Iffy wireless connection

[Guest]

Daughter's Dell (Vista) lappy is a temperamental connector to our Netgear wireless router at home. In her bedroom in particular which is opposite the room where the router is for example. It will often drop the connection even if it connects at all.

 

My Acer (Win 7) lappy is fine anywhere in the house.

 

The house has paper walls (an exaggeration but you get the drift).

 

Any ideas for improving it short of upgrading the OS which she can't afford at the mo.

 

Cheers,

 

ETA - just asked her and she has confirmed it is fine at her boyfriends house but she doesn't know what router he has.

Edited May 9, 2011 by MJG

[Robbo]

Daughter's Dell (Vista) lappy is a temperamental connector to our Netgear wireless router at home. In her bedroom in particular which is opposite the room where the router is for example. It will often drop the connection even if it connects at all.

 

My Acer (Win 7) lappy is fine anywhere in the house.

 

The house has paper walls (an exaggeration but you get the drift).

 

Any ideas for improving it short of upgrading the OS which she can't afford at the mo.

 

Cheers,

 

ETA - just asked her and she has confirmed it is fine at her boyfriends house but she doesn't know what router he has.

 

 

It more than likely be interference, change the channel on the router, if it's near 1, change it to the other end like 12 and see if that improves it.

[Scooby]

It more than likely be interference, change the channel on the router, if it's near 1, change it to the other end like 12 and see if that improves it.

 

Or you could hard wire it.

[alan_fincher]

Any ideas for improving it short of upgrading the OS which she can't afford at the mo.

I wonder if what you have typed is what you meant, but I can't see why upgrading the operating system would make it work any better.

 

But wireless networking is hardly a speciality of mine, so perhaps I'm missing something.

 

I have to say that an expensive Netgear router I have in use here that claimed a higher range than many does not reach the further parts of the house well, but here we are not talking paper-thin walls. It's cases where we actually have cavity walls now as internal walls because the house got extended.

[Guest]

I wonder if what you have typed is what you meant, but I can't see why upgrading the operating system would make it work any better.

 

I did mean what I typed and I can't see why it would do either, it was just to stem any suggestions from the anti vista brigade that would be the cure for all ills.

[Justme]

If you look in the advanced power saving properties you can find the settings for the laptops wireless. First turn up the power & then turn off power saving for battery & mains settings.

[DaveP]

An adjustment that helped my vista laptop stay on message was to change the roaming aggressiveness of the wifi transponder - basically it was looking around for other access points, latching on to them, failing to negotiate a link and dropping the connection to mine. Reducing the roaming aggressiveness value prevented it being so flighty.

 

See http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/sb/cs-025393.htm for the advanced settings of the transponder.

[nwhear]

You might like to try TCP Optimizer which I found helpfull on a vista PC

 

http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php

[Guest]

Plenty of stuff to go at thanks folks.

Edited May 10, 2011 by MJG

[bag 'o' bones]

Daughter's Dell (Vista) lappy is a temperamental connector to our Netgear wireless router at home. In her bedroom in particular which is opposite the room where the router is for example. It will often drop the connection even if it connects at all.

 

My Acer (Win 7) lappy is fine anywhere in the house.

 

The house has paper walls (an exaggeration but you get the drift).

 

Any ideas for improving it short of upgrading the OS which she can't afford at the mo.

 

Cheers,

 

ETA - just asked her and she has confirmed it is fine at her boyfriends house but she doesn't know what router he has.

 

I've got a netgear wifi and have experienced the same sort of problems. although to be fair the lappy is used a good 10 metres from the router and line of site the signal would have to go through three breeze block walls so has to bounce down the corridor to get through - I assume

 

Thing is though some days the signal is good other it hardly connects at all. Sometimes it would be easier to connect to next doors signal which is well over 30 metres away!

 

Very strange although have run a wire through now which is well worth doing.