need help with wireless networking

[Ice9]

Hi, I am trying to get my wireless internet connection working properly under XP and am having a tough time.

When I first installed my SMC wirless router and my Zyxel wireless network card, everything worked fine, but for some reason it has started to act funny and I can't figure out what the problem is.

What is happening is that I am constantly losing my connection completely.

This happens seemingly at random, but it will never go more than a couple minutes without happening. It will happen even if I am not using the connection at all, but seems to happen more often if I am using the connection.

A bubble appears over the wireless icon in the taskbar and says:

"Network connection unavailable"

Then it immediately says:

"One or more wireless networks are available.
To see a list of availble networks, click here."

And I have to click connect to get my connection back.

This happens despite showing "Excellent" for both link quality and strength, and as I said, it USED to work fine so I don't think that is the problem.

I am new to wireless networking and was wondering if anyone had some tips for diagnosing the cause of my problem.

[jmwills]

Your network is "wandering" and needs to stay at home because of mixed signals. It doesn't know which one to use so what you need to do is reference Knowledge base Article 811427 which deals with the Zero Configuration Utility.

[Ice9]

Thanks for the reply. If what you say is true, shouldn't there be 2 networks showing up under the perferred networks / available networks boxes? All I see is my own.

Here is the article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...en-us%3B811427

I suppose that it is possible that my neighbor has a wireless network and my XP is trying to connect to it, fails, then has to reconnect to my network, but you would think they would let you control that...

So how do I fix this? I don't even know how to tell if my router is broadcasting SSID or not.

[jmwills]

There should be an indication on the main setup page. If this is a Linksys, you will see this.
Your documentation will tell you a lot and I know we guys HATE to read the instructions, but this is rather important not to.

[SeaJay]

I've got a D-Link wireless PCI card and have noticed similar symptoms. It's very intermittent, but is very annoying. I'm running XP Pro. Just recently went over to XP from 98SE so bear with me. My WAP is about 40ft away. Signal strength (unless my wife is moving the WAP around), according to my computer, is most always excellent.

When this problem occurs, I'm seeing a couple of those little pop-up bubbles that appear from my wireless network connection icon on the system tray. One of them says something to the effect that there is no wireless connection; the other will say the signal is excellent at 11mbps. When this happens, the two pop-up bubbles will alternate from one to the other very quickly. Also, There are two other WAPs within range of my computer, though their signals are not always strong enough to "heard."

Sometimes the problem will stop by itself; other times it will stop when I sart the D-Link Air Plus utility software installed (from XP not from the CD that came with the card) when I set up my system. Note: Any the Air Plus utility is running, it indicates there is no wireless card present even though there is and XP sees it. Not sure if this matters.

Any suggestions would be great. Also, is the throughput indication (in mbps) accurate? Normally, mine will indicate 11mbps, but once I start communicating over the wireless network, it'll often drop to 5.5, 2, or even 1mbps.

Ignorantly yours,

Cj

Computer:
AMD Athlon XP 2500+
Abit NF7s Mobo
512Mb PC2700 333Mhz DDR
Radeon 9200SE

[SeaJay]

Fixed it.

The card didn't like to work with the default XP drivers. I deleted the device and reinstalled the software/drivers that came with the card.