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ASRock motherboard issues

I

Itchyeyes

Gawd
Joined
Jun 26, 2007
Messages
710
I just a built a new machine with an ASRock H67-MITX motherboard and I'm having a lot of trouble with my network connection. I've got a Linksys AE1000 802.11n adapter hooked up via USB to the machine. I can connect to the network, but speeds are abysmally low (speedtest.net showed less than 200kbps). By comparison, my laptop hooked up to the same network tested at 15Mbps. The Linksys adapter was also working fine in my old desktop machine two days ago, so my inkling is that the problem probably has to do with the USB on the new motherboard. Has anyone else run into similar problems with this motherboard? Thanks.
 
Try connecting to the 5GHz Band (if your router supports that). If it works well then the poor performance could be due to interference on the 2.4GHz Band.
 
I don't have a 5ghz band. But like I said, I don't have any problems connecting other devices to this router, and I didnt have any problems with the wifi adapter when was attached to my old machine. So I really think the problem lies somewhere in the new machine. I've got current versions of all my drivers installed correctly, the only thing left that can think of that would be bottlenecking it is the USB ports.
 
Itchyeyes said:
I don't have a 5ghz band. But like I said, I don't have any problems connecting other devices to this router, and I didnt have any problems with the wifi adapter when was attached to my old machine. So I really think the problem lies somewhere in the new machine. I've got current versions of all my drivers installed correctly, the only thing left that can think of that would be bottlenecking it is the USB ports.
Click to expand...

Reason why I asked you to test the performance on 5GHz band is because I encountered something similar previously.

Basically, I have 2 rigs in another room connected via a Gigabit switch to a D-Link DAP-2553 Wireless Bridge which is connected wirelessly to my Asus RT-N56U dual band router.

Connecting to the 2.4GHz band yields full strength (i.e. 300Mbps as reported by both the router and bridge) but 1 of the 2 rigs stuttered very badly with its internet connection.

Switching to 5GHz completely eliminated the problem so it's kind of obvious this particular rig must be affected by some interference (from whatever) in the 2.4GHz band.
 
josephclemente said:
Have you tried timing a copy of some large files to a USB flash drive? Any speed issues there?
Click to expand...
Ok, I did this. I transfered a 602MB file in 54 seconds, so I'm getting ~90Mbps through the USB port. I suppose that's good enough to conclude the USB isn't bottlenecking my network down so low.
 
I double checked my drivers and it looks like I've got the 32 bit drivers installed instead of the 64 bit ones. The only problem is Windows won't let me upgrade my drivers to the new ones. I point it to the location, then it just tells me that it already has the most recent drivers installed. If I delete the 32 bit drivers Windows automatically reinstalls them as soon as I plug in the device. Does anyone know how to get around this?
 
I know this may be a simple question but, you did install 64 bit windows, right? I ask because it hasnt been mentioned and have learned to check the obvious.
 
Very odd that it would allow you to install 32-bit drivers if you are using a 64-bit OS. That kind of stuff is generally locked out.

Another thing to consider is which 2.4 GHz channel your router is broadcasting on. The 2.4 GHz range tends to be pretty busy and includes things like wireless telephones, bluetooth, wireless keyboards/mice, and neighbors with wifi. You may run into a weird coincidence that one of your neighbors started using some new piece of hardware in that range and it's hammering the same frequencies that you want to use.

Free utilities like inSSIDer ( http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/ ) will allow you to see all of the wifi networks in your vicinity and which channels in the 2.4 GHz range they are using. Some routers have a "decide the best channel for me" feature that works pretty well in most cases, but sometimes you may want to manually set the channel to something that looks to have the least interference. Channels 1, 6, and 11 are generally recommended as they don't overlap each other in frequency. Sometimes, however, it works better to choose something in the middle of those ranges if things are particularly busy in your area.
 
Yeah, I don't really know how they got on there. I don't remember seeing a prompt or anything. But that's what it says in the device manager. And yes, I am using 64-bit windows. I really doubt this is a router problem, given that it works fine with other machines and worked fine with the same wifi adapter prior to when I put it on the new rig. Also, houses in my neighborhood are on 1/3rd acre lots, so there's a lot less overlap with other networks than you might be thinking.

The drivers seem lime the most likely candidate. If anyone knows how I can keep windows from auto reinstalling the old drivers so I can try this with the 64-bit ones that would help a lot.
 
This link describes how to turn off automatic driver installation when Win7 is starting up. I think I'd try this and follow up by manually installing your 64-bit driver.

http://www.brighthub.com/computing/windows-platform/articles/66792.aspx

You may also want/need to do the following trick for getting rid of hidden device drivers in the registry. This would be something to do after you've removed the 32-bit driver the regular way and before you reboot/plug the device back in. Seems that Win7 may be holding onto your 32 bit driver because it's a USB device and it expects it to be plugged back in like a USB flash drive:

http://www.petri.co.il/removing-old-drivers-from-vista-and-windows7.htm
 
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Have you tried a wired connection to your router? Just to be sure that the problem doesn't come from something else than the USB dongle's driver.
 
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