Frustrated with wireless connections....

treitz3

For those of you here that know about wireless connections, I sure could use your help. First off, I will let you know that I am computer stupid. What I do know, I get away with only by the grace of the computer gods.

Here's my issue....

On any random occasion [and I do mean random] the router I have will "log off" and send me to another unsecured network provider. Nothing I do makes this happen. I can be using the computer and it does it....while at the same token, I will not have used the computer for days and it still logs me onto an unsecured network.

Why is it doing this? I would not like it not to do this.

What information do you need from me to see what the issue is? It's frustrating at best and unplugging the router, resetting the computer, hard resetting the modem, computer and the router has no steady correction patterns.

What the hell is going on? I never had this when I was hard wired to the same outlet and as far as I know, it was installed correctly about a year or two ago. This seems to happen about once or twice a month rather consistently with no apparent reason. Is this normal or may it be something so simple, I have just overlooked it?

Lost

treitz3 wrote: »

For those of you here that know about wireless connections, I sure could use your help. First off, I will let you know that I am computer stupid. What I do know, I get away with only by the grace of the computer gods.

Here's my issue....

On any random occasion [and I do mean random] the router I have will "log off" and send me to another unsecured network provider. Nothing I do makes this happen. I can be using the computer and it does it....while at the same token, I will not have used the computer for days and it still logs me onto an unsecured network.

Why is it doing this? I would not like it not to do this.

What information do you need from me to see what the issue is? It's frustrating at best and unplugging the router, resetting the computer, hard resetting the modem, computer and the router has no steady correction patterns.

What the hell is going on? I never had this when I was hard wired to the same outlet and as far as I know, it was installed correctly about a year or two ago. This seems to happen about once or twice a month rather consistently with no apparent reason. Is this normal or may it be something so simple, I have just overlooked it?

Have you ever changed the default login and password of the router?

treitz3

No. It has been the same since it was installed. I have tried to log on under different passwords and logins when the system goes haywire but the only one I can log onto is the unsecured networks in the area. Honestly, I don't think the "passwords" and "logons" I was trying were nothing more than computer talk. I was just trying anything to get the daggum thing working.

I wouldn't even know how to change the default.

I keep trying to connect to my network but the computer won't even recognize that I have one??? I'm running off of my neighbors unsecured network right now. Why won't the computer recognize I have one right now when all is plugged in and well?

iminneworleans

What is the make/model of your router? Are you using Windows or a secondary program to manage your wireless connections?

treitz3

iminneworleans wrote: »

What is the make/model of your router?

Netgear. As far as I know it's a WPN824 V3.

iminneworleans wrote: »

Are you using Windows or a secondary program to manage your wireless connections?

I would believe it's just windows. I have nothing fancy on this thing. Like I said, I know nothing about computers.

John30_30

treitz3 wrote: »

For those of you here that know about wireless connections, I sure could use your help. First off, I will let you know that I am computer stupid. What I do know, I get away with only by the grace of the computer gods.

Here's my issue....

On any random occasion [and I do mean random] the router I have will "log off" and send me to another unsecured network provider. Nothing I do makes this happen. I can be using the computer and it does it....while at the same token, I will not have used the computer for days and it still logs me onto an unsecured network.

Why is it doing this? I would not like it not to do this.

What information do you need from me to see what the issue is? It's frustrating at best and unplugging the router, resetting the computer, hard resetting the modem, computer and the router has no steady correction patterns.

What the hell is going on? I never had this when I was hard wired to the same outlet and as far as I know, it was installed correctly about a year or two ago. This seems to happen about once or twice a month rather consistently with no apparent reason. Is this normal or may it be something so simple, I have just overlooked it?

Do you have other computers wired in a home network as well? It would help to have that to compare to, as it could be your ISP's pipe to your home location.

What version of Windows? Also do you have other wireless devices that could be hammering it, specifically Apple products?
Google issues of that make and model and see what comes up.

treitz3

John30_30 wrote: »

Do you have other computers wired in a home network as well? It would help to have that to compare to, as it could be your ISP's pipe to your home location.

Yes, the wife has a laptop and that does the same exact thing. It seems that when it changes on one, it changes on both of them at the same time.

John30_30 wrote: »

What version of Windows? Also do you have other wireless devices that could be hammering it, specifically Apple products?
Google issues of that make and model and see what comes up.

XP and no Apple products.

renowilliams

treitz3 wrote: »

Yes, the wife has a laptop and that does the same exact thing. It seems that when it changes on one, it changes on both of them at the same time.

XP and no Apple products.

Is your router a duel band router (2.4 GHZ and 5.0 GHZ). The reason I ask is that most single band routers are 2.4 GHZ and duel band routers by default are set to 2.4GHZ. I have herd that sometimes other devices in the house that operate on the same frequency can interfere with the signal IE cordless phones. This may not be causing the issue your having but it wouldn't hurt to investigate this.

I just looked up the specs on your Netgear and it is a single band (2.4 GHZ). You might try a duel band router and set it to 5.0 GHZ and see if this resolves the issue. Maybe a friend has on you can try.

tcrossma

In my experience I've had routers that have just started acting up after a while. No rhyme or reason to it really, and it wasn't any type of configuration issue. I'd just lose connection to them occasionally and a reboot of the router would be required. My gut feeling is some sort of failure due to overheating of the router, but that's just a guess.

Some routers are better than others in this regard, and some last longer than others. My current router I've not had to reboot in over 2 years. My last router prior to that would need a reboot every 2-4 weeks.

If the problem is as intermittent as you say, my guess is that it's not something that you'll be able to control. It might be interference from something (i.e. a cordless phone) or it might be something wrong with the router. You could try making sure you have the latest firmware, but failing that, my suggestion - just from personal experience - would just be to try a new router.

John30_30

treitz3 wrote: »

Yes, the wife has a laptop and that does the same exact thing. It seems that when it changes on one, it changes on both of them at the same time.

XP and no Apple products.

Well, I was originally thinking this could be your problem: that on a typical ISP you get a dynamically leased I.P. address out of a pool the ISP "owns" for a default time period, say 7 days. When it expires the computer or router generally is able to just gracefully gets another without all the commotion.
It's possible the router is **** up on the lease renew.

The other thing that occurred to me was that if you've got logging turned on on the router, it will backlog and fill up a cache of log, leading to errors.

Or you could have someone dos-attacking you. Check what this little bastage is doing: sipper router

iminneworleans

When I troubleshoot these kinds of problems I always power everything down including the computer. Then I start powering them on from the wall out. Giving each item time to go through it's start up routine.

I have also seen where the cable modem acts like a DHCP router and tries to hand out an address, things fail when your wireless router does the same thing. Call you Internet provider and ask them if your modem acts as a DHCP router and if so, ask them to help you turn that feature off because your wireless router is doing the same thing.

lightman1

Who cares, jack-****. Just don't try to look at your bank account.

treitz3

I have an update.

I owe a big thank you to Quadzilla of this forum. Shortly after I started this thread, he voluntarily PM'd me out of the blue and offered to assist with my issue.

Long story short? After a couple of hours on the phone with him, the issue has not reoccurred once since the last post of this thread. Thank you for taking the time to get my computer straight. It was and is much appreciated. My wife told me to thank you as well.

Shut up Russ.

Sherardp

Awesome glad you got it worked out.

treitz3

Well, here's an update. It continued happening about three weeks after my last post about every week or so, graduating to where it didn't work at all [no matter what I did] just before Christmas. It wasn't so bad [before it completely quit] because all I had to do was repair the connection but it kept getting so repetitive and would sometimes reoccur [lose the network connection] once every ten minutes sometimes. Determined to get this issue resolved once and for all, I called my cable company this morning.

Two hours later, I hung up the phone with 3 things to try since it was determined that it wasn't the modem or the router. (1)Reinstall the wireless driver, (2)replace the wireless card [adapter] and last but not least, (3)do a Windows repair. Tried reinstalling the wireless driver a couple of times with the same results.....IP addresses of 000.000.0.0 while at the same time, the laptop was working flawlessly.

Went to Best Buy and got a dual band high performance USB wireless driver and even though it took me 3 times installing and uninstalling the hardware and software, I got it to work. So far, so good. Looks like I had a flaky wireless card all this time.

Time will tell, but I have learned a lot about wireless networking between Quadzilla and Chris at Time Warner. For the first time in my life, I actually installed something on this damn thing that didn't require help from someone else. That felt pretty good. Here's to hopefully nipping this issue in the bud.

quadzilla

Yeah, I was gonna say that your router isn't sending you anywhere. Windows decides it's getting a better signal from another wireless access point and connects you to that. You can disable that so that windows won't automatically connect you to other access points, but this is pretty usual with wireless. I watch the signal from my access point fluctuate quite a bit when I'm not moving. It's just other signal in the air interfering, causing the signal strength to go up and down from the wireless cards perspective.

Anywho, if you keep having problems, pm me and we'll do another remote session so I can tell your laptop not to automatically connect to the other networks near you.

treitz3

Actually, before all of this happened I would not have had one clue what you just said or how to do it. Now that I have been educated a bit on the subject, I know exactly what you are talking about. It has already been done to both the laptop and the desktop. I erased all other access points, even the ones on demand. Now either I have a signal or I don't and neither of them will automatically switch to another router.

So far, so good but history with this issue has taught me that I shouldn't close the book quite yet. I'm praying, but we'll see and thanks Quadzilla.

treitz3

Damnit, it's happening again. For two hours today, the modem displayed the internet signal. The router said the same thing. Did I have internet? NO.

Is it so damned hard to buy something that works? ARRRGH!