why is this happening to ME! computer question:

i have a house guest with a laptop, so i finally hook up the wireless network. since then i'm experiening occaisional slowdowns and disconnects from the net at my computer, but it doesn't seem to be a problem with the laptop.

so, eggheads, what have i done wrong?

edit to had - i only hooked up the hardware and ran the install CDs. anything else i'm sposed to do?

If so, my dad had the same problem with his desktop and laptop. The laptop worked fine but the desktop would not work well on the Internet. He solved it by putting a wireless card in the desktop. I know that's not really the efficient way to solve this problem, but I'm posting this b/c it seems to point toward the answer having something to do with interference w/the router.

just stuck it there till a better location presented itself.

...can put out a fair bit of radio interference (the transformers/power packs are very leaky in the RF-band, dontcha know). That could easily be the cause of the interference. Try to locate your wireless router somewhere reasonably far away from likely sources of RF, such as microwaves, fridges, TVs, radios, cellphones, the external walls of your house (to avoid interference from neighbors' networks).

Or have you just connected that to the router with an Ethernet cable?

If the desktop is connecting wirelessly, be sure it isn't near any major appliances like air conditioners, microwaves, fridges, even TVs. All of those appliances can give off enough radio frequency noise to drown out your wireless signal. If that happens, your router will slow right down as it tries to extract the signal from all the noise.

Is the desktop machine near a wall that adjoins a neighbors apartment/duplex/etc? Wireless signals from different networks can interfere with each other and degrade performance dramatically. Perhaps the laptop is being used in a part of your house that's relatively free from radio noise, while your desktop is right in the middle of a snowstorm of interference.

Unfortunately, getting good wifi reception in our increasingly wireless world is a bit of a black art. In my apartment complex alone, there are fifteen competing networks I can detect from my living room. It got so there wasn't a free channel I could use that didn't already have two other people's networks on it. Finally, I upgraded to a new 802.11n router. My laptops have 802.11n cards in them, so I can run the whole network at 5GHz, rather than the 2.4GHz that 802.11a/b/g networks use. This has lifted me above all the clutter and I have a stable, fast, reliable network that never drops out. For now. Soon, of course, everyone else will switch to "N" and I'll be back where I started.

i've just everything about 4 feet away. maybe that will help

lovely Vista. Don't know if it's your OS but since I've upgraded (yikes) I have to restart my unit in order to switch from wifi to ether.

anywho, if you do have Vista there are 10,000 reasons why it would want to protect you in the middle of an important conversation.

thanks!

...then RF interference shouldn't be an issue at all. The router should just pass the signal straight through to your cable modem/DSL box/whatever.

Aside from an out-of-date Ethernet driver on your PC or a firewall conflict, I can't think of a reason why you'd be getting intermittent connectivity on the desktop. With Ethernet, it's usually all or nothing.

That's why I can't encrypt for shit. Other than that I can't help. Weird problem though.

:hi:

We were having problems with disconnects as well. Our problems were solved by moving the cordless phone away from the router, and changing the router channel from "auto" to a fixed channel.

Hope that helps. :D

Older phones use the same 2.4GHz radio band as 802.11a/b/g wireless routers, with often hilarious results. Newer cordless phones use 5.8GHz, which puts them nicely out of the range of wifi, which reduces interference dramatically.

Though I think it is Vista. My laptop connects just fine on my g network with WPA, but my desktop only likes WEP and refuses to connect with WEP on a WRT54G Linksys router. I am using an Belkin USB g wireless connector. I will probably end up getting a card for WiFi access.

Of course I had lots of issues with the driver which I still have to fix (rolled back Vista to a backup that was not activated yet, grrrrr). None of the new or old drivers worked properly.