Problem Description:
1. Click on the wireless connection icon in the system tray to open "Wireless Network Connection Status".
2. Click on "View Wireless Networks" to open the "Wireless Network Connection" dialogue.
3. Click on "Change Advanced Settings" button under that dialog and XP Pro will freeze.
This is a repeatable pattern. When I say freeze it doesn't require a hard reboot. All the programs and menus become unusable but I can still CTRL+ALT+DEL and log off the current user to go to the log on screen. When I do that, explorer.exe will need to be manually terminated in all occurrences. In some occurrences, ctfmon.exe will also need to be manually terminated. Once these steps are taken, the logon screen appears normally and I can log back into the system without any further issues.
Solutions Tried:
1. I updated the wireless card drivers to the latest Intel release - Intel 4965AGN. I installed all the recent windows updates. This seemed to cure the problem, but only after the first restart. After that, the same pattern repeated itself when I tried to change advanced settings.
2. I tried disabling WZC and using Intel's manager. This cured the problem of course, BUT I did not like the things the Intel manager did to my system. First off the memory foot print seems humongous. My system was starting around 380 MB of RAM usage before it. After the installation that number went up to around 470MB. Also, Intel manager disabled the welcome screen and fast user switching for good. The worst part was though that system startup time sky rocketed. I could easily say that it quadrupled. But the interesting thing is that the generic advanced settings dialog of Windows was working properly if the Intel manager was set to use the Windows manager. OK. So I uninstalled the Intel manager since I didn't like the strain it put on my system and I'm back to square one. Right at my third attempt to open the advanced settings dialog, XP froze again.
Is there any way to "repair" the WZC service?
Is there a simple and effective alternative to it that is not a resource hog like the Intel manager?
Thanks a lot for bearing with me...
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