Strange Internet Problem

Hi, do hope someone can help me...

I have a Acer laptop running Windows XP and it's wireless. Over the past week or so it is struggling with websites. Once my homepage has loaded (using FireFox) which is usually very quick I can surf the net in the normal fashion but then pages hang when trying to load.

If I close down FireFox and start over again, then it's fine, but again only for so long. No particular length of time but it will stop.

Today I took the laptop upstairs and was 'tesing it' throughout the day whilst working on the PC upstairs. At no time did pages hang or become unresponsive. Yet this evening, I moved back into the living room and as always, sat about 2ft away from the wireless router and it started again.

I've not changed any settings on the Laptop nor Router. When it happens, the PC upstairs is fine.

Ran all the usual spywares etc, and nothing has been found. To be honest the laptop isn't used for downloading, it's sole use is for MSN and Facebook :-D

Thanks in advance

 

Couple questions: The PC upstairs that you talked about that is working fine is that connecting wireless or hard wired into the router? Have you looked at the laptop's wireless drivers date in the device manager? If it's older you can try updating the wireless drivers. Answer those questions for me and I can further troubleshoot for you.

 

Thanks for the reply dc.

The PC upstairs is wireless too, so is my 360 and they all work fine. I've looked for newer drivers than the ones installed but can't find any. I had them direct from the ACER website.

 

Can you hard wire your laptop into the router and see if you can duplicate the problem? Then we know it's the wireless on your laptop for sure. If you plug in and there is no problems I would remove the wireless device from your device manager, restart the computer, and then reinstall the wireless drivers. Also, make sure your letting windows manage the wireless and not wireless software. Let me know what happens.

 

Sorry DC, been away on business.

I've been running the laptop wired all night tonight and it's fine.

I'll try uninstalling the drivers & instlling them again and yes, windows is managing my network.

 

Ok let me know how that goes. If it still does not work correctly let me know the exact wireless device listed in device manager and also the driver date which is listed in the driver tab of the properties of the wireless device in device manager.

 

Hi dc, thanks again.

My partner was using the laptop last night and complained it wsas hanging again. I checked and the wireless was turned off as the laptop was wired to the router.

I've checked that the Netgear DG834GT firmware is up to date and it is (V1.03.87).

The LAN driver is:
Signature = "$Windows NT$"
Class = Net
ClassGUID = {4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Provider = %Marvell%
CatalogFile = yk51x86.CAT
DriverVer = 06/01/2006, 8.55.4.3

The WLAN driver is:
Signature = "$CHICAGO$"
Class = Net
ClassGUID = {4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
Provider = %ATHEROS%
Compatible = 1
DriverVer = 05/02/2007,5.3.0.45
Catalogfile.nt = net5211.cat
;Catalogfile = net5211.cat

At no point is the upstairs PC being effected, just this laptop. My theory that being sat in front of the router hence somehow blocking the wireless path doesn't stand up now, being as last might the laptop had the wired connection.

Also, the laptop is an ACER Aspire 3680 approximately 18 months old.

 

Ok then for the last thing I would reload that laptop completely. Backup your files, format the hard drive, and reinstall windows. Your starting fresh then with the laptop. Anything wrong after that is a hardware issue for sure.