From: pheasant on
Wireless adapter died. Bought a D Link DWA 142 Rangebooster to replace
it. Holds signal much better than previous one. Works great, but
doesn't play nice with other programs.

Problem arises when I want to use the computer as a jukebox. Whenever
the wireless sends it's query to the network, it spikes the CPU use, and
the player stutters. Annoying. Currently I just disable the
wireless, and player works great. Quit the music and enable the
wireless and network is back. CPU use goes from 1% to maybe 40% then
drops back so fast it took a while to even find the culprit.

D Link tech help works from a script. They are clueless as to a solution.

Hardware is Soltek SL75FRN2-RL with a Barton core Athlon XP 2500 cpu .
FSB 200, 1GB PC3200 RAM. Win XP Home SP3.

Thanks

Mark


--

"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who
are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
Albert Einstein
From: Paul on
pheasant wrote:
> Wireless adapter died. Bought a D Link DWA 142 Rangebooster to replace
> it. Holds signal much better than previous one. Works great, but
> doesn't play nice with other programs.
>
> Problem arises when I want to use the computer as a jukebox. Whenever
> the wireless sends it's query to the network, it spikes the CPU use, and
> the player stutters. Annoying. Currently I just disable the wireless,
> and player works great. Quit the music and enable the wireless and
> network is back. CPU use goes from 1% to maybe 40% then drops back so
> fast it took a while to even find the culprit.
>
> D Link tech help works from a script. They are clueless as to a solution.
>
> Hardware is Soltek SL75FRN2-RL with a Barton core Athlon XP 2500 cpu .
> FSB 200, 1GB PC3200 RAM. Win XP Home SP3.
>
> Thanks
>
> Mark

With wireless devices, sometimes the same chipsets are used on competing
products. Which means, you may research a competitor's product, and discover
they have a solution. In this case, the chipset appears to be Marvell. And
there are various driver versions, with their own quirks.

http://forums.linksys.com/linksys/board/message?board.id=Wireless_Adapters&message.id=10565

D-Link has a forum, but I didn't see a place for DWA-142 questions.

So my hint would be, to investigate the various driver versions, if you can
dig up examples. Perhaps one of the drivers isn't quite as greedy.

I doubt you'd be so lucky, as to find a setting that controls how much
CPU the driver uses, or how greedy it is.

When I investigated the Asus site, and looked at one of their Wireless N
devices, it turned out to be an Ralinktech chipset. So there are potentially
other chipsets around, but perhaps with different networking properties
(speed etc).

Paul