Sporadic 'Wireless Connection Unavailable' Blips

Hi, everyone. My first post here, so thanks for your patience.

The question I have concerns my primary work computer, a modern-build (not quite 1 year old) laptop running WinXP. My job involves a lot of online research and so I was pleased when I bought the laptop (at the start of January) that it was a Centrino M 1.5 GHz and had built-in wireless. However, by running some connection speed/stability tests comparing its built-in wireless to using a slot-in PCMCIA wireless adapter, I found out I was better off with the PCMCIA card and disabled the on-board wireless so the two wouldn't butt heads. (Both the built-in adapter and the PCMCIA card are 802.11g, by the way.)

Well, everything was fine for 8 months. I've got a Linksys WRT54G wireless router sharing out a 1MB broadband connection that comes into the house via a cable modem, and I got rock-solid connections on the laptop from the moment I turned it on to the moment I shut it down every day. Then disaster struck.

About a month ago I tried updating WinXP on my laptop to SP2 (at the continuous pestering of the Windows Update app). Alas, some kind of virus had snuck past AVG, Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware, and ZoneAlarm and was just waiting for the chance to shaft me, which it did during the SP2 upgrade. My laptop wouldn't boot, couldn't make it to the boot selection screen (much less into Safe Mode), and trying an in situ repair using the WinXP install disc proved fruitless as well. In the end I had to yank out the laptop HD, use a USB adapter to copy off my vital data to my desktop computer, wipe the laptop HD, and do a fresh install of WinXP. I put on all of the drivers and Device Manager thought everything was hunky-dory. But it wasn't.

FINALLY we come to the problem I'm contacting you guys about...

Ever since I reinstalled WinXP, I've been having a bizarre problem with my wireless connection. (It only happens on the laptop, and not any of the other computers accessing the Linksys router via wireless connections, so it's not on the router's end.) Between 1 and 20 times per day (and no, not at regular intervals), I'll be using the Net and WinXP will pop up a message to say 'Wireless connection unavailable.' About 1-2 seconds later, it will chase that with a new pop-up window stating that I've established a wireless connection to my network and the strength is excellent, etc. etc.

In broad terms, the effect of this isn't critical. If I lose my Net connection for 1-2 seconds 20 times a day, that's 20-40 seconds of downtime per day. However, it's a real pain whenever it happens just as I submit a form I've just spent several mintues filling in, or in the middle of a long download, so I'm keen to fix it. I've tried everything I can think of to correct this, been back and forth through the Network settings, and peered long and hard at the router settings in case something had reset to something useless, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Everything is set the way it was before (as far as I can see), but now the laptop drops wireless sporadically and then instantly reconnects.

If this sort of thing rings a bell for anyone, I'd greatly appreciate being pointed in the right direction towards fixing it. I'm not a techie, but I can follow instructions. It's just frustrating that it was working perfectly before (well, the PCMCIA card wireless, if not so much the built-in Centrino wireless) and now I have this maddening glitch.

Many thanks in advance for any advice/assistance you can provide.

 

Could it be a cordless device? (phone, tv remote, wireless game contoler)

My cordless phone takes out my wireless network. I change the channel on the phone and get it back.

My wireless network also cause my Nextel phone to loose signal when It's to close to the laptop also. (Don't have a clue why!!) I would start testing for strange or new interferances. (try moving around the house) It could be somthing your neighbor is doing.

Matt

 

Matt, thanks for your reply. I don't believe it is a cordless device simply because we haven't bought/installed any new ones since I got the laptop. In fact, the only other devices that could be competing for bandwidth with the computers are the cordless phones we have, which is the same pair that we've had for two years now. All of our remotes are IR, so that's not a problem. I've confirmed that the problem happens all over the house, not just in the room I do most of my work in.

However, your suggestion that it might be something our neighbours are doing is possible... unfortunately, it's a bit hard to verify/disprove too. The neighbours on both sides are retirees, and neither strikes me as very tech-savvy. In fact, I'm not sure either of them even *has* a computer. But maybe they got a new cordless phone recently. It's a bit embarrassing to go knock on their door and demand to know if they've bought one, though.

The thing is, my gut feeling is that it's not an interference issue because the problem never happened before the WinXP reinstallation, and has been happening since. It seems like too big a coincidence that the day I'm forced to wipe the laptop's HD and reinstall Windows is the same day one of my neighbours buys a new cordless phone system that clashes with my wireless adapter... and only the one on my laptop, not the one on the desktop computer.

But all ideas are appreciated, so people, keep them coming!

 

are you using windows to manage your wireless connection or is there some third party software managing the connection.

If you are using third party software, you will need to disable the built in windows wireless configuration utility. The best way would be to go into the control panel, select "Network Connections", go into the properties of your wireless network and find the setting that says something like "allow windows to manage wireless connection" and uncheck it.

 

Sorry for the delayed response; been away on work for a few days. To answer your question, I'm not using any special third-party connection management software. Both before and after the WinXP reinstall, all I ever did to access my broadband connection was to use the Control Panel to let Windows know the SSID of the wireless network. Once it found it and auto-added it to the 'connect to this wireless network if available' list, I was up and running.

 

Have you updated the drivers for the wireless NIC?

 

here is a quote i found from somewhere

windows XP before SP2 would do this if "Enable IEEE 802.1x authentication for the network" was checked in your wireless connection properties

 

I appreciate the advice, majinbuu. I've just disabled that setting and will see if the problem clears up. If I can go a whole day without getting the glitch, then my guess is you've cured it.

 

Oh, well... was too much to hope for, I guess. Just had another 'blip'. Thanks for the suggestion, though... I'll leave that setting off for now as it doesn't seem to have hurt anything (even if it hasn't helped anything either ...grr, but this glitch is driving me nuts.

 

just a thought, have you tried adjusting the power management settings for your laptop. Go into the control panel, choose power options and choose a setting like "always on".

What I have found in the past is some laptops when using power management modes can under power the pcmcia slot. Example, my uncles laptop has a usb 2.0 pcmcia card which he uses to connect his IPOD. When the power management mode is set to Laptop/battery the laptop will crash when the ipod is plugged in. When the power mode is set to "always on" there is no problem.

If you need help finding these settings just ask

 

some wireless adaptors also have settings for the output power they use to transmit signals, can you see any options to increase the strength of the output. Also what signal strength are you getting?

There is another thing that I was going to mention, just slipped my mind, will post again shortly

 

is the wireless connection you are using set as the default connection in the wireless management