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Laptop running win me freezes when i connect my crossover cable to my pc card adapter

I have two laptop computers that i am trying to network together via a crossover cable. One is running win xp and has a built in ethernet connection (Realtek RTL8139 C+ Fast Ethernet NIC), and the other is running win me and has a Microsoft Broadband Networking notebook adapter (pc card) that installed fine without any complications. The problem occured when I plugged in the crossover cable for the first time. The adapter showed a link but my laptop running windows me stopped responding (no response with mouse pointer and keyboard keystrokes, incluing ctrl, alt, del). The xp machine has no problems and displays that there is a network connection.

I've tried:
- switching the cable around
- unistalling and reinstalling adapter and software
- booting up with cable connected
- using the adapter in safe mode
- installing pc card with cable attached
but none of this has worked.

What can I do?

Gareth Gudger

1/. Try a different cable?

2/. Try a different network card.

nolanites

ASKER

I did not try a different cable and card, but I installed them in a different computer to see if the it would have the same problem freezing up and it did not. There doesn't seem to be any problem with the card or the cable. My win me computer that keeps freezing up is older with only 45 MB RAM and 133 Mhz processor, could that be the problem?

Gareth Gudger

That is kind of old.... it may also be a incompatibility with the PCMCIA card. Judging from the specs you gave I would assume you could only use a 16bit PCMCIA card in there. A 32bit card would probably cause problems. I think you can still get 16bit NICs for PCMCIA slots.....

Has this card ever worked with this machine?

It could also be an incompatibility with the card if not a problem with the bus bit length.

nolanites

ASKER

Here are the specs for my computer pc card slots

EXPANSION SLOTS

Two stacked pc card slots Yes: Hold two - 5mm PC Cards Type II or one - 10.5mm PC Card Type III.
Support Standards Yes: Supports 32-bit, 3.3V PC CardBus Cards and 16- bit, 5.0V PC Card Standards
(Information attained at Toshiba's support website)

No, the card has never worked with this machine. However, as you can see according to the specs this type of card shoud be supported. Card Type:

PC Card Type II slot extended; PC97 32-bit CardBus standard
(specifications given by card manual)

I'm not sure what you mean by "bus bit length."

nolanites

ASKER

I tried starting all over again and this time my computer didn't freeze up when I connected the two computers together via the crossover cable. Then I started the Network Setup and setup up the network, when it came to the "restart computer" screen it froze up again. Now with the network setup to allow sharing between the computer it freezes when I reboot the computer and connect the cable again it freezes.

Any suggestions?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Gareth Gudger

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nolanites

ASKER

What would it be incompatible with. According to my specs (which I have listed above) the card should be compatible. As I mentioned above I started the install process over and everything is fine until I run the network setup wizzard to connect to my xp machine, when upon completion my me machine freezes up. But as of right now I have my me machine running just fine with the card plugged in and an active connection indicated. It is when I try and setup my me machine to share resources that everything freezes.

nolanites

ASKER

I got a new card and it works. Thanks.

Gareth Gudger