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System freeze if using Intel® Centrino® ultimate-N 6300 on Win7 64-Bit

idata
Employee
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Hello,

I have a laptop with win7 ultimate 64-bit installed. There was wifi card Intel® Centrino® ultimate-N 6300 preinstalled. Running one year without serious problems, now systems freezes if the driver netwns64.sys exist in driver directory.

Directly after logging into account, i can observe a growing memory usage until the system freezes completely due to no memory. This memory cannot be adresses to some processes in task manager, its just there.

If I manually rename the above driver, then system will behave normally.

Does anybody has this problem too?

Please help.

Thx and best regards,

Jens Becher

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idata
Employee
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hello,

I just want to precise my information:

on the laptop driver version 13.0.0.107 was preinstalled.

After I updated the driver to newer version, I first got some BSOD caused by driver netwns64.sys.

After installing most recent driver so far, i think 14.0.0.2, I get the behaviour described above, i.e. memory consumption grows from start and reaching the limit (8 GB) my system freezes.

If I manually rename the netwns64.sys in directory c\windows\systems32\drivers, the wifi adapter cannot be run correctly and the problems disappears.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks and best regards,

Jens Becher

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idata
Employee
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Hello jbecher,

The issue you describe is not any known issue. What you can try though is doing a clean install of the drivers-only package. To do this, download and save the drivers from the link below (this is version 14.2.0.10)

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/confirm.aspx?httpDown=http://downloadmirror.intel.com/20433/eng/Wireless_14.2.0.10_Ds64.exe&lang=eng&Dwnldid=20433&DownloadType=%0ASoftware+Applications%0A&OSFullname=Windows+7%2c+64-bit*&ProductID=3408

Then uninstall the Intel® PROSet wireless WiFi software from control panel/programs and features/uninstall a program.

And uninstall the 6300 wireless adapter from device manager (start/right click on computer, right-click on computer, select properties then on the top left click on device manager) here check under network adapters right click the 6300 and select 'uninstall'

Then without rebooting install the file you downloaded earlier, this will install just the base driver for the network adapter.

The issue you are describing indicates software corruption, which can be caused by a number of variables like a malware, Operating System corruptions or even a failing network adapter

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idata
Employee
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Hello Nathalie,

I struggle with the same problem.

My Dell Inspiron 1545 has the same problem.

I did what you asked in you're last post, but it didn't work out.

I had to replace the Ultimate-N 6300 for my old one.

Do you know something else to solve this problem?

Yours,

Remko Feenstra

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idata
Employee
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I think I've fixed this...

The symptoms: Win 7 64-bit, sp1, done as a clean install on an Acer AMD C-50-based netbook, and adding the 6300 as an aftermarket upgrade. The automatic driver finder/downloader gives BSOD. Installing driver manually usually would cause a freeze/lockup just as it finished. When it did not freeze right away, it would freeze during shutdown, or at the latest upon restart/login before the windows login tones had a chance to play.

What works: 1) set the wifi power option to 'maximum performance' before loading the driver, and then 2) manually load driver-only version 13.0.0.107. Everything is totally stable.

To set the power option, do Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change Plan Settings -> Change advanced power settings -> Wireless Adapter settings -> Power Saving Mode -> Maximum Performance. I set this a total of 6 times, to cover high performance/balanced/power saver, and plugged-in/battery.

I tried a number of more recent drivers without luck: 13.4, 13.5, and 14.3. I needed to Google to find the 13.0 version on Intel's website.

Anything short of Maximum Performance does not work. Other power-related settings do not seem to make any difference, eg Link State Power Management for the PCIE port in the power settings, or the "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" under the power management tab of the driver in the device manager. Setting the 6300 driver to Disabled in the device manager (via a trip to Safe Mode) does prevent the freeze, but also prevents the card from working.

For those digging further than me... 13.2 is when they started bundling My Wifi Technology (MWT) with the core drivers, perhaps that is related. I started digging in the power-saving direction as it looks like there are also lockup issues with Intel SSD drivers that are fixed by selectively disabling the related power saving options on the Windows side.

Gordon Saksena

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idata
Employee
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I gone for months with no freezing problems... except if I use the netbook's button to shut off the wifi card. It shuts off fine, but turning it back on will cause a freeze.

Since the card has a noticable impact on the netbooks battery life (the card is in Maximum Performance mode), I do want to shut it off if I'm away from power for many hours, so I've done it by disabling the driver: System -> Device Manager -> Network Adaptors -> Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 AGN -> (Change Settings) -> Driver -> Disable. Re-enable it the same way. No problems with freezing when done this way.

Presumably the card was tested with Window's mechanisms for control, and not with the mechanism used by the driver provided by Acer.

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idata
Employee
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After 10 or so driver uninstalls and installs, my system has been stable for the most part lately, but will still from time to time go to a red x, and require a reboot. Also had the issue on an Asus G73J but was fixed with maximum performance, and oldest driver.

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GSaks
Beginner
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I am now trying to update to Windows 10, but having trouble... Windows really wants to update the driver to something from this year (v15.16), which causes the same problems as before. v13.0 seems to be no longer available to download from Intel, even via Googling, but I have a copy from before. But, I can't figure out how to get Windows to use it rather than the newer version. The Windows 10 update blocker tool (support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3073930) does not seem to be effective.

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GGius2
Beginner
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Gordon,

Any chance you can share the 13.0 drivers? I have the same issue (Centrino 6300 on Windows 7 freezing with high bandwidth usage).

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GSaks
Beginner
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GabrieleGiuseppini: try here -

drive dot google dot com / open?id=0B7aBgU1RXrIkNldvZk1rOHF0Tlk

Gordon

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idata
Employee
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I too am experiencing this issue. My system is a Dell Inspiron 1545 with the Centrino 6300 added in

Upon loading the newest driver, the computer would freeze not long after operation.

I followed the advice in this thread and adjusted the power settings and installed the 13.0.0.107 driver package.

For a while it was stabilized. Now the problem has began to happen again, and it only seems to occur during high-bandwidth usage. I have 105mbps internet, a Cisco AE4500, and now an Intel Centrino 6300... Yes I can get around 80mbps over wifi for a speedtest, but then it freezes and i have to hard shut down the computer...

Get it together Intel, it's obviously not my system, or equipment, it has been documented enough on the internet that it occurs with different systems and setups... Seems as though YOUR card can't handle MY internet...

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idata
Employee
1,161 Views

 

My 6300 does exactly the same. It works fine for a few minutes but then it hangs the entire laptop. Working with the cable works fine. I have the 6300 installed in my Dell XT2 latitude. With a clean Windows 7 ultimate X64 and X86 both hang. So I had to downgrade to my orginal wifi card.

Funny detail, the wifi @ work works fine, when I come home, I use the Sitecom 300N router the laptop hangs..

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EAvis
Beginner
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I experienced the same symptom with the 6300 card on both Windows XP x64 edition and Windows 7 64-bit. I have downgraded to 13.0.0.107 and changed the power settings according to Gordon S.'s advice - I'll see how it goes.

Intel, could you please provide the older driver version 13.0.0.107 for download from your site? It seems to have been removed.

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