Before I buy a new WLAN card...

Hi all,

I have the Verizon One phone (oh what fun) for my router and an HP laptop. Every so often the router goes bonkers and I have to reset the thing. I recently had a major problem accessing the DSL. It turned out to be mostly Verizon's fault, but I still think the router is acting up. It will randomly restart itself (it's been doing this for over a year) and will kick my desktop off the internet (hard wired in). After the last recovery, I was using my laptop via wireless when I lost connection. I thought it would reconnect, but no luck. Since then I've been unable to access the internet. I suspected the router, but after hours with CS, they claimed it was my WLAN card (which it may be). Just before this, I had replaced my hard drive and freshly installed Win XP pro. I'm running an anti-virus/spyware program (ZoneAlarm).

The fixes I've tried are: repair Winsock with utility & manually through regedit (MS instructions) check for viruses, spyware, malware, and anything else I can run restore to earlier version (not much of a choice) update drivers/ roll back drivers input settings manually remove all security settings/ including WPA beg, pleaded, cursed, and threatened

The symptoms are:

- I can see my network and it's name (including all of my neighbor's networks and any public ones too)

- I have excellent signal and when it first "connects", the pop-up gives the standard message that I'm connected to my network with excellent signal and at whatever speed it's running (the usual message I would get when it was working properly)

- If I let the wireless get the settings automatically, I've gotten either 169.254.x.x, all 0's, or "unavailable" - "unavailable" is the most recent. Mostly it was the 169.254.x.x

- On my desktop, I have the devil of a time getting to my router's settings. Even if I can get onto the internet, when I try to access the router's settings, it often will not be able to find it. Eventually I'll get it, but it's a crap shoot.

Today my mother brought her laptop over and was able to access the internet wirelessly through my router. I couldn't get to the settings via my desktop until I tried to access them through her laptop, at which time my laptop suddenly made a connection. I didn't know what had happened, but I thought it meant the card wasn't busted, so I turned hers off to work on mine and when it powered down, I lost the wireless connection again and haven't gotten it back (yes I re-did everything on hers to see if I could get it to work again).

Is there anything I haven't tried that could fix the problem? I don't think I had a chance to update to Win SP2 after I put the new hard drive in, could that be causing the problems? Let me say that I looked for an indication that I had SP2 loaded, and I didn't see anything, so I don't think I had a chance before all the problems started. Does this sound like a WLAN card problem or a router problem? If it didn't see all the network names, I would definitely say it was the card, but it doesn't make sense to me that it can read the SSID and claims it's connected, but not actually be so (of course, I could be an idiot). I'd just like a more experienced opinion before I waste money on a new card I don't need.

Thanks so much!

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melika
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melika hath wroth:

You really do need XP SP2 and certainly don't need a new wireless card.

On the desktop, right click on the "My Computah" icon and select "Properties". Under "System" it will give the service pack level.

You can also see XP SP2 listed under the "updates" in: Control Panel -> System -> Add/Remove Software

You might want to download and install Belarc Advisor (free version) from:

It will show every serial number, version number, update level, application, hardware config, etc in your machine. It will also tell you how far behind you are in updates.

There were a huge number of networking and wireless updates in SP2 and subsequent fixes. If you have only SP1 installed, be prepared for perhaps 200Mbytes of updates. Be sure to install "Microsoft Update" when offered.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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