Windows 8.1 BSOD: netwlv64.sys

Explain the procedure to test wifi quality and I'll be ready to run those tests for you.

As written already you might open Command-Prompt:

Win+X, launch command prompt (no need for admin)

Then type "ping -t 192.168.1.1"

Assuming 192.168.1.1 is your router IP address, you might find your router/gateway address by typing "ipconfig" on the command line too.

Alternatively just type "ping -t www.google.com" to ping google. However this requires a working internet connection and varying ping-times might occur depending on your Internet connection quality.

Then watch the output for timeouts. The output should look similar to this:

Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=63

Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=63

Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=63

Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=63

Slight fluctuation in "time" is possible but on LAN/WiFi interface it should not exceed 10ms. If you ping google the value might be between 20ms and 60ms usually.

Test this after reboot, after standby and on battery.

I am at home right now and pinging my router seems to be more stable than at work. This might be partially related to WiFi band overload at work - perhaps the driver just handled it badly. But also here I get occasionally high RTT (time) values. I will monitor again in crowded WiFi network and perhaps let it run for a day or more to watch for more BSOD.

Right now it looks like outdated 12.4 driver is at least more stable. But other issues of Windows 8.1 are a complete no-go too. It looks like it's at least not worth the hassle. If this thread helps somebody with only WiFi issues and nothing else to fix it then it's fine however. Just keep in mind that you might have to disable power management of Wifi driver in device manager and depending on issues (like standby-resume connection) disabling MSI and even 802.11n mode on 4965agn driver might be required.

Explain the procedure to test wifi quality and I'll be ready to run those tests for you.

Hi, I've had the same issue with this since the upgrade to Windows 8.1 on my lenovo T61 with this wifi adapter.  With Windows 8, it happened very rarely.  One thing I've noticed is that it consistently happens when I am using IE11.  I have NEVER had it happen with Firefox.  It happens every other day right now, so I'm going to just use firefox exclusively and see if that helps.  I'll try and remember to post again later on how it's going :)

I am sorry to say but the browser you are using is extremely unlikely to have an influcence on the BSOD issue. Browsers are user-level applications and just use high-level communication libraries provided by the OS. A browser or any other application is usually unable to write to memory segments in the kernel or driver space in order to cause a crash. Except of course for seriously buggy libraries like it happened for Safari once causing BSOD; but actually also here it wasn't Safari to be the guilty one as it just used OS libraries to draw elements and this library was broken.

In this case here it's clearly the WiFi driver which is faulty or the kernel itself interacting with the driver. There is nothing an application like IE or Firefox can do about it.

I was having my Windows 8.1 running this afternoon. Good news is with driver 12.4 it did not BSOD. Bad news is that I noticed to lose my RDP, VNC and SSH connections every couple of seconds. Tracinb packages show that with driver 12.4 I get extraordinary high packet loss. I was trying a continuous ping on my local WiFi router (ping -t 192.168.1.1) and ping times varied between <1ms and >2000ms randomly with occasional timeouts. Sometimes timeouts for periods longer than 20s which could cause timeouts in connections. So likely driver 12.4 might not BSOD but definitely does not provide stable connections. Perhaps sufficient for short-lasting connections (IM, web browsing, DNS lookup) but certainly not usable for longer sessions.

Perhaps I am the only one with this issue as Coincoinlapin seems to be happy with old 12.4 driver. Or he just didn't realize that the connection is very unstable and drops packets every now and then. As said for pure web-browsing it might be sufficient, some pages might just take longer to load occasionally.

Really frustrating situation overall. Even worse Microsoft (customers of mine having the same issue) keeps telling me I have to buy a new office since Office activation is bound to the machine as well and you cannot simply re-install it after setting up Windows 7 from scratch.

Hi, I've had the same issue with this since the upgrade to Windows 8.1 on my lenovo T61 with this wifi adapter.  With Windows 8, it happened very rarely.  One thing I've noticed is that it consistently happens when I am using IE11.  I have NEVER had it happen with Firefox.  It happens every other day right now, so I'm going to just use firefox exclusively and see if that helps.  I'll try and remember to post again later on how it's going :)

Rob

Still no crash here (5 days). Try a vista x64 driver (from your manufacturer...preferably...I guess).

You are probably right, at least partially. I have downloaded "R239284.exe" from dell download servers. See here.

Then just extracted the driver using 7-Zip.

Driver Provider: Intel

Driver Date: 28.05.2009

Driver Version: 12.4.3.9

However I had massive issues with this driver to resume from standby. It simply won't reconnect to any WiFi network after standby resume. In Previous (version 13) driver I had to disable 802.11n mode to work around this issue. For driver version 12.4.3.9 this did not help. However it helped to disable the power management option "Allow the computer to turn off the device to save power" in device manager. In addition I have disabled MSI (see previous post). I did not even disable 802.11n mode yet.

I can't tell whether this is totally stable now as I said I am going to migrate to Linux and did already. Only keeping Windows installations on VM or on replacement HDD. Windows 8.1 turned into the worst user experience I ever had, topping out Windows ME and Vista by far. Here in the forums we get responses from Microsoft technicians which are either completely unrelated to the question or even recommending to switch back to Windows 7. Perhaps somebody could tell me how I re-install Office 2013 which now believes it's bound to Windows 8.1 so it can't be re-installed ;). Nevermind.

Anyway I don't get why Microsoft includes a driver which was working fine back then on Windows 7 and now they broke something in kernel interfaces or power management which does not work with the driver and even keeps crashing the kernel. The older driver might work partially but seems to be only partial solution (disabled power management and MSI required on my machine).

So going for outdated 12.4 driver seems to be the best option we have. Or move to any other stable OS.