Wireless internet problems

[devnull]

Alright, my mom finally got fed up with the cables running from her computer room to my bedroom to give me internet access and she got me to buy a wireless router and adapter card. I ended up getting a Netgear 802.11G router with the superG acceleration. Anyhow, I had used a friends router (the same one) the night before and it worked great so I decided that this would work out nicely. THe only difference would be the card I put in my computer, instead of a linksys, i replaced it with a netgear one (and got some money back for the linksys).


Well......now I am having problems. Whenever I surf the web for more than 20 minutes, the software tells me it is losing the connecton and scans for the service again and again, picking it up and losing it. Every time it scans, it stalls my computer for a second or two. Finally, after about 5 minutes of this, my whole computer locks up. I thought it might be an IRQ confict because when I play command and conquer: zero hour, it occasionally locks up and the sound gets messed up. It doesn't seem like anything is conflicting, though. I also uninstalled my software firewall, as netgear said that may be a problem too, but it still has problems. Anyone have any advice?

[TRow]

Could be a bad signal connection between the router and card. Check the signal strenghts, and try positioning the "wifi donut" at different angles in your house. May be the wifi card needs to be replaced. Double check all the usual suspects, from Internet settings to your Internal Router configs.

Sometimes routers are preconfigured for settings that control how long you stay connected when in active for X period of time.

But then you factor in the system lockups after connection refresh, and it sounds like conflict. You should Run this WinSock Fix. This tool can fix even the wackiest PC.

You can also try the IPCONFIG /release and IPCONFIG /renew commands in respective order from Command prompt. Do this after you have reset the Router, and Re-Installed the PCI Card. Power Cycle the DSL/Cable Modem(Turn Off for 30 seconds, Turn back On) should also be done.

And if that still doesnt work, theres always Knoppix 3.7, the linux based live boot CD. I wont get into knoppix, but its a must have for every techie.

In my experience, Linksys is the leader in wired and wireless routers. D-Link and Netgear I would not consider for a wifi-g network, in the wireless G world, you get what you truly pay for.

T.RoW

[devnull]

Hey, I finally figured it out. TRow, I totally agree with you on the Linksys and the performance-per-dollar on such networks. But my mom isn't a power user and I am only gonna be here for a few months at a time (the duration of breaks from college) so I just decided to get something that works and not something that is a bulletproof enterprise solution.

Well, I figured out what was wrong and I think this is a good lesson for anyone installing a wireless network. When my friends and I were lanning via wireless the other day, we accidently connected to a neighbor's wireless connection and it immediately should have clicked that interference was the cause of my problem. As it turns out, wireless routers run on designated channels and it just so happened that my attempt to run my super-G router was through the same channel as the linksys router that my neighbor was using. Thus, his bleed-through signal was interfering and the card was trying to differentiate the signals so much that it was just getting confused and biting the dust. All I did was change from super-G to regular G and switch the channel. Apparently, if you want to use super-G you HAVE to use channel 6 (at least for NETGEAR) and thats the channel my neighbor is on. No worries, im not really in need of 108mbps anyhow... thanks for the reply TRow