I have no friends so I never see such problems. Any particular wireless router? Any particular wireless client radio? Any particular brand of computer? Any particular Windoze mutation (Pro, Home, Media Edition, SP2?)
Are you sure it's standby and not hibernate?
There are 4 layers of "standby" on the typical PC. I'll assume the mystery PC is a laptop so I don't miss any. Your job is to give your soon to be former friend the bad news that he will need to disable each layer, one at a time, until the culprit can be identified.
- Power save on the wireless adapter. This is in the properties for the unspecified wireless device.
- System hibernate and/or standby. They're quite different and are buried in the Control Panel under "Power Options"
- Screen blanker. It may seem odd but I've found one laptop (Toshiba A45-S515) that would kill the wireless connection when the screen blanker kicked in. Don't ask me why. I don't know.
- BIOS based power save. You'll have to dive into the CMOS to twiddle with these. If running ACPI, they can be set by the Power Options in the Control Panel, but it's a good idea to check them anyway. In desktops, it's sometimes called the "Green PC" settings.
If your soon to be former friend doesn't want to go through that exercise, you scan try this trick and see if it works: Start -> Run -> CMD IPCONFIG /RELEASE wait about 10 seconds IPCONFIG /RENEW This sorta kick starts the wireless card and try's to convince it that it should wake up and renew the DHCP lease. Another similar trick is to find the wireless icon in the system tray, right click, and select followed by . Don't do the "repair connection" as it takes way too long to complete.
Yes. Reduce the number of friends you know with computers and they won't bother you with such questions.
In the future, it's a good idea to supply:
- What you're trying to accomplish. (You did that).
- What you have to work with. (You did that very badly).
- What you've done so far. (You didn't supply that).