["Jon Miller" <jlmiller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I would probably do the following:
uninstall Ethereal, Winpcap
remove registry entries and folders for both
reboot twice
update all drivers for NIC and video
make sure windows updates are up to date
reboot again
reinstall with Winpcap 3.1, then ethereal 0.10.13.

Jon


Jon L. Miller,  ASE, CNS, CLS, MCNE, CCNA
Director/Sr Systems Consultant
MMT Networks Pty Ltd
http://www.mmtnetworks.com.au
Resellers for: Novell Gold Partner, Cisco Partner, Peopletelecom, Westnet, Sophos Anti-Virus, 

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure
 is trying to please everybody." -Bill Cosby



>>> Pete.Bateman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 6:54:13 pm 8/12/2005 >>>
Hi chaps,

I have Windows XP prof on a laptop, running Winpcap 3.1 and currently Ethereal 0.10.13. If I open ethereal, then open the interfaces dialog and press capture, there is a 50-50 chance that the trace will work. If it doesn't the whole OS hangs. If the first trace works the next attempt to capture is guaranteed  to hang the OS. It is always the pressing of the capture button that initiates the hang. I can otherwise move around the program interface with no troubles. Which interface the is done on and in what order doesn't seem to make any difference. 

Laptop is Dell Lattitude D600, Window XP Pro. It has Broadcom Gigabit nic, Broadcom BCM4306 wireless nic, Nortel Contivity client virtual nic and a couple of unused modem entries 

The hang is complete - no mouse response, <alt><ctrl><del> does not work, unable to force a memory dump with <ctrl>-<scroll>-<scroll> so I am unable to debug with windbg

I have traced from each interface several times in turn using windump and the hang does not occur.

Problem originaly occured with Winpcap 3.1 beta so I upgraded to the full release, no change. (as mentioned above windump works fine)

I have used 0.10.10, 0.10.11 and 0.10.13 and the problem remains the same

Now I know a complete hang is likely a driver problem so I upgraded both the Gig and the Wlan driver to latest version - no change. (again windump works) 

I would suspect ethereal itself except that no one else has reported a problem and its a fairly major one, so it appears to be just me.

Can you suggest how to proceed with diagnosing this?

Thanks

Pete

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