Wireless Connection Disconnecting

[Peter Stahl]

I have a wireless connection for my Sony Vaio Laptop that shortly after booting up will disconnct. I can usually get it going again by right clicking on the Wireless Network Connection Icon in the system tray and select repair. What can I do to get this connection to come on and stay on. I have a Linksys Wireless G router off my cable modem. I attached a couple screen shots of what I get when it disconnects. I can get it to go again but my wife get frustrated and just shuts it off. Any help would be appreciated.

thanks, Pete

[Dick Latshaw]

Well, obviously you need to contact the person who manages your network. Oh ... that's you, isn't it. :mad: Don't you just love MS error messages?

[Joe Pelonio]

We had that problem a lot with the same Linksys, and eventually gave up and went to cables except for on here in the shop that I don't need to be online much and is the room next to the router.

Our problem was interference. When we display available networks there are 7 that show up. Lots of neighbors must have them. Also, you get interference from wireless phones, and baby monitors. We used the tips on this web site before we gave up, maybe some of them would help you:

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/moredone/wirelesstips.mspx

[Peter Stahl]

Well, obviously you need to contact the person who manages your network. Oh ... that's you, isn't it. :mad: Don't you just love MS error messages?

Yeah they're great. Be nice if all these manufacturers played nicely together. Thanks for the reply.

[Ian Abraham]

I would suspect interference from nearby networks too just by looking at the list of detected access points.
You could try changing the channel your access point is using from the default, you might find some 'clear air' that way.

Otherwise a Cat5 cable will allways work ;)

Cheers

Ian

[Peter Stahl]

We had that problem a lot with the same Linksys, and eventually gave up and went to cables except for on here in the shop that I don't need to be online much and is the room next to the router.

Our problem was interference. When we display available networks there are 7 that show up. Lots of neighbors must have them. Also, you get interference from wireless phones, and baby monitors. We used the tips on this web site before we gave up, maybe some of them would help you:

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/moredone/wirelesstips.mspx

Joe,

Most of the time I can get it to connect and stay connected but I wanted something crazy like 99% of the time not about 60%. Out of the 60% of time it looses the connection, I do the repair thing it will stay connected. We do have 4 cordless phones in the house so I guess one could be interfering with it. I put my network at the top of the list to connect to and set it to only connect to it but who knows. Thanks for the reply.

[Doug Shepard]

It could be a cable problem too. I had similar problems about a year ago. Sometimes repair would fix it but more often it needed a complete power on reset of the cable modem, wireless router, and PC to fix it. Turns out to have been cheap splitters and the fact that the whole house needs a 4-way splitter (an A-B, then internally another A-B off one of those legs) at the outside box. Originally the line going to the part of the house with the cable modem was on one of the secondary splits which has signal loss at every split. The result was intermittent signal drop-out. Never enough to notice anything with the TV but apparently the modems and internet connection need a dB level hotter than what the TV needs before it loses a channel. Once they replaced the splitter and put the modem part of the house off the first split, no problems.

[Brad Schmid]

Along the same lines as Doug, me and all my neighbors had the same problem about a year ago. In fact the problem was much worse during the day. At night things worked better. Turns out, we were living on the edge with signal strength. The heat of the day put it over the edge, and the internet would drop out. Cable TV was ok. After they came out and tweeked it at the neighborhood main box, we haven't had a problem since.

By the way, one other thing you might check is to see if your router is at the latest firmware version, or at least see how far behind it is and look to see what the newer versions fixed.

I think interference is another good bet as the others have mentioned.
cheers

[Jason Roehl]

How many of your cordless phones are 2.4GHz? Those will ALWAYS interfere with a wireless network. Virtually all consumer-grade WLANs are 2.4GHz. I still have 2.4GHz phone, but we rarely use it for that reason--it sits on its base so that it doesn't cause problems.

I used to have lots of connection problems with my WLAN, too, but I found that turning OFF security helped reliability a lot. So, for SOME security, I don't broadcast my SSID, and I don't use a dynamic IP. Also, I have it set to only allow the IP addresses I specify. But, I'm in a small town, and I only rarely even detect one other WLAN in the area.

[Matt Meiser]

As Jason said, 2.4GHz phones are a problem, but also different networks using the same channels (or multiple access points on the same network using the same channel) can be a problem. Linksys recommends leaving an unused channel between used channels. For example at home I have two access points, one on Channel 1 and one on Channel 6. You might play around with the channels on yours and see if you can find one that works better.

[Peter Stahl]

Beginning to sound like if I get connected and it stays that way I should be happy. Usually if it drops the connection it's during the first couple minutes and usually I can reconnect. I'll just have to show my wife how to restart the connection. Don't think I'll be getting rid of any phones but I might try changing the channel. Thanks for all the advice.

[Chuck Wintle]

Beginning to sound like if I get connected and it stays that way I should be happy. Usually if it drops the connection it's during the first couple minutes and usually I can reconnect. I'll just have to show my wife how to restart the connection. Don't think I'll be getting rid of any phones but I might try changing the channel. Thanks for all the advice.
Which Linksys router do you have?:)

[Mario Lucchesi]

get the latest firmware for the router by going to the linksys site. I have seen this problem too oftern. There have been some problems with the DHCP in several revisions of the routers. Try the upgrade.

[Jerry Clark]

I had that problem on one computer and found out it was trying to connect to a neighbor's wireless-- I reset the default to my wireless and no more problems. :D

[Peter Stahl]

I had that problem on one computer and found out it was trying to connect to a neighbor's wireless-- I reset the default to my wireless and no more problems. :D

Jerry,

Yes it was doing that when I first started using this laptop but I changed that and also disabled the others. It's at the top of the list now. Thanks for the reply.

[Peter Stahl]

Which Linksys router do you have?:)

It's a WRT54g.

[Peter Stahl]

get the latest firmware for the router by going to the linksys site. I have seen this problem too oftern. There have been some problems with the DHCP in several revisions of the routers. Try the upgrade.

Thanks Mario, I give that a try too.

[Chuck Wintle]

Thanks Mario, I give that a try too.

The firmware is up to version 8.0 for that model.