Hi, just a note about your Linksys WPC54G card and the problems you have with it. I have the same card and installed the drivers for the WPC54GS (downloaded from the Linsys website). The WPC54G runs just fine with them and might solve your problem …

Good luck with it …

Michel    10 May 04

Gosh, I’m so stupid! What would have I done without you, Michel? I probably would have wasted $100...

Thank you; I didn’t realize that the SpeedBooster driver would work with the old card. It worked like a charm, and now I can open all the dozens of browser tabs I want! Plus, I might get more done on this site… Once again, thank you.

★ Hans    10 May 04

Hi, I’m glad the new driver worked out fine for you too :) Though what you call an old card, is a new card for me ! ;)

Keep up the good work with your site !

Michel    12 May 04

Hans,

Don’t mean to belabor this issue on your site, but yours is the top Google hit for bcmwl5.sys problems ;-). Anyway, thanks to some suggestions posted here I was able to fix the bcmwl5.sys BSOD I was getting with my Buffalo Tech WLI-CB-G54S laptop card. It all stems from the driver used for the Broadcom chipset that Buffalo (along with Linksys, HP and Belkin and others are using for their 54g+ cards). Seems that even the latest drivers offered by Buffalo were having problems. These drivers used version 3.50.21.10 (or lessor) of bcmwl5.sys (located in c:\windows\system32\drivers) dated 05/19/04 with size 294kb. As was suggested, I looked around for more recent versions of this file. The Linksys version is 3.50.21.11 and is strangely dated as 02/19/04 (how can .11 be dated before .10?). On the HP site (do a search for zt3280us drivers) I found version 3.70.17.00 dated 08/04/04. This is probably the most recent version of the Broadcom driver. I simply extracted the HP driver file, and copied only the bcmwl5.sys file to c:\windows\system32\drivers, overwriting the existing one. I’ve had no problems since. Why other card makers haven’t updated to this version is beyond me… would surely save us all a lot of hassle. Thanks for pointers… saved my skin.

Bob    25 September 04

Just to say thanks for your help with bcmwl5.sys. Our emachines had been running fine for 9 months and then I installed a wlan and upgraded to XP professional. The laptop became unuseable (and was infected with spyware). We tried everything, even sent it for repair (PCWorld) which took a week, came back with a new fan but still froze constantly and then I discovered bcmwl5.sys, found your site and the problem was fixed thanks to the HP drivers – many thanks again – Bill

Bill Smith    13 November 04

I’ve had this same problem, I checked around the HP site and I can’t seem to find the version and date you mentioned Bob. I don’t know if it’s been removed or something, but could you (or someone else) post a URL to the correst page on the site?

Jake    29 March 05

Jake,
If this link works…the full driver file is here…extract and follow the tip to just use the driver file

If the link does not work…go to HP.com…select Driver Downloads…in the Enter a Product number search field enter “zt3280us”...select your OS (in my case XP) which gets you to the page with the above link on it. Under the Network Drivers section it is labelled “Broadcom WLAN Network Adapters Driver for Windows XP” 12-2004, v.3.00 D, size 3.32M. I believe the User Interface file right above it is the one I’m currently using too. Anyway…I have the Gateway M675 PRR. The Wireless was erratic and buggy as all get out when I got it (refurbished…no doubt a brand new laptop that someone got fed up with the crappy wireless in the first week and returned it ;-) ). Anyway, after a number of attempts…this has done the trick. I remember having some quirks getting it all to install correctly…mainly I think I had to go thru the Remove Hardware process…and remove the old driver…then restart and let Windows find the hardware again…then say Have Disk or whatever so I could direct it to just the file we want. It works awesome!! Only quirk is that this driver uses the blue light that surrounds the wireless On/Off switch on this laptop to indicate wireless traffic…whereas with the original driver the light simply indicated whether the wireless card was enabled/on or disabled/off. Good luck to everyone.

The Card management software shows this: v. 3.70.22.0 – Oct 20 2004 built by WinDDK. And my hardware details says: BCM4306MP Rev 4.4 Chipset BCM4306 / Bcm2050

bfr    12 April 05

I hate to bother you, but I was reading through various websites for related problems and found your contact information.

I am a US Soldier in Iraq but I recently began having problems with my laptop, due to this I am forced to use local computers to try to find a fix.

Recently my NIC1394.sys, BCMWL5.sys and EL000325.sys related files became corrupt so my internet stopped working as it says the file drivers dont work.

Do you know any fixes for this? Do you know where I can find them?

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Fallen One    16 April 05

It’s odd, I never had this problem before I had my laptop repaired, then when I got it back, BSOD left and right. Thank you for posting up this fix!

Eruda    11 May 05

Just like to say a big thank you all for bfr’s help with this problem. This has been bugging me for ages and now finally i have an answer :-)

Thanks once Again

EnigmaUK    23 May 05

I can’t day for sure that the 3.7xx driver resolved the problem I had, but I dl’d it anyway and had to uninstall the card then re-install to get it working again. My problem was that I went from a disabled security setting to a SHARED KEY and it broke my connection. After uninstalling the card, I changed the security setting on my WAP from Shared Key to WEP. This worked, so I left it alone.
I’ve had nothing but hard luck and trouble with Linksys equipment, and it leaves me very skittish and angry about fickle wireless connections.

wildwillyak    9 June 05

Hi,

Just a quick note to say that my Buffalo Card WL12-PCI-G54S (Desktop running AMD Barton 2500+ XPHome 1.5Gb RAM)was suffering from involuntary shutdowns which seemed to happen most when downloading large files or using multi-media applications whilst downloading).

Replaced the bcmwl5.sys with version from the HP site 3.70.22.0 (Buffalo did not respond to my e-mail on teh subject) and since everything has been fine. The only thing I have noticed is that the speed appears to have dropped down to a max of 54Mps when before it peaked at the cards max of 128Mps (not that it will affect my 2Meg broadband)

Budfrog23    4 July 05

When I upgraded from 98SE to XP my old Linksys PCMCIA card stopped working since the original CD didn’t have an XP driver. Even after downloading their latest driver from LK’s site the laptop refused to accept it.
Enter a new ASANTE AL5403-XG card and CD. Again the same thing happened even after being on the phone with their tech support for over an hour today. Card uses BCMWL5 chip and the latest driver that ASANTE shows is 3.30.15.0. The tech finally gave up. I can operate with a USROBOTIC USB adapter though, but since my LP only sports one USB port I wouldlike to use the card instead. After reading the statements in this forum I wonder if any of you gurus can come up with a possible solution to my predicament.

Johs.    5 July 05

Just to say that this page is still the first google result for bcmwl5.sys … and that nowaday the available version from the hp site is 3.100.65.1 :)

(and by the way thank you very much)

Geompse    13 December 05

Out of the blue, my WPC54G started failing… after 3 years of good use on the same laptop. At first, I thought it was Windows, but eventually realized it was something with the PCMCIA wifi card.

I tried reinstalling both the new drivers as well as the old drivers and nothing seems to have fixed it.

Basically, when I boot up, everything is fine until Windows tries to use the card. The card itself green-lights as active and that does nothing. Its only when the wireless driver “service” activates that it dies on me, freezing Windows entirely.

Your site is great. Just wanted to share my unfortunate experience without a solution. (I’ve been forced back to ethernet for now.)

Romerican    9 January 06

How to unload the driver bcmwl5.sys?

ancarani studio    30 January 06

wonder if you guys still monitor this site i got the same problem bcmwl2.sys BSOD did u guys ever find a good fix i using a belkin f5d7011 NIC and medion6272 lappy and had nothing but probs

lee    15 September 06