Vodafone Datacard Causing Intermittent Shutdown

[roadsweeper]

Hi

I have a Vodafone 3G/GPRS PCMCIA datacard which appears to be causing my laptop to suddenly switch off without warning - there is no blue screen, nothing, it just switches off.

I'm not sure whether this is likely to be a problem with my laptop or the card itself and wondered if anyone else had seen this kind of problem and oculd perhaps point me in the right direction?

Cheers,

roadie.

[malman]

Does it turn off or reboot? If its a reboot then the blue screen can be a bit too quick to see but can be set to stay on the screen until you reboot it.

Is it random amounts of time? How hot is the card getting? Is it when you are using it or just idle? Are you actually using the cards service when it does it?

[roadsweeper]

malman said:

Does it turn off or reboot? If its a reboot then the blue screen can be a bit too quick to see but can be set to stay on the screen until you reboot it.

Is it random amounts of time? How hot is the card getting? Is it when you are using it or just idle? Are you actually using the cards service when it does it?

It turns off. It does not restart.

The timing appears to be random.

The card does get quite warm but I have never used a different one so I don't know if this is normal.

The laptop has switched off when using the service on the train (signal reception was intermittent) but also during the boot process itself when it would obviously not have been connected, which led me to thinking it might be a hardware fault.

[malman]

If its possible try running the machine without it in to see if its a general problem. The only way to find out if its the card slot or the card is to swap it for another or borrow another card or something to put in the slot and see if it dies with that in.

[tvrforever]

How odd - I had this same problem and swapped the 3G card (I work for VF), and tested both old and new ones in other laptops, with no problems at all. New card made it happen less but still every few hours.

Tured out it was something it in the laptop that only failed when it had the 3G card in it - even though the laptop (HP 4200TC) was only 2 weeks old Swapped laptop using old card and all ok now...

Might be worth checking you have the latest software & firmware :-

www.business.vodafone.com/site/bus/public/enuk/support/p_support.jsp

or

www.business.vodafone.com/getDocument.do?docId=83958

[roadsweeper]

malman said:

If its possible try running the machine without it in to see if its a general problem. The only way to find out if its the card slot or the card is to swap it for another or borrow another card or something to put in the slot and see if it dies with that in.

It never happens when the card isn't present. I'll try and get Vodafone to replace the card and see what happens.

Thanks for your help.

[tvrforever]

what's the card's current firmware rev?

[tvrforever]

did a swap sort it?

[roadsweeper]

I haven't had chance to speak to Vodafone yet. I'll give them a call and see what they say. Thanks for the advice.

[Fiddlemesticks]

I had that when i got a Vodafone 3g card. Just made everything freeze, then crash.

Decided i could do without the card. Sorry if this doesnt help you, but to let you know that you're not alone with this issue.