Weird...

[Nashida]

This has been going on for several months.

I'm having some trouble with the wireless router we are using in the house. Frequently while I am using the internet, I'll get 'page not found' errors, and when I check my connection status, instead of seeing my router's network I see Access Point. I'll be connected to this point for several minutes before I then lose that connection as well, ultimately getting a "Not Connected" message. I have to wait for it to find the router's network again, and after 3 times of me not being connected I have to choose the Repair option, which usually works.

It's especially frustrating right now as I'm on the hunt for another job, and it's upsetting when I'm filling out applications online only to have all that work be lost when I hit the submit button and get disconnected.

I'm also the only one having this problem. We have 5 machines linked wirelessly to this router, but only my laptop is having the "curfew" trouble. At first I thought it was because my laptop is still outfitted with the secuirty programs I used when I was at college, while the rest of the machines have a security suite offered by our ISP. Turns out my father's laptop doesn't have this same suite either, and has never been disconnected either. Just mine.

I tried lowering my security settings for internet browsing to see if that would do it. I was online for roughly 2 hours before I was booted off for 5 minutes. As far as I know there's no cut-off setting on the router that would just boot a user offline after a certain amount of time.

I'm running WinXP with SP3, as is my dad. The only difference between us is he uses MalwareBytes and another antivirus program, while I run SpyBot and Symantec Client Security, both of which have worked very well for me for the 5 years I've had this laptop.

Anything else I can try? I'm going on maybe 4 months now with this problem.

[Cazzi]

Silly question, but have you tried rebooting the router?

I ask as my old one which I've just replaced had a nasty habit of deciding not to allow random computers to access the net from time to time, it took me rebooting that to fix it... til the next time it went moody

[Nashida]

I haven't tried that yet, but it has been rebooted in the past and for countless times for a great variety of reasons, and it hasn't seemed to affect it.

I forgot to mention that we have it set to WPA, because our neighbors would leech off it and cause connection problems when it was a WEP.

We've also tried putting all the MAC addresses into the router, but it won't do it that way either. Once we put all the addresses into the system, hit submit, and the thing locked down altogether.

It's also a Linksys router, if that seems to help any.

[TheSHAD0W]

Low-end routers often have issues when supporting more than a couple of wireless clients. They also tend to get flaky when they overheat, too much dust in 'em, etc. With that much of a load I'd have to recommend picking up a router capable of running dd-wrt. This alternative router firmware gives it much more flexibility and reliability.

[Fire_on_High]

I've seen this issue with a fully wired setup...it's some combination of XP SP3 and your NIC drivers.

I ended up replacing a 10+ year old NIC I was trying to use, that had known iffy driver support for XP, and that fixed it. OTOH, another machine in the house has an identical NIC and works fine on the exact same version of Windows.

I'd try updating NIC drivers before anything else, at this point.

EDIT: The machine it works on is an older setup, and much simpler configuration. The one it failed on is a dual-NIC setup, non matched. Might be significant, might not.

[Nashida]

See, that's interesting. My dad's laptop is running XP with SP3 as well, but he doesn't get booted off.

I'll try updating the NIC drivers and see what that does.

[Nashida]

So it appears that I have two devices on the laptop that are network adapters. One is called Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller. The other is Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection. If I right-click them in the device manager I am given the option to update them, but I don't know if I need to search for them on the Web and download them in the same manner like I would updating, say, Adobe Acrobat, or if I should be looking for any installation discs that came with the laptop.

I'm hoping it's not the discs, as I have no idea where any of those discs are and if I even have them, since I bought this through my college as a freshman and they installed everything on it before shipping it to me.

[Fire_on_High]

Aha, this is why I posted the tidbit about the problem arising on a dual NIC config but not a single.

I'd try manufacturer's websites for updated drivers.

There's another odd, very specific quirk you haven't mentioned, but since it sounds like you merely HAVE 2 potential ways to connect, rather than both being in use, I'm not sure you'd have ran into it. Ever let anyone connect THROUGH your machine? I'm curious...

[Nashida]

Nope, no one's tried to connect through my machine before.

I'm going to try and find the network key that came with the router and do a fresh install, maybe see if something got borked along the way.

In the meantime, I've disabled the Gigabit controller one to see if maybe having both of them on at once is causing a conflict. So far so good...*knocks on wood*

EDIT: An hour later I was disconnected. I then switched to disabling the Intel one and discovered that doing so makes me unable to connect to anything at all.

I also checked the router to see if it had any time-out session settings and it didn't.

[SteeleDragon78]

the broadcom is your wired connection. with the intel being the wireless, updating of the drivers is a good start, just out of curiosity, what make and model is your laptop? as the laptop manufacturer may have updated drivers as a dl in their support section.

[Nashida]

The laptop is Dell Latitude D620, but I was able to pull up the specific Intel driver through a Google search which then directed me to Intel's website.

I downloaded the update for the driver, which was a .exe file, but it wouldn't install it because it claimed the older version of the product is too old. (it's like 10.3.1, while this updated one is 13.something or other. It wants me to manually uninstall the older product before it can update to the new one.

I'll admit...I haven't any idea how to without botching something up...^^; I tried last night through the device manager, lost internet completely until I made Windows monitor my wireless rather than Intel. And it still wouldn't install the update.

Oddly enough, now that Windows is monitoring my wireless, I haven't been dropped yet.

[Fire_on_High]

At this point, you lose nothing by staying put. Let it go as is til something changes...and it may not.

[Nashida]

Tonight I was dropped twice. The first time I was only off of the network for maybe a few seconds.

The second time lasted for five minutes, during which time it would attempt to acquire a network address and fail several times before it finally succeeded getting onto the access point. It then managed to connect again to my router's network.

So I guess I'm back at square one again.

[suburbandecay]

For a Dell D620, I would say get the driver directly from Dell. If you are still having problems, it's possible that the wireless card in the laptop has gone bad. If I remember correctly, the wireless adapter in that model is user replaceable and somewhere around $30 - $50 the last time I checked (been a few years on that though)

[Nashida]

I'll try getting the updates directly from Dell. If that doesn't work I'll see if Best Buy sells the network card I need and go pick it up.

Today I lost access not long after I booted up the PC. First time that's happened. Lost it two more times since then.