Friday, January 2, 2009

Windows Vista 64 Freezes When Saving to Network Share Using Ralink RT61 Wireless PCI Adaptor

The new Athlon X2 BE-2400 computer (running Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit) I had built had a terrible problem- whenever I tried to save a document on a network share the whole computer would freeze. Seeing that I didn't have a spare wireless network adaptor available, I decided to tweak the settings of the one in the machine. It's a CompUSA brand MIMO internal PCI card with an external antenna stand having 3 antennas. Windows Vista shows it as a Ralink RT61 MIMO Wireless LAN Card.

From the Advanced tab of the properties for the card, I turned B/G Protection from On to Off, turned IEEE802.11h from Disabled to Enable, and set TX Burst from Disabled to Enabled. They didn't make any difference.

So I went ahead and bought another wireless card, the Rosewill RNX-G300EX, and little did I know that it was also Ralink, this time Windows Vista indicating it as a Ralink RT61 Turbo. And yep, the same freezing problem. I then booted into Safe Mode with Networking, just to eliminate the possibility of any apps being the culprit, and it still froze the computer when I did a cut and paste into a network share.

I used Vista and tried to do a "Update Driver" but it couldn't find a newer one on the net. I then navigated to the support section of the Ralink site over at:

http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Windows.html

and noticed that there were new driver updates as of December 11th, 2008. I downloaded the one that said "PCI/mPCI/CB (RT256x/RT266x)" because the Docs said the drivers were for RT61. The version was updated to 2.1.3. After installation, it still DID NOT WORK- the computer hangs after saving something to a network share. What a piece of junk. Hopefully Ralink will eventually fix this.

23 comments:

Alex said...

i recently just ran into this problem myself. i tried installing 2.1.3.0 drivers - and they still crash too.

any luck on your end?

Anonymous said...

I have exactly the same problem with this card / driver. They posted a new driver a couple of months ago that I hoped would fix the problem, but my computer froze again today when I tried to print to my network printer. I think the only solution in the short term (unless or until RALink releases a driver that fixes the problem) is to get a different (non-RALink) NIC.

Meno said...

Yep, same problem with my Linksys WMP54Gv4.1 card too (rt61 chipset)

Anonymous said...

I have random freezes with the following specs:
Linksys WMP54Gv4.1 8GB RAM
VISTA x64 and Windows 7 x64

Anonymous said...

Try this: http://files.aoaforums.com/F2749-RT61%20PCI%20mPCI%20CB.zip

No more freeze on my Vista x64 and Windows 7 x64 Beta. ;)

yfital said...

Hey, having the same problem as well.
Hangs usually when utorrent does many connections, found that minimizing max connection helps a bit.
Edimax 7128, RT61 as well...
4GB mem, Vista 64, Didn't have this on the 32Bit version ( of course ... ).

If anyone finds a solution, let us know, this is getting truly annoying.

yfital said...

Hmmm, so far the old driver is working ok....
I saw it somewhere but i thought someone said it doesn't work with wpa 2...
Maybe finally i can leave my computer on at night and see it running in the morning :]

Thanks man!

Anonymous said...

The old driver work on my WPA2 AES protected wireless. ;)

yfital said...

Well, good news and bad news.

The good ones are, no more complete hangs.

the bad news are:
1. Sometimes i get totally no connectivity to my network, never happened before.
only thing fixing this is reinstalling new drivers and reverting to the old ones ( don't ask me why ).
2. Teredo is kinda jamming the network (i think).
since utorrent 1.8.2 ( released this week ) i noticed that i am getting a teredo IPv6 IP, and i think my speeds went up, but thats only on the new drivers, on the old, something is weird ( not sure what yet ).

speeds are slower, or connection to peers is slower, not sure yet.

And ya, no problem with WPA2.

The weird thing, that putting the new drivers works for a couple of days, and than just doesn't stop getting stuck, reinstalling gives another day or two, and than, right back to stucking...
annoying :\

maybe ill submit a query to ralink, though i doubt they will help.

Anonymous said...

IM having this exact issue.. that old driver works without freezing, but im getting much slower speeds than i did using the new drivers.... I cant believe ralink hasnt fixed this yet, i wont EVER purchase anything that uses ralink drivers again

Anonymous said...

Any news about this problem ? I have hangs everytimes i upload files with a Dlink DWA510 (RT61).
Vista 64, 6Go, i920.

tmaxxtigger said...

I turned the encryption on my router down to 64 bit from 128 bit and it appears to work with the latest 2.1.3. driver, no hangs so far.

Dave Roberts said...

I'm VERY curious to see if anyone found a fix to this. If you bought a new card to solve the problem, which card?

Anonymous said...

Same problem verified with RT61 on Windows 7 here. Driver 2.0.3.0 doesn't have this problem, however this driver introduces lag spike every few minutes making them useless for online gaming.

Anonymous said...

I had the same problem with my vista 64bit system with the ralink rt61 card found out that if you have 8 gigs of ram or more it will freez up so I went and bought a netgear card and it has stoped freezing.

Simone said...

The last version (02/06/2009 3.0.1.0) from Windows Update on Windows 7 RC 64-bit resolve all problems!
Yuppy!!

Dave Roberts said...

Does Windows Update have newer drivers than Ralink's website does? Look at the dates on this page: http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Windows.html

Simone said...

Yes..Windows Update (for Windows 7 RC 64 bit) have newer drivers than Ralink's website for RT61!

Anonymous said...

Is there a fix for Vista x64 ?
Can we use the drivers for Windows 7RC ?

Dave Roberts said...

I'm using Windows 7 64-bit and the updated drivers from Windows update are working for me

yfital said...

Finally, a new driver set on the VISTA 64 window's update.

Dated from the 20/07/2009.

I really hope this one will work, just installed it...

crossing my fingers :}

Anonymous said...

let windows update install automatically the drivers by uninstalling them at all and connecting to internet by other way. it works perfectly for mee.

sorry for my english!

drivers for my wireless adapter:

http://rapidshare.de/files/47925720/Ralink_RT61_Wireless_LAN_Card_V2.zip.html

rt256x

Anonymous said...

thanks Anonymous (July 23, 2009 6:10 AM), your rapidshare upload saved the day!