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redrum

This is a heads up to those who have been having reports of low connection strength or 'Grey Wireless Icons" after applying SP1.

It is evidently an NDIS wrapper issue where it reports a signal strength of 1%. Xandros is aware of the situation and is working on a solution, so please be patient. I'd like to note that this does not actually affect the signal strength, just the reporting of that signal strength..

Thanks for your patience...
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Paul Cooper · Xplorer Joined: 17 Oct 2005 Posts: 22

Yes, after installing Service Pack 1 over X4 Premium, the first thing that was noticed was the low signal strength in the "Visible Access" area. But in my case, the strength of the two devices signals shown was around 35 to 50% in yellow whereas before they were in the green at 75 to 85%.

Since the routers/access points are only about 10 feet from this machine, I was duly concerned. (I knew it had to be "them" and not "Me") After chatting with support, the tech gave me a couple of attempted fixes after I had sent them the file containing all the hardware, etc. The fixes didn't work.

I'm glad to see your statement about ndiswrapper. The system works just fine....however, I don't like to see yellow when I can see green. (however, this could make one see red).
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Paul Cooper, Merlin, Oregon

BoyLinux · Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 8:45 am Post subject:

Paul,

Your issues is different form that mentioned by Redrum.
There might be two parts to your problem.
The first is with the kernel update the driver has changed for a newer one. In this case the develloper might have changed some code in the driver to report differently.
The seoncd part os we did change the way the strength is calculated as we had some erros previously on some cards reporting wrong signal strength. This may change the strength show up or down dependingly.
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Paul Cooper · Xplorer Joined: 17 Oct 2005 Posts: 22

Kevin;

When you say that that the code in the driver(s) was changed to a newer one and the signal strength reporting might have been changed to report differently, and then say that the OS was changed in the way it itself reported signal strength, I must presume that the customers who you changed all this for were reporting that their level of signal was either too high (?) or too low.

Using that logic and assuming that most wireless cards will use one of a small number of firmware available, I think that your decision to change the OS for this reflected knowledge that indeed the code in the driver(s) was definitely changed. I also conclude that the users reported signal strength too high.

My firmware is Atheros and Broadcom and I must reach a conclusion that you will have a tremendous volume of complaint on this matter.

Would it not be prudent to affect a change in this code to allow mainstream users to see green instead of yellow? A simple patch would do it.

Paul
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Paul Cooper, Merlin, Oregon

jon wiedmer · Xplorer Joined: 19 Oct 2006 Posts: 25

I noticed this on my system:

Network Connections Applet shows signal strength always at -1%. I dont know how NC gets its data about the connection strength, but here is the output of iwconfig on the same AP at the same time NC reports -1%

eth1 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"removed" Nickname:"removed"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: removed
Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power:25 dBm
RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:50/100 Signal level:-64 dBm Noise level:-96 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

and on subsequent tries the link quality does change as does the signal and noise levels. Just my non developer mind thinking but shouldnt NC be able to grab its data directly from wherever this output comes from? I use wifi every day and on multiple access points which change daily depending on where I stop this truck for the night. Being able to monitor the connection status helps me determine where in the lot I will park for the night for a stable connection. Hope to see some kind of update here soon, and keep up all the wonderful work on this great operating system.

namopereht
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jon wiedmer · Xplorer Joined: 19 Oct 2006 Posts: 25

Something else I noticed... When I open up the available wireless networks search tool from the NC menu (site survey) I am showing a signal strength there also. Just now I connected to an AP with 42% signal strength in the search box. When I link, the NC applet quickly shows all green bars then immediately to all gray. Statistics show -1%, and iwconfig shows 46% a few minutes later. The search tool seems to be reporting in agreeance with iwconfig, just the tray applet and statistics seem to have missed something. Maybe this can be of some help?

namopereht
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namopereht

zeddock · Xplorer Joined: 14 Dec 2006 Posts: 13

I see same here. Goes all green then grey.

I am on the trial version of this thing and would like the wireless problems addressed before I commit to the OS.

Thanx,

Zeddock

bbradley · Xplorer Joined: 27 Dec 2006 Posts: 17

I had the same problem Zeddock ,however I also could not shutdown when I left my ethernet card set to load "on boot". I did a reinstall and that seems to have cleared up, however the grey icon is still there. I just jumped in blind and bought the software first. I'll just live with it for now and will wait for the fix. Is this just an issue with broadcom cards or wireless cards in general?

The people on this forum are very helpful, supportive and encouraging. I would recomend this OS to anyone.

zeddock · Xplorer Joined: 14 Dec 2006 Posts: 13

I am unsure, but a post from another thread says that this is only an issue for NDIS drivers and the poster made a suggestion of this driver for broadcom devices...
http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R115321.EXE

zeddock

jmurrayil · Xplorer Joined: 07 Mar 2008 Posts: 1

It's now 2008, has this probelm been corrected. I have an HP wiith Broadcom internal wireless.

Can or should SP1 been uninstalled until issue is corrected? Having intermittent wireless connection.

kombibus · Xplorer Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 7 Location: CA.

You know guys for the longest of time during my tenth install of Xandros 4.0, I had success when at the beginning of the install, I selected at the network connection portion of the install, the wireless unit that Xandros recognized. I had great success connecting Wireless untill my install developed some bugs and I had to re-install Xandros. Then I lost the connection totally. I still have ethernet connection but the wireless fails to initiate all together. I dare not re-install it again, I'm afraid I might lose the ethernet capability altogether.

I hope this is of some help.

Kombibus