USB Device - I/O Error and Internet surfing

[neno64]

Hey -- I'm new, been using BT4 for about two weeks.
My specs real fast are:

• 8 GB Pny Flash Drive
• Duel Core 2.5 GHz Intel Cpus
• Alfa Awus036h USB wireless card
• BT Installation: Full AES disk encryption.

Issues: One seems to be more widely discussed than the other.

First, I've noticed relatively poor performance with the alfa awus036h when it comes to internet surfing, however when pentesting - it performs quite nicely. I don't really understand it, and I've read somewhere that it has to do with the device drivers I'm using, or that I'm supposed to install a patch due to the version of Ubuntu that backtrack is based off.. Different people tend to say different things.

Secondly, and more unknown to me, is that after an hour or so inside the BT4 OS, after awhile - every command I give to the system throws me an I/O error. Looking at the USB device, it becomes frozen with activity. The only way to fix the issue at that point is a hard reboot. After some web surfing, I've come up with nothing. I see people having issues with I/O errors during installation, but my system was installed flawlessly.

I'm not entirely sure if these issues are hardware issues or software issues and any insight would be very appreciated.

Sorry for self-bumping, but I'd thought I'd add an update.

As for internet stability, it seems like if I'm in the same room as my router I don't see any issues (95-100%), but if I go into my basement across the house (I drop to 75-80% signal) internet surfing becomes unavailable. However, in both these situations I can effectively airodump and arp my router with no issues. Now, I'm aware that it's obvious that the farther I'm away the worst it's going to get, but that's not what I'm getting at. In windows, I downloaded the drivers and did the same tests, and internet surfing was fine even from my basement. So I'm a bit perplexed. Does this mean - infact, that it is a driver issue?

As for the I/O errors, I still haven't found any answers

[thorin]

For the I/O issue there are a few things you should check/try.

1) When it starts happening reboot go into the BIOS and check your temps. Is your system overheating? (Obviously this means that you know the "normal" temps for your system as well).
2) Try the device on a different USB connection/port.
3) Try a different USB device. (If you don't want to go through the headache of creating another Live USB you can just use dd to duplicate your current one, though it can be slow depending on your system and the devices involved).

[neno64]

It appears the thumb drive I was using is a faulty pos, so going to chalk it up to that. It doesn't matter though, because I've decided to install BT on one of my computers, the usb deal just felt too sluggish for me. It's good for laptop / portable reasons, but to sink into testing it's a bit cumbersome. Thanks for the reply though, if only I could figure out the wireless card thing :-(