Question : Downloads freeze Win98SE Laptop, but surfin' works fine

This is driving me crazy! A customer has a Sony Vaio PCG-X18 Laptop (Windows 98SE) that is connected to a docking station. He used to connect to the internet with a CardBus modem, what was slow but worked perfectly. Now he has DSL, so I installed a Netgear router in his office and installed a Netgear FA411 (16bit PCMCIA, not CardBus) Ethernet card in his laptop. I can surf the internet without any problems (DHCP from the router works; using fixed IP adresses didn't change anything) and even download small files, but every bigger download (2-3 minutes) freezes the laptop in a way that ctrl-alt-del doesn't work. I have to use the power button.
I've tried everything that came into my mind and I try to list everything I discovered:

BTW: I removed every other PCMCIA card and every other external device (printer..) during all my tests. I checked for viruses with NortonAntiVirus 2003 and for SpyWare with AdAware6. There is no newer BIOS (R0115A0/RK115A0) for the laptop available at the Sony website.

Installing problems of the ethernet card:
The laptop has two PCMCIA slots itself and one in the docking station. I stuck the card into one of the laptop slots, it discovered new hardware, I showed it the path to the drivers on the CD (there are no newer drivers on the Netgear website), it installed it. Fine. Restart. It found new hardware again! Installed the drivers again! A message popped up saying the Ethernet card might be damaged. Two Netgear ethernet cards in the device manager, one with a yellow "!". One entry uses IRQ 3, one uses IRQ 10. OK, booting into save mode, removing both entrys in the device manager, delete *fa41*.* Repeat whole procedure. Same result. Tried the other PCMCIA slot. Same result. Tried the slot in the docking station. Seems to work, but freezes on long downloads.

Fumbling with IRQs:
Netgear has a DOS based DIAG.EXE to test the card. This program finds the card only if it is stuck into one of the laptop slots. It doesn't see it when it is stuck into the docking station slot. The program tests the card and finds it OK. It always shows IRQ 3 at adress 300h. OK, rebooting into windows, stuck the card into a laptop slot, rebooting, two entrys in the device manager as expected. I disabled the entry with the yellow "!" and changed the other entry manually to IRQ 3/300h. Rebooting, downloading, freeze!

Device manager:
I booted into save mode and removed every entry that shows up more than once. Reebooted. It found some new hardware and installed it again, but it didn't change anything.

MSConfig:
I disabled 'autoexec.bat', 'config.sys' and everything but 'systray' in 'autostart'. Same result.

SysTray:
The is a utility in the systray that allows to savely stop and remove PCMCIA cards. This utility shows five (!) slots. Slot 1 and 2 without saying anything about them, slot 3 and 5 being empty and slot 4 with the Netgear FA411. Where do those two additional slots come from? There are two PCMCIA controllers listed in the device manager. I removed both of them, but it reinstalled them again, so they are obviously actually there.

???

Any ideas?

Answer : Downloads freeze Win98SE Laptop, but surfin' works fine

Saving this Q as a PAQ and refunding the 85 points to the questionner

modulo

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