WLANSvc and Ping Spikes

[vulgrin]

Note: this has been cross posted to Microsoft.Public.Windows as well:

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.p...15cb573d723820e

I put Vista Ultimate 64bit on a new PC about a week ago, with a

wireless network card. and have been having a problem that manifested

itself in online gaming (Counterstrike Source and Half-Life DM

specifically) but has also cropped up in Remote Desktop.

The symptoms are that when I am playing, every minute or so I get a

burst of lag, which clears up in about 2-3 seconds. Obviously this is

incredibly annoying and makes it unusable. I've done all sorts of

things, including trying several different drivers, and two different

cards - all with the same results.

After some major googling, I think I have found the culprit, but can

find no way to fix it: the WLAN Autoconfig service is pinging every 60

seconds to try to find wireless networks in my vicinity. I confirmed

this by doing a ping -t to my router, and sure enough every 60 seconds

on the nose I see a <1ms ping turn into a 800-1300ms ping.

Unfortunately, I don't believe there is any network configuration

software for my cards (dlink and netgear) so if I shut off the

service, I lose the network. I tried to shut off just the autoconfig

portion in the command line (using netsh wlan) and then setting up the

network manually with my SSID, but it still won't connect without the

autoconfig on.

I've poked about in the registry as well, and found several keys for

this service relating to the "Scan Interval" but changes to these

settings don't seem to make any difference, and I can't find any

documentation on them.

How do I either get around this, or set up a much higher interval so

that its not happening every minute? This is a desktop PC, so I don't

really need to be looking for other networks... and it seems

ridiculous that I can't shut that portion off...

Thanks

[kartel]

You need this:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysintern...s/autoruns.mspx

And uncheck these

[vulgrin]

No luck. I can't disable the Native Wifi Miniport Driver - if I do, then the WLAN Autoconfig service won't start, and I have no connection.

Are you using a different wireless connection manager? Do you have a wireless in that PC? The DFE-530TX that I'm seeing online is a wired card... I should have been more clear about that - I'm using a wireless connection, so I have to have the WLAN unless there is another 64 bit Vista supported connection manager out there, OR, there is some way I can turn off the damned 60 second check... or delay it to once every couple hours or something.

Thanks though.

[cluberti]

Have you considered downloading netmon3 from connect.microsoft.com and gathering a network trace of the issue occurring? It would be interesting to see if this was the NIC broadcasting, or if it was perhaps something else (and if so, where the traffic was heading).

[vulgrin]

I'll check it out. Its a possibility - though I've seen this issue from a couple people, especially those who reported a similar issue with Wireless Zero Configuration under XP. But I'll see what netmon says - maybe it is some other buried service or something being annoying.

Thanks for the tip, I'll report back once I've had a chance to check it out.

[vulgrin]

Well, I gave up. One trip to the hardware store, some creative wall drilling, and a LOT of four letter words later, and I'm on a wired connection.

For what its worth, I did run the netmon, and once I shut down everything that uses a network, there was NO other traffic running around the time of the pings. Its almost like its pestering the adapter and making it ping slower for half a second...

Who knows... I gave up.