why does my wireless network stop working

Hi Geeks,

Wonder if you can help me.

I have a wirelessnetwork set up at home, basically to allow shared use of an internet connection.

One pc (which connects directly to the net) is a HP Pavilion 472 with 768mb ram, 40gb HD, pentium 4, to which I have attached a Belkin wireless adapter and the other is an ergo ensis laptop which has a netgear MA521 card installed.

The problem is, every now and then, for no apparent reason, the wireless network will not stay 'connected' for no apparent reason. I say no apparent reason, because it will work fine for several weeks, then one day i can turn both pc's off at night, and when i turn them on the next day, the network will constantly go from 'connected' to 'scanning for network'. Is this an issue that is normal and will happen from time to time, or is there something wrong that i'm not aware of.

I'm not particularly PC literate, so any response needs to be said in easy to understand terms.

Many thanks for your help.

 

Is this happening on just the desktop or laptop or on both?

 

i think it's both, in as much as when the desktop loses the network, the laptop then follows

 

On your laptop, can you borrow a friends PCMCIA Wireless Card to rule out that you might have a bad card.

Next, make sure you have the latest driver for your wireless card. (And Windows updates)

Next, how about your wireless router? Is the firmware up to date on it? (You could have a bad router too)

 

Thanks for responding. Unfortunately, I don't know of anyone where I can borrow a PCMCIA card, but don't think there's anything wrong either either that or the belkin router.

Although I'm not an expert in any way, I can't help but believe that microsoft updates has something to do with this - can't be sure thou.

I've actually got the network up and running at the moment, run the wizard, to reaffirm more than anything, and as I say, it's working. Confusing thing is though, it's picked up a network MS HOME, when I renamed the ID's (? is that what they are) to SECONDARY, after having trouble setting it up in the first place. If neither pc is in a work group of that name, how can the network work? I give in.

I think what I've done is create two profiles, one on channel 1, and one on channel 10, assuming that if one isn't working the other will get picked up.

I think one of my concerns is that I had read that running the Wizard too often can cause more problems, so didn't want to do that. But, how often is too often? If I have to do it every couple of months, is that too often?

I know there's a website or two about networking, but in all honesty, all the ones I've looked at are written fairly technically, and I don't understand half of it. Does anyone know of a good 'for dummies' site that perhaps will teach me to understand what i'm doing?

 

Sorry, just looked at both pc's, and this is what I don't understand....

both the desktop and laptop are showing 'connected to network MSHOME'
yet, when I set these up, I set the network name as SECONDARY, and that is the name set as the workgroup name.

I may be talking absolute tosh, but hope you understand.

 

There are a number of items that can disturb your signal strenght, such as:

* mobile phone
* metal cans (coke can)
* speakers

do you have an antenna at the back of your router? Point it towards where the wireless machine is.

 

Thanks for your comments Dr Evil. I do have the antennae pointing in the direction of the laptop, although it's in another room, and i'm not aware of anything in the way to disturb the signal.

In honesty, what COMPLETELY confuses me, is how the network can be working perfectly well when i turn off the pc at night, then next morning, when i turn back on again, it will not work.

I don't change anything, move anything, or download anything (except I do have automatic updates set to on). and how come i've a network called MSHOME when I've set the workgroup names to SECONDARY on both PC's.

I apologise if this makes me sound 'daft', I had help setting the network up originally, and had it working fine for several months, now it's not.

 

If you can see a network called "MSHOME" then one of your pc's must be configured to join this workgroup. If you can see both "MSHOME" and "SECONDARY" then that is the problem.

best to run the network wizard again, or re-configure manually then try again.

I get disconnected sometimes if i use my wireless laptop in another room, but very infrequently this happens.

can you post some more info pls? type "IPCONFIG" in the command prompt on both machines, and post your results pls so i can have a better look.

 

Hi Dr Evil. Ok, i've got this working now, I deleted the MSHOME network, and set it all up again, all is working fine.... at the mo. I'm convinced more than ever it's the automatic updates that are doing something, so i've changed that so they now download, but i can review them before installation. Not that i'm sure if i'll recognise a possible culprit.

Anyway, onward, I couldn't run ipconfig from the 'run' option, on both machines, it brought up the command prompt box they closed it immediately, so i run ipconfig by entering the command prompt under the program options. i'm sure it'll be the same (tell me if i'm wrong).

Here are the results:

The laptop is showing this:
Windows IP Configuration


Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : mshome.net
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.76
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 2002:d5f9:bbc9:5:c444:52f2:71bf:d936

IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 2002:d5f9:bbc9:5:209:5bff:fe8c:de7
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : fec0::5:209:5bff:fe8c:de7%1
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : fe80::209:5bff:fe8c:de7%5
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
fe80::211:50ff:fe17:e904%5

Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : fe80::5445:5245:444f%4
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

Tunnel adapter Automatic Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : mshome.net
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : fe80::5efe:192.168.0.76%2
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

and the desktop shows this:
Windows IP Configuration


Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : fe80::211:50ff:fe17:e904%5
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : fe80::5445:5245:444f%4
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

Tunnel adapter Automatic Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : fe80::5efe:192.168.0.1%2
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

Hope you can see something from these.

 

hey that's good news!

looks like your machines are now on the same workgroup, using the same subnet mask and IP range (192.168.0.1 - 192.168.0.255) so that is why they can now see and access each other.

if you have any more problems, just PM me or post here again.

 

In my experience Belkin = shotty wireless hardware. Glad to hear your problem is resolved.

 

Best to keep to NetGear, 3Com or other A-brands i suppose...

 

probably a tad late to say something but im bored and have nothing else to do, but..

i use lynksis and i for a while had the problem where every thing is orking fine then theres nothing, after a few phone calls to my dsl provider and lynksis i found that my router was cutting out, and needed to reboot...