Asus G50VT-X6 - Both USB NICs keep disconnecting (suspecting motherboard)

I have this computer:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220483
ASUS G Series G50VT-X6

I have installed Windows XP SP3 even though Asus does not support XP at all and doesn't provide official drivers. XP functions well. However I think the computer is having electrical issues or an incompatability with XP. Here are some symptoms:

The internal wireless card no longer works. When pressing the FN-Wireless key (F2), the Asus utlity shows that Wireless is "Off", after a few seconds it flashes that Bluetooth is off too (I have not installed any Bluetooth drivers am not worried about that). The internal wireless card stopped working abruptly around 4 weeks after I installed the required Intel drivers. It worked perfectly fine until one day it stopped. When attempting to reinstall the Intel drivers, the installation ends saying the device cannot be started. I have concluded that the internal wireless card physically failed.


I have tried to 2 different USB wireless cards (I have also expereicned the exact same symptoms on 2 different routers, a Netgear and D-Link. No other computer in the house is experiencing this problem).

ENCORE ENUWI-N USB 2.0 802.11n Wireless Adapter
Netgear MA111

Both of them exhibit similar symptoms. When the computer is freshly rebooted they usually work for around half an hour. Than they both abruptly fail. The windows wireless networks connection status shows that they are connected.

For the Encore, the wireless software shows that transmit rate falls to 0 and than jumps around at very low levels at around 3-10 kbps, the receive rate is a little higher but also falls. After around 1-4 minutes it sometimes reconnects and the transmit and recieve rates go back to normal.

For the other card, the software shows that no data is sent or recieved during this episode of failure.

After the initial failure (~30 minutes post startup) both wireless cards go into this cycle of disconnecting and possibly reconnecting. Disconnected the cards and plugging them back in causes them to find the connection successfully but they disconnect again within 1-5 minutes if the cycle has started.

All drivers are updated. 2 different routers have been used with firmware updated. I have attempted to troubleshoot with all other USB devices disconnected. All power saving settings have been turned off. I have attempted to use channels 6, 8, and 11 with the same results.

Here is the weirdest symptom. For the Encore wireless card, some of the time (especially if the computer has been idle for some time) the card's light turns off and the card itself completely stalls certain parts of Windows. When this happens, attempting to bring up the wireless software by right clicking doesn't work, pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE doesn't work, opening programs doesnt work, it seems that explorer.exe is permenantly stalled.... UNTIL I pull out the card. All of a sudden, all of the things I have attempted to do while stalled (CTRL-ALT-DELETE, Wireless software, starting programms) they all of a sudden start executing once the card is unplugged.

So what's going on? USB drivers? Motherboard incompability with XP?

I have browsed the internet and the random wireless disconnecting issue seems prevalent in XP/SP3 with a lot of unresolved threads with a random disconnecting problem. So is going on?

 

Hate to be cheeky, but your statement of "XP functions well" does not bode well with the rest of the system device's performance as you described

The only thing that I can think of is probably the lack of a "XP" chipset driver and USB controller driver for this comp. You might want to use Everest Home and list out the devices and see if you can track some other drivers for the USB controller and see.

cheers ...