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General discussion

Intermittent wireless connectivity

by green eagle feather Mar 23, 2006 2:18PM PST

I have a laptop with Windows XP SP1, with a wireless card, a 3COM 3CRSHPW96. This laptop accesses internet through a Linksys WRT54G router. WEP is enabled. I can connect to the wireless network all right, most of the time, but intermittently, I will loose connectivity. Every few minutes, I get disconnected from the wireless network, I have to manually click on the network icon on the taskbar, and connect to the network, which is pretty annoying. Further, if the computer stays on for a longer time period (usually more than 10 hours), it seems as if the network adapter chokes. Even though it shows as connected and with a valid IP address, I'm unable to ping either the router or the IP address of the network adapter itself. A release/renew times out. It's as if the card is dead. The workaround is to either remove and reinsert the network adapter, or restart the computer.
This problem started increasing recently. I didn't do any changes on my computer recently though, except by the ocasional installation of windows updates. I suspect something in one of the updates might have broken something, but I'm afraid to go blindly removing updates without being sure of what is causing the problem.
I have a firewall installed, but I have already tried shutting it down, and the problem continues.

Anybody has had any similar weird networking issues? Any ideas?

Discussion is locked

5 Posts
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how about...
by Gakada Mar 23, 2006 3:50PM PST

updating your windows with SP2?
updating the Firmware of your router and wireless card
try to use different wireless channel

Have a nice week end guys ..

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In addition to Gakada's suggestions...
by linkit Mar 23, 2006 4:46PM PST

Scan for viruses
Scan for spyware with at least 2 antispyware programs.
Download and install latest driver for your wireless network adapter (don't use the one Windows Update provides).

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Still having problems...
by green eagle feather Mar 24, 2006 6:38AM PST

I tried before updating to SP2, but it gave me quite a bit of pain and grief. With SP2, I was unable to connect to an unsecured wireless LAN, and although I'm aware that's not secure, I don't control all networks I need to connect to, and thus, it's annoying when I need to connect at some places. And I do have a good firewall already in place, I only disabled it shortly while troubleshooting, just to make sure the firewall was not blocking any keepalives or something that could cause the connection to be lost. And I really, really would prefer avoiding having to install SP2 again unless there was a way around the whole not being able to connect to unsecure networks, and I knew it would actually help with this issue.

The router is running the latest firmware version. One other detail... this same computer, using Linux, can be connected to the wireless network without any problems.

I've ran several spyware scans, with different software, and found nothing unusual. No viruses either. I'm usually VERY careful with what I do with my computer when connected to internet, as getting rid of that crap is really cumbersome.

I updated my driver for the wireless network adapter, to the latest I could find. As this is an old card, the latest driver from the manufacturer is from quite a few years ago. Sad

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what I would do
by linkit Mar 24, 2006 7:14AM PST

Completely uninstall/remove the driver for your wireless network adapter.

Run Windows Update and install all critical updates (and the recommended updates you want) AND to install SP2. (SP2 helps with security: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/topten.mspx)

Reinstall the latest driver verstion. There should be no ''Preferred Networks'' listed on the ''Wireless Networks'' tab of the wirless network adapter Properties window (If there are any, Remove them). Now, ''View Available Wirless Networks'' and try to connect. Results?

If you give up on this old wireless-b PCMCIA card, there are a lot of inexpensive wireless-g USB adapters that are compatible with wireless-b and -g. (The PC Card/PCMCIA adapters tend to be more expensive.) You will be able to take advantage of your WRT54G's faster speeds for your local network with the wireless-g adapter.

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I had similar problem
by DonE37 Mar 24, 2006 12:29PM PST

I had a similar problem with my Belkin Wireless Router which became very frustrating. After taking a step back and actually looking at the manual, for this problem the channel needed to be changed. When I changed it the problem went away and the connection has been steady and locked on with no drop offs. Hope this helps.

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