Comment 40 for bug 569841

I am seeing this problem, too. Fresh install of 10.04 on a Thinkpad T60 with Intel 3945ABG.
In my case, I see the disconnect when running Google Earth, but I haven't yet tried doing any of the other things that are reported to trigger it. This is a test install on a spare partition, and I've been testing the usability of Google Earth on 10.04.

What I see is that while running Google Earth, the network connection will drop. After a LONG time, it will fail to reconnect and prompts me for the connection settings again. Re-entering them doesn't help. The only way I've been able to regain the connection is by disabling and re-enabling networking, then turning the hardware wi-fi switch off for a bit then back on. That doesn't always work, and eventually seems to stop working at all. At that point, the only fix I've found is a reboot.

Based on some helpful advice, I tried installing this kernel:
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.34-lucid/

I saw a noticeable improvement in Google Earth frame rate, but the network problems are still there. Slightly worse, even, in that at least once the connection dropped and Ubuntu didn't even notice it had dropped. Still thought it had a network connection, only it didn't work.

Right now, this problem is keeping me from even considering upgrading from 8.10 to 10.04. I'd really like to get past it and move on to testing other things. It appears that the workaround until this gets fixed is to downgrade the kernel. But my experience in tinkering with the kernel is very limited. Could someone give some easy-to-follow instructions for safely installing whatever version of the kernel will work around the problem?

Thanks.