When two things stop talking to each other, the only real way to find out which is at fault is to use a third device. When your laptop has a problem, can other wireless devices connect? Can you try using a different wireless card or USB stick on the laptop?

I know you said rebooting the router fixes it, but what happens if you reboot the laptop? Does it ever just start working again by itself?

Which machine are we talking about; what's the wireless card and the OS? Are you using the Windows wireless configuration, or the wireless manufacturers?

Yay! You're back!

My laptop: Acer lappy with built in wireless, uses windows xp to configure. Machine is about five years old and has a Centrino 1.6ghz cpu but runs everything well.

Sister's laptop: Dell studio 15. Nine months old. Can't remember the spec but also has wireless built in to the screen. Runs Vista which configures its own connection.

Desktop: Athlon xp 2400 that has Netgear WG311GT PCI card.

Phone: iPhone 3GS

My sister has had problems with intermittent connection soon after changing from McAfee to Zonealarm. Haven't gone back to McAfee as the 30 day trial expired. Initially rebooting her laptop would fix things but now it doesn't work unless you reboot the router.

Rebooting my own laptop or disable/reenabling the wireless connection doesn't work when there's problems. Only rebooting the router.

The iPhone also has issues. At times, despite connected to the router, will be unable to use the internet on the iPhone unless the router has been recently rebooted.

Initially the problem would resolve itself spontaneously but now I'm having to reboot the rooter twice per night. The desktop is barely used so can't verify that it has the same problem. As you hadn't replied for a while, I was going to retest everything this weekend - ensure sister's laptop was correctly configured, see whether the desktop had the same issue and whether my WG511GT PCMCIA card would work or still have problems. Although I've said a wired connection works fine, this was something else I wished to double check.

Yep, been on holiday... where I also spent a significant amount of time diagnosing wireless problems! His problem was caused by several great thick stone walls, so it was a bit more obvious...


When one PC or the iPhone stops working, do the others carry on as normal?

Have you tried doing the hard-reset and reprogramming the router from scratch? I'd go ahead with the tests, it was a good plan.

I hate to admit that my favourite router might be at fault, but it does rather sound like it might be. If defaulting it doesn't help, then I'm pretty much out of ideas. It might be time to think about whether you can justify upgrading to a more powerful router with QoS? Might be nice to share out the bandwidth equally, and it would be a good excuse to try a new router. It's an expensive option, but it's the ultimate proof.

It's not fun having to do the same work you do normally whilst on holiday.


This is one of the things I aimed to find out at the weekend.


No. I was planning on doing the tests first. I was going to wire a laptop to the router when the fault happened and see if I had wireless access too. Using a combination of two wired lappies and two wireless devices (iphone and desktop), I was hoping to find out whether it was a purely wireless issue or a router issue.

Will also try the hard reset and see what happens.


If my testing bore out a router issue, I was going to buy a new router. I bought it new with the pcmcia and pci cards when I was a poor student. Now I have a bit of money to flash round, it'll be a little bit easier. Though I just spent another £60 on car cleaning equipment!


EDIT: OMFG! Such a n00b! Just realised I have the O2 router I had when I was with O2 (back down south). I could set that up and see whether I get the same issue. I cannot believe I've had that router sitting around for two months gathering dust. Brand new too!

ROFL

You have a busy weekend

Well 'testing' was a bit of a farce.

The first time I got the error over the weekend, I became rather excited. Neither my own lappy nor netbook nor desktop could access the internet. Don't know why but I looked at my iphone and turned off its wireless connection. Immediately, I was able to gain internet access (despite windows telling me on all machines it had an excellent connection).

So for the rest of Saturday, not once did I get a problem. My father however tried to access the internet on the desktop and couldn't. As I wasn't home, I couldn't check to see what was happening. When I did return home, I booted up my laptop and couldn't connect, despite rebooting the laptop and turning off/on the wireless feature. As soon as I connected the laptop via the ethernet cable, it worked fine and once I returned to using it wireless, the laptop was okay.

For Sunday, there were no problems but this afternoon, my laptop wouldn't connect. Yet both the netbook and my sister's laptop connected without hassle. Desktop was working fine too. I wasn't able to replicate problems I had earlier in the week and my sister's laptop has yet to have problems (though the laptop is now in the same room as the router whereas before the wireless signal had to travel through my room, into the landing and into my sister's room - 10m in distance).

I can't find my Netgear PCMCIA card yet but will keep looking. The O2 wireless box, I forgot, was configured for O2 and my 'rents are on Orange, so complete fail there.

At this point, I'm looking for another router. I would like to stick to Netgear but given only the desktop uses a Netgear PCI card I'm not so particular. Originally, I had two laptops and the desktop using Netgear hardware and together with the router was achieving decent transfer speeds (with the desktop acting as a sort of music server).

Any suggestions for routers?
Do I bother to stick with Netgear? One or both laptops may end up with one of the Netgear PCMCIA cards and the desktop is still using a Netgear PCI card. Prefer to be able to buy from PC World as am having issues with couriers at the moment.

Interesting. There was a case where iPhones at a school were causing a DoS attack on their Cisco wireless network because of an incompatability. Basically, they were reconnecting hundreds of times a second because the connection kept failing. This made to router so busy it couldn't do anything else.

I used to have a similar problem with a Nintendo DS crashing my wireless every hour or so, but it worked fine with no encryption. It may be worth trying a different level of security. I know WEP is rubbish, but it's generally more compatible with poorly designed hardware. What kind of security are you using? Do you have the MAC filter turned on? If so, try with it off.

I don't suppose there's any clues in the laptop's event log?

Also, next time you have a problem check again with your iPhone turned off.

Finally, I do think it's worth defaulting the Netgear and setting it up from scratch.


Now that suggests interference again.


Can't you just reconfigure it?


Depends if you have any special requirements. The GT you already have is the one I'd usually recommend! It might be worth concidering one with QoS, especially if you game. They aim to guarantee low pings even if there's loads of file sharing and stuff going on. However, I don't have any personal experience of them so you're best off reading the reviews.

:EDIT:

I've just thought of something blindingly obvious. What's the DHCP range set to? You might just be running out of addresses! Might be worth giving yourself a static one anyway, just because it's something to try.

I'll have a look into this. Any idea which versions of the iPhone were causing the problem? Have the 3GS.


SSID visible, any items able to connect (as opposed to the permissible list), WPA-PSK, ZA. Can't recall whether MAC was on/off so will have a look.


Something else I forgot to look at. Though there's nothing in the router's logs.


Will try this after doing the other tests.


I thought that but my sister's previous laptop (another dell but using a Netgear PCMCIA jobby) didn't have this issue. Plus also bought an antenna booster which should have helped (well it did when using the PCMCIA card).


From what I can see, no. It doesn't seem to be a rebranded router. When you log in to the router, you're taken into an O2 screen and can connect only to O2 adsl connections. I imagine I'd have to reformat the box and reload with another firmware/software, which maybe impossible to do.


I like my GT router. I'd buy another one if I could.


This is something else that crossed my mind - to set all hardware individually with their own settings rather than allow windows to autoconfigure.

Thanks for your help JJW009, it's been much appreciated. I'll keep you informed of what's been happening.

Okay so over the weekend, I found my Netgear PCMCIA card and used it instead of windows' wireless configuration. It hasn't dropped the connection once. Perfectly stable.

Haven't gotten round to assessing the other machines but at this stage, my laptop's working fine.

Okay, been busy for a while due to work.

Anyway, I've managed to narrow down the issue. Basically, my laptop will connect to the router with an ip address of say 192.168.0.2. For some reason, at an indeterminable time, this changes to something else like 192.168.132.22 (as an example). Suddenly my laptop cannot speak to the router. The router itself is still connected to the internet and my PS3 (wired connection) will work fine.

The change in IP address cannot be rectified by disabling/reenabling the wireless PCMCIA card or by restarting the computer. The only solution is power-cycling the router. This will work until it happens again.

I've tried a different PCMCIA card with no difference. The problem also happens with my iPhone - it will work for a while, then suddenly its IP address will also randomly change, also requiring a power-cycling of the router for it to reconnect properly again.

I've tried looking online but don't think I'm entering the correct search terms.

It sounds like maybe the DHCP controller in the router is borked.

Try turning DHCP off on the router and wiring in an XP computer with the DHCP turned on.

The computer should become the DHCP controller for the network.

Is that an actual example? Specifically, the 132 part? If so, the only way that could possibly happen that I can imagine is if there's another router doing DHCP. Possibly a neighbour's wireless that you're picking up in error, or another device on your own network.

When this happens next time, can you please to an "ipconfig /all" and paste the results here. That will tell you what the DHCP server address is. We should be able to figure out something from that.

On the other hand, if the address it changes to is 169.x.x.x then that's a Windows automatic address, and means no DHCP server can be reached.

Have you tried using static IPs yet?

If there are any unsecured wireless networks, then set them to "manual" or else Windows will decide to use them instead of yours. This happened to my GF's laptop a while ago.

Apologies for not replying more quickly. Work rotas have meant I've not been using my laptop as much to generate errors but today was my day off and the problem replicated itself.



I got two IP addresses, one from each device:
169.254.184.13 - iphone
169.254.140.178 - laptop


I'll need to look into this. No idea how to go about it. Any important advice or info that I need to be aware of, or will simple googling provide me with the information I need?


There's one unsecured network but the signal's poor and it's not mine. I don't know who it belongs to either.

These are both Windows automatic (APIPA) addresses and their existence indicates that either no DHCP server was found or else the iphone & lappy are set to not use DHCP.

You might try, from the lappy, from a dos box, "ipconfig /renew" <enter>; then wait a couple of minutes (may be quicker for you) then type "ipconfig /all" again to see if the IP address has changed from the 169.254.x.x net to a 192.168.x.x net. You should also then see an IP address for the DHCP server.