Same firewalls and AV on the Laptop. Only Windows manages the connection. Stumped!

Lets get silly, have you changed anything (not computer related) lately? Started leaving your mobile in a different place, moved an anglepoise light, changed to energy saving light bulbs etc? What happens in the house just before things go flakey? As I say it sounds silly but...............

BOAC,

Is it related to your wiring saga, by any chance?

SD

I have a friend who could not, no matter how much fiddling he did, remove the ghost lines from his telly picture. Eventually, we moved a speaker a couple of feet away from the telly...

When the connection is recycling, have you hovered your mouse over the system tray icon - windows will give a commentary on what it's doing during the changes.:confused:

Its the usual 'acquiring IP address' etc. I has a fit of Google yesterday and I have changed 'Media Type' setting from 'Autosense' to '100base TX' on the RJ45-USB adapter.

So far so good....................

Ray! No need to thank us:}:D:}

I was actually waiting to see if it was fixed!:cool:

Still far better, and I am wondering if the ISP (Tiscali) had perhaps changed their polling method to cause the conflict.

Fullsome thanks and a link to the item I read on Google to follow in due course.:) - but,of course, thanks to all for the hints so far:ok:

A depressing update - problem still with me after being 'on-line' over a day so it could be a heat problem? I thought I was 'there' today when I cleared 2 kg of dog hair out of my bios chip fan duct but on return from my hospital visit of 'dad' I found the disconnect still there.

I have noted mav64's post, and indeed I have one of those 3Com routers but I'm pretty sure the link is good on the laptop when this one goes flakey. Still looking for that 'common point' between USB-RJ45 link and wifi link which would cause both to 'wobble'.

I have missed some of these posts but you say USB port to RJ45, would the USB port be powering down in standby mode. There may also be a configuaration setting that powers down the wireless hardware for power saving mode?

TIO

AFAIK no 'power-saving' selected. I will run the Laptop on an extended day's 'on-line' on the RJ45 (direct connection, no USB) just to confirm whether it is after all a router problem involving this AR7 chip.

BOAC,

My Netgear WAP/Switch/Firewall regularly dies, requiring a reboot. Once or twice a day, I would estimate.

It seems to have got worse since configuring a large list of blocked sites to keep the kids in check. Or maybe that's co-incidence. Maybe it has got worse since Virgin Media took over NTL... or maybe THAT's co-incidence?

SD

Are you talking computer reboot or just router/switch?

BOAC, Is your XP internal firewall running?

No - Zone Alarm. In the middle of a 'burn-in' test with the laptop and it might just be possible after all this that it IS a Router issue:ugh:

Just router/switch reboot

AR7
 

Hi all, I wasn't aware of this thread when I posted the AR7 info. That issue should only affect the DSL connection itself and shouldn't affect the (w)lan side of things at all. Having said that, it is supposed to be a router on a chip... :hmm:
I know you said you'd set the card to "100Base-TX", but was there also a duplex setting? If so, set it for full.
A fairly useful utility, seems to log everything and displays it nicely with a description of the event etc. See what XP thinks your connection is doing.
http://www.eventlogxp.com/
Good luck with the "Burn". :ooh:

Yes, full duplex, and the 'burn' is beginning to point after all to the 3Com router.

Still puzzling! Today I ran the lappie and the desktop all day while I went about my business. This evening, with wifi running on both, the desktop is cycling the connection but the lappie remains steady.

Does ANYONE know of a common point in a PC which the various internet conns go through? It has to be something like that.

The system log shows TCPIP event 4201
Google (MS) says "The system detected that network adapter Compaq NC6134 Gigabit NIC (NB Not MINE) was connected to the network, and has initiated normal operation over the network adapter. A single TCPIP 4201 event is typical after you restart the computer or after you disable or enable the network adapter."

and Browser event 8033
Google says "The browser has forced an election on network /Device/NetBT_E100B5 because a master browser was stopped.":confused:


Heeeelllllllpppppppp...............