TH55 freezes trying to connect to WiFi

[margaret]

I got my TH55 yesterday, charged it all afternoon, and played with it all evening.

Just when I had everything up and running the way I wanted, NetFront crashes with a Fatal Exception. I did a hard reset, but now when I try to connect to my wireless router, the TH55 freezes. A hard reset does nothing to correct the problem.

I read on another forum here that hard resets don't really clear out everything, so you should drain your battery and try again. Unfortunately, draining the TH55 battery is a long long long process. In fact, I haven't been able to do it. For those of you who have working TH55s, that should come as good news. ;-)

I need a PDA that's up and running 99% of the time. Because that isn't happening with the TH55, I'm taking it back. I'm not real happy about the situation, because up to this point, the TH55 was very nearly ideal PDA for me.

margaret

[jumpyg]

You should take some more time to troubleshoot the problem. It might be a problem with how you have your wireless router set up.

Please post what router and other config information you have--this will help others.

[SamuraiCatJB]

were you using WEP settings or open network? Just curious because mine is set up on WEP and i would think if there was a problem, that would be the most likely culprit... I guess I will find out when I try mine on my network.

[dmako]

I had an issue with my D-Link router and my TH55. Had to disable
4X support (a D-Link item). All is fine now.

[miswit]

Hi,

Margaret here. I wasn't logged in when I posted the initial message in this thread.

Anyway, to answer your questions about the router...

There is nothing wrong with the settings on my router, a Netgear FM114P. I was surfing with the TH55 just fine with no trouble for quite a while last night before the crash occurred. The router saw the TH55 and the TH55 saw the router.

After the crash, the TH55 wasn't showing up on the connected devices list in the router management pages at all. The TH55 software did not progress far enough to catch the router's signal before freezing.

In any case, it's returned now. I can't have a temperamental beastie as a PDA. I need a reliable performer. If that means hanging onto my trusty, banged up Treo 90 for a while longer, then that's what I will have to do. That thing has been dropped onto concrete half a dozen times and stepped on once and it has never missed a beat.

[skccs]

Originally posted by margaret
I got my TH55 yesterday, charged it all afternoon, and played with it all evening.

Just when I had everything up and running the way I wanted, NetFront crashes with a Fatal Exception. I did a hard reset, but now when I try to connect to my wireless router, the TH55 freezes. A hard reset does nothing to correct the problem.

I read on another forum here that hard resets don't really clear out everything, so you should drain your battery and try again. Unfortunately, draining the TH55 battery is a long long long process. In fact, I haven't been able to do it. For those of you who have working TH55s, that should come as good news. ;-)

I need a PDA that's up and running 99% of the time. Because that isn't happening with the TH55, I'm taking it back. I'm not real happy about the situation, because up to this point, the TH55 was very nearly ideal PDA for me.

margaret

This is strange, I never had problems like that on my nx70v, nz90, nx73v.

By all means do not drain your battery (i read you returned the unit). This is a compete bullshit, that a hard-reset does not completely clean your device (except for rom which can not be cleared by battery drain either). I had pda's which did no more recover to a good battery life after draining them completely. These small and flat li-ion-polymer batteries are hightech but not as reliable as a horse.

[jumpyg]

I can't have a temperamental beastie as a PDA. I need a reliable performer.
I agree that your problem is troubling. However, I don't think you can chalk this up to the TH55 being unreliable if you've only used it for a couple hours. You could easily have the same problem with another WiFi unit. WiFi is not a technology that necessarily works straight out of the box.

Just look at the reviews for wireless routers on CNet. Ten users say this router is a complete piece of crap, and ten others say it works like a charm. The point is there are dozens of variables, and it's doubtful that there is anything inherently wrong with the TH55 that prevented you from connecting. Some users will connect right away and some will have to play with it to figure it out.

[divination23]

I recently setup a wifi network at my house and couldnt get
windows2k to use encrypted packets(WEP), so i had to disable that feature,
does the th55 suffer this as well?
It would be unfortunate to offer such an excellent technology,
without security.
Also, why are all the wifi cards for clie's only B and not 802.11g?
I realize im not going to be streaming movies on my clie, but
i always enjoy fast throughput

-div

[skccs]

Originally posted by divination23

I realize im not going to be streaming movies on my clie, but
i always enjoy fast throughput

-div

The throughput on my NX73V was really very good (desktop mesured with mcafee speedometer about 850 kpbs, and clie feels much the same.

I don't know if this is documented in the manuals of the clie's but I recently noticed that some kind of pseudo movie-streaming worked on my NX73V (later clie models usually get better!): I you click an an url with an mpg1 (works without desktop conversion) movie which is small enough to fit the RAM of your clie. Netfront opens a dialog and asks you to play or download. Choose play. It will first download to RAM, then save to memorystick, afterwards it does setup the filenames to work in clie-movieplayer in the background and then launches movieplayer and highlights the movie. you just have to press play and it shows!

[Tarugo]

Windows2K should have no problems handling WEP. How is your wireless network set up? Did you change any settings on your router or network connections in Win2K?

[SibesRule]

Tried to use WIFI @ Schlotskys and it wouldn't work. Timed out then it did freee up. Soft reset fixed it. Went out and bought a Lynksis router (wireless), hooked up and now I'm posting from TH55. Now, if I can just everything to landscape......./

[Tarugo]

hooray for linksys!

[gollum]

SibesRule - when you switched to a Linksys router, did you enable WEP?

[SibesRule]

Originally posted by gollum
SibesRule - when you switched to a Linksys router, did you enable WEP?

Took out of the box, followed the instructions and went with the defaults on the setup web page. Am I lazy or what? :D

I wouldn't know a WEP if it slapped me in the face!

[divination23]

as for the win2k question, i didnt mess with much of it. I finally
hardwired my laptop(winXP) to the router so i could play with all the
router settings and still be able to talk to it.
I figured its not the win2k setup on my other machine, since,
after i turn off wep it works fine. I've got wep working excellent
on my laptop so i dont think its the config of that. perhaps a
service pack issue? i have no service packs installed
on the 2k box, it broke all to hell last time i did that... yey ms.


Thats really cool to hear about the streaming video thing!
I've always had this dream of doing photoshop or film gimp
from a pda through a vnc connection to my laptop, i think that
would be killer, but most likely still impossiblle with sluggy
data rate. i feel like sony always keeps us wanting more,
just like a seductive love affair.

but sonys a tease. :)

-div