February 10, 2005

Wireless George My wireless network is on the fritz and I can't figure it out. Help!

I use an Airport Express and a D-Link AirPlus G card, each about three months old, and worked great until this week. For three days now, the network will appear in my list and work for a few minutes after turning on/rebooting the PC, and then disappear, and I'm unable to find the network until rebooting either the PC or the Airport Express. The two are not that far away from each other, maybe thirty feet (tho the PC is one floor above). I thought humidity could be a factor, as it has been rainy/snowy here for three days straight, but it has been quite wet outside before without such problems occuring. My roommate's IBook is not exhibiting any such problems, and he's using it from even further away. This is seriously cutting into my Diablo2 addiction, not to mention my Monkeyfilter/#mofirc time. Any ideas? Any freeware apps for WinXP that improve connectivity? Would wrapping the antenna in tinfoil help? Because cursing at it, loudly and often, sure isn't.

posted by waraw 19 years ago
  • Are you using Windows XP to handle your wireless settings directly, or the D-Link software? The native Windows wireless manager is, to put it nicely, not very good, so you may want to switch to the DLink software if you haven't yet.
  • try turning off anything that might conflict with that frequency, even if it hasn't been a problem in the past (meaning, any and all electronics, plug them back in one at a time).. I had a phone that screwed up my airport network.... but only sometimes...
  • Try downloading Network Stumbler -- it's a free hacker tool that's really helpful for diagnosing wireless networking problems. Your problem could, for example, be related to neighbors who've started their own wireless networks which have defaulted to the same channel that yours uses.
  • what mahoukenshi said. Use the dlink tool instead of the winxp deal. Also you might want to futz w/the router and it's location. We've had to move ours around just a bit to get the best connectivity. And we got a big ass antennea (sp? it's early) that seemed to help quite a bit. Like $29 @ compusa.
  • In my experience, microwaves and 2.4 ghz cordless phones are prime culprits in wireless network instability.
  • Have you installed Service Pack 2 for Windows XP? There are some wireless networking benefits (better support for wireless devices and connections). You might also want to check for an update for the firmware for the Airport Express. I've had a Linksys A/P router for about 3 years now, and I've had to reset the router to factory settings at least once per year -- the wireless signal would either be lost, or the wired router would fail... typically would either not pass packets off of the internal network, or would not pass an ip address to any of my machines, even though it was acting as a DHCP server. Dunno about the Airport Express, but I've read that other manufacturers other than Linksys have this issue. Oh, and another thing. Rather than rebooting, type restarting the Wireless Zero service for Windows XP. Click Start, then Run, then type in "services.msc" without the quotes in the Open field and click OK. Scroll down through the list of services, and look for one that says Wireless Zero Settings (an approximate name... I'm on a Windows 2000 client at work). Right click on the name of the service, and select Restart. That should allow you to reconnect to the wireless network without having to reboot. I'd be interested in hearing more about this. Shoot me an email if you like... email address is in my profile.