Problems with 8.04 (WiFi, open VPN, random system lockups, CMOS corruption)

[Eric S. Johansson]

  upgraded from 7.10 to 8.04 on my laptop (TravelMate 8204) and my wife's 
desktop (shuttle PC)

summary of problems:

Laptop:
   o WiFi (Intel  3945ABG) not recognized, solution involves back port modules 
and wicd
   o WiFi solution lost my open VPN management capability.

wife's desktop:
   o migration from 7.10 to 8.04 caused random lockups with associated CMOS 
corruption
   o Firefox three plug-ins are not exactly functioning right.

detailed chatter:

On my lap top, everything seemed to work okay except for WiFi.  WiFi is an Intel
chip, 3945ABG.  After following instructions found elsewhere on the net which
involved installing back port modules and replacing net manager with wicd, I 
finally got WiFi working.  Unfortunately, I lost open VPN management.  The only 
other management tool I found was KVpnc which, is from my experience,quite user 
hostile.  For example, when importing an openvpn configuration, it expects 
passwords for IP sec.

If I can't find a solution to these two problems, I'm giving up on 8.04 for my 
laptop and going back to 7.10 where, everything pretty much worked right.

On my wife's desktop, the first problem noticed was that Firefox 3 had numerous 
problems with plug-ins like flash and Java.  Given that she's addicted to things 
like youtube, Pop cap, cheeseburger and the like, this is a serious problem. 
solution was to downgrade Firefox to version 2. The second and more serious 
problem is that her machine locks up at random and sometimes won't reboot unless 
you power off.  Frequently the CMOS is corrupted.  Like many of you, my first 
thought was the CMOS battery is gone.  Replaced it, no change.  A second thought 
was thermal overload but again, with additional cooling from an external fan, no 
change.  The only difference was upgrading to 8.04.  Which leads me to the 
conclusion that something in 8.04 is locking up and corrupting CMOS.

Again, if you folks, who are much smarter than I am, can't help me with a 
solution, its downgrade to 7.10 and give up 8.04 as a lost cause.

I really want to stay with 8.04 if for no other reason than it's a lot less work 
for me than downgrading would be.

help would really be appreciated