[ltp] Cisco 350 MiniPCI firmware problem and solution

[Hafþór Hilmarsson]

well its not really windows that does the firmware upgrade, but the cisco
Driver :p or the driver, so its harch to blame windows, even if it does have
lots of flawes ;)
should send mail to cisco or the driver coder and tell them to put upp a
warning or something IMHO.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ivarsson, Torbjorn (T)" <tivarsson@lucent.com>
To: <linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org>
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 8:52 PM
Subject: [ltp] Cisco 350 MiniPCI firmware problem and solution


> Well, after 1+ on the phone with Cisco tech support, I managed to solve my
problem myself... I realize now that I should have asked this list first if
anyone has experienced something similar, and if and how you solved it.
>
> Anyway, my problem was: Cisco supports the Aironet 350 MiniPCI card I have
in my R40 with their 2.0 driver and 5.00.03 firmware. I know about the Linux
driver alternatives... When I got my laptop I went to Windows and saw that
the firmware currently was 5.02.19.
>
> After downloading the files from Cisco, I "downgraded" my firmware to
5.00.03. Fine. The problem was that when I then rebooted back to Windows the
firmware was "magically" upgraded to 5.02.19... Frustrated I called the
friendly tech support (an engineer called back very quick) and we tried to
fix the problem.
>
> Well, during one of the many "please stay on the line, I'll put you on
hold while I research the problem", I searched my harddrive for *.img files
(the firmware is a .img file). A couple of them popped up, including a file
named c:\windows\system32\drivers\pcx504b.img. A quick search on Google
revealed that this file is related to Aironet. I renamed the file (.im_),
"downgraded" my firmware again to 5.00.03 and rebooted. The "automagic"
upgrade of the firmware to 5.02.19 was no more.
>
> Apparently Windows or ACU or some other program, automatically loads the
pcx504b.img file into the firmware without asking me... Wonderful. Windows
strikes again.
>
> Anyway, if I was the first one with this problem, the solution is now in
the archives...
>
> Why do I dual-boot with XP? Well... hmmm... it's pretty, isn't it? :)
Once I get Mandrake to work as I want, I may blow XP away. I run my music
apps on my optimized XP desktop.
>
> Thanks for listening,
> T.
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