop from TD : http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...800&sku=S168-TZ130NB ON&srkey=S168-TZ130NB ON

Model is: VGN-TZ130N

Once I got it, I realized that Vista is not really a good choice for such a laptop & processor therefore I moved to a clean install of Windows XP SP3, installing went smooth and perfect. I was able to install all drivers without a single problem, I've installed Office, security software, updated the laptop to be very fast away of SONY garbage software.

After all, I thought that I need only one software from SONY which is the utility called SmartWi where you can enable/disable wifi and Bluetooth easily, I downloaded and installed the utility and restarted, HERE IS THE PROBLEM: WIRELESS WAS TURNED OFF ! and SmartWi runs on startup and gives a message that there was an error and it should close !!

I did the following to resolve the issue but couldn't, by the way I’m not a beginner and I used to search and solve very easy but this one, sorry I COULD NOT !!

1- I removed SmartWi and restarted, WLAN is still disabled even its enabled in the "Network Connections" but when you search for wireless networks you will get the message "No wireless networks were found in range. Make sure the wireless switch on your computer is on.", well the switch is turned ON and only the Bluetooth icon is glowing while WLAN green icon is NOT !

2- I talked to SONY guy, I swear he has no clue what to do, after an hour of his steps that I already made, he couldn’t solve my issue and transferred me to 2nd line support !

3- Finally, I formatted and installed a clean XP again but guess what? Wireless still has the same issue, seems like disabled ! I went through BIOS but it doesn’t seem like to have anything related to networking !


Now, I have only clean install of Windows XP Pro SP3 , Intel wireless 4965AGN driver installed and SONY Shared Library !


Let’s see if someone went through that before, I won’t install anything before hearing from you

 

Well, let's wait for other people to potentially give you better suggestions - but my first instinct might be to do a recovery of the Vista install, and see if that allows the wifi to turn back on. Once it's back on, do a clean install of XP and stay away from SmartWi!

 

You know, I had some strange bluetooth problems on an old Medion laptop.
The device vanished/reappeared.
Formatting didn't necessariy solve the problem.

If you can, find out in which order !!! you have to instal drivers.
Then completely wipe your harddrive (either the full setup format, possibly twice or get some software

This may work.

Oddly enough the order in which drivers are installed is important - more so on Sony than on other computers.

 

Thanks for the advise, but I already removed VISTA recovery partition

I'll see, lets wait for more ideas, I have no problem formatting again since I didnt update or install anything yet.

 

Thanks Guys, I managed to solve the problem. I used another setup file on Intel package called "iProDifx.exe" instead of "dpints32.exe" and the WLAN was glowing again !

I wanna make another fresh install of XP using this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=183695

but wanna know which tool you use to wipe the hard drive cleanly since I used to use XP CD regular formatting blue screen (not the quick format for sure).

and is there any utility to switch connections (wifi and BT) rather than SmartWi? because I tried it again after solving the problem and it gave same error.

Thanks

 

Install Wireless Switch Setting Utility instead of SmartWi for your new clean installation and enable WLAN with it. Which version of SmartWi did you install? Test different versions of SmartWi if you really want to use the Fn+F1 toggle, otherwise WSSU should be sufficient.


That error can also occur if a third-party wireless manager is being used. To let Windows handle it, double click on the wireless tray icon and go to Properties. Then click the Wireless Networks tab and enable the "Use Windows to configure my wireless network settings" option. Make sure the Wireless Zero Configuration service isn't disabled either.

 

Hello, "Wireless Switch Setting Utility" you gave me didnt work with TZ and it stated that it's not for that model.

 

^^^^^^^^^^

The WSSU version inside the Sony Utility Series package is v4.0.00.09070. If that's still not compatible after running the extracted setup file, these other versions are available:

v4.0.00.09030
v4.0.00.11070