Only have one hair left to pull out..

So please help me save it.. lol


I've got a computer in my workshop.. 200 feet and 5 walls away. For 4 years.. I've been running a WRT54GL (with the power turned up to 90mw in Hyperwrt) The Card in the garage is a DLink WDA 2320 and I've added a higher gain antenna . It's been connecting at about 30% signal strength since I upgraded the card from a B card last year. Slow.. but always worked. I never had a reason to go deeper and check the SNR before.. so I don't know what it worked out to be.


Monday I came home from work only to find that the computer couldn't connect to the internet... or if it did connect was like 28.8 dialup slow. The signal seemed to be cutting out so I assumed the boosted router box was dying. I cut it back down to within specs (84 mw) and THEN checked the other computers.. (I tend to skip some needed steps during troubleshooting) that worked perfectly... as I assume they did before. However now the far away computer can't see the network. So I bought a cheap little Asus repeater box that had good reviews..

Now the computer can see the network with a 78% signal and a 40+ SNR... However when I click connect.. The computer can never obtain an IP from the network. It shows the connection start at 54 mbps .. then 28.. then 9.. then 5.. then 1.. then drops the signal.

The other two computers still connect to the internet. It's just the one. I can't understand why the card can see the network.. but can't obtain the ip so it can get on it. And ideas short of buying another wireless card to try?

 

can it connect to the network, without getting assigned an IP address, or does it just not connect?