Bad Wireless Router?

Do a hard reset of the router, by holding the Reset button for 30 seconds or more and power recycle the router off/on. Your router will be reset to factory default settings so you'll have to set the WAP key again.

You can disable the Wireless Zero Configuration on XP to see if that's dropping the wireless connection as the machine tries to connect to other networks in your area, dropping your connection.

You can have some kind wireless interference that could be happening that's causing the connection to be lost.

If you got a friend with a wireless laptop, then have them come over and connect to see if the problem follows. If the problem doesn't follow with the friend's computer, then may be your wireless card is going defective.

If the problem follows to your friend's computer, then you might have some kind of interference happening.

I'd done this before and I think I had a solid 2 days of connection. After that, the problem came back with a vengeance. I'll try resetting again and seeing what happens.

I'm on Vista. Does vista still have the zero configuration issue?

Perhaps, but can't imagine what as I don't have any heavy electronics or anything around.

I have both my desktop and my laptop wirelessly connected. When it goes down, they both drop at the same time and both come up at the same time, so that disqualifies it as a wireless card issue.

....

You may try to change the wireless channel from the default to another one, on the router. Maybe your neighbours use wireless as well?

You can also try to re-flash the router with its firmware as firmware can become sick and not function properly.

I have Vista on a laptop as well, and it has a wireless card. Vista has a WLAN Autoconfig service in Services, which seems to be the same thing as WZC on XP. You can try disabling that to see what happens.

WZC on XP allowed you to walk with a laptop or desktop, if you could walk with a desktop, and it would roam for a wireless connection.

The WAC is doing the same thing on Vista. Also, if I go to Device Manager and select the card, right-click/Properties/Advanced Button, it has a setting for Aggressive Roaming as well with various settings.

So, did these machines you have come with Vista? Did you upgrade to Vista doing an upgrade of Vista over the top of XP? If you did an Vista upgrade, did you check to see if the card had a driver for Vista? If Vista upgrade, did you do the Vista Compatibility check on the machine?

You got Vista on both machines. I would still have someone come over with a non Vista machine and see if the problem follows.

Also along with posting to alt.internet.wireless, you might want to post to a Microsoft.Public.Windows.Vista NG like Setup or Hardware, which they may be able to give you some things to look at about the issues you are having with your wireless connection.

I have seen your post in the sometimes, that's most of the time, madd house called 24hrs. :)

I had connectivity problems for 12 months, something like 500+ reconnections in that period (BT technical have a tracing system). Finally had a discussion with a knowledgeable tech and he arranged a BT engineers visit.

The cable entering my house had poor/corroded wiring. He renewed this and fitted a filter box at the same time...................been OK since.

For what it's worth, I've had similar troubles three different times. The first time, it was AC noise. I switched outlets and used a filtered UPS and the problem cleared. I actually caught the router dropping out and corrupting during a power glitch.

The second time, a firmware upgrade to the router fixed it.

The third time, it was simply a bad router.

These were all on different systems. Your problem may have nothing to do with any of these things -- I'm just suggesting stuff to check.

Good Luck!

Know how to check IP status, and connectivity? Which OS on clients?

Wanna tell?

Which connection-manager on client?

chrisa wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

You have a lot of good advice. FWIW, Let me throw one more into the mix. You say you have Vista, but this may apply there as well:

"The computer disconnects from a wireless network after random time intervals in Windows XP"

HTH, John

One more piece of the puzzle perhaps. My router was actually being good. I was up for about more than a full day, wow. I had the same IP for the entire day from what I saw. My connection went down a few minutes ago. I unplugged the cable from the router(leading out the modem) into my laptop to verify a live connection which there was, then plugged it back into the router. And as usual the router is back up after doing that. I also notice that when I checked my IP address, it had changed.

Now what I wonder is whether my connection is dropping because my IP gets changed or did the IP change because I plugged it back into the router. That may be another clue as to the problem for me throw out there.

It's not likely your IP changed due to a brief disconnection by you.

That sounds like the problem I had for awhile with my Linksys router, because DHCP wasn't working after IP changes by my ISP. After I updated the router firmware to the latest, that problem went away.

I'd check the Linksys web site for your *exact* router version, to see if there are any updates that might help. They tell you what they correct. Good luck... bj

Fraid it will, one connection via the wireless & the next by patch lead........that's a sure way of getting differing IP addresses (because it is being connected to differing MAC adresses).

I can't help but wonder why the OP hasn't tried using fixed IP adresses for each connection. If it is a DHCP problem it's one sure way of getting around it..

My bad; I should have said that hadn't been my experience, rather than imply it wasn't likely for anyone else. :) bj

I'm not too saavy with networking issues so not sure how to fix my IP addresses for each connection. I have a dynanic IP from my ISP, how do I change it to fixed?

Whatever the problem is, I am sure at this point that it has something to do with the computers acquiring an IP address. My connection went down a couple time, and when I opened up the find a network screen, I saw my SSID name, and then I saw it say "acquiring an IP address" and then a few seconds later it showed connected and it was fine. So perhaps this whole problem is the DHCP. By the way, I did update the firmware, and like I said in a previous post, I bought a brand new Netgear router right out the box and was still having the same problem, so I don't think it's related to router firmware. I'm wondering now if I need a new modem.

You don't.....

You turn of the DHCP server in your router & then assign IPs to each of your machines using the IP of your router as your gateway IP..

Do a google & it will be there...

Depending on the router, you can also tell its DHCP server to "reserve" specific addresses (in its range) to specific machines on your LAN.

I've got a firewall which is supposed to do that.....doesn't work it just allocates the next free IP. Thankfully the print server isn't on when I try & log in wirelessly from my works laptop (yes it gives the same IP to both)

I'll look into that, because I'm getting desperate for a solution. I upgraded modem firmware and the problem actually seems to have gotten WORSE!