1. Distance to the router.
Start at 20 feet line of sight.
2. What channel is the router on?
3. Does it work if we set the router to no security?
Tell more about the laptop. Some of these onboard wifi cards crap out with age. I carry USB WiFi dongles to test that.
Bob
For several months, I've been trying to get rid of an "attempting to authenticate" issue between my home Wi-Fi and my laptop. I have a Dell Inspiron laptop that runs on Windows 7 and uses an Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1030 wireless adapter. The connection to my Wi-Fi will connect and disconnect at random times and we'll disconnect noticeably faster when I'm trying to load something. I've tried reinstalling my adapter and going some things into the command prompt, but nothing seems to work. Every time I unplug my router and plug it back in, reinstall my adapter, type stuff into the command prompt, etc., the laptop receives a good connection for a short time but eventually will receive the status "Attempting to authenticate." Other thing I've tried include downloading updated drivers through a wired connection using the Intel Driver Update tool and creating a custom connection to my home Wi-Fi by typing in the correct parameters manually. Every time I think the problem us fixed, it returns to is problem. I'm not sure what to do at this point.

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