Problem with Wireless

whitepotatoe

New Member
My laptop (Compaq Presario 2100) works fine if I'm hooked up with my Comcast cable connection at home. But when I am at school or work, the wireless connection is very unreliable. Sometimes it works fine, other times it runs slow, other times it will open the connection then fail within 5 minutes, other times it will not even find the network. At first I thought it might be the wireless at my school, but then at my new job, the problems are the same or worse.

My computer uses the HP WLAN 54g 450 Network Adapter. It only has 256 MB of RAM, but I only need to use it for email and doing research, no gaming or anything. And I usually only have a few windows open. The website that gives me the most trouble is lexisnexis.com. Often times it will be working, then when I get on lexis it totally craps out. It will begin to load the page, then I will see the text coming up, then the text disappears and the page is just white, other times is just does not load at all and give me page cannot be displayed. When I click on the wireless icon to repair the connection, usually it just does nothing, and I have to open the task manager to close it down. If it gets the connection working again, it usually stops again within a few minutes. Restarting my computer may or may not help.

I have called the HP tech support, and those people are useless. Sometimes they get it fixed, but other times it still won't work. In two years, I have sent my computer in for them to fix 4 times already replacing the heard drive each time, my systems board(?) once, and my fan once. Each time the problem comes back soon after I get it back. Now my warranty on it is done.

If anyone can give me some advice, I'd appreciate it. People tell me that more RAM would solve the problem, but then why does it work perfectly fine on a landline, and sometimes work fine with wireless for hours straight, but other times not work at all. It seems to me like RAM is not the real problem.

Also, I might just buy a new laptop. I'll take advice on a good $500-700 laptop to get me through one more year of school.
 
Well, what kind of signal strength are you getting from home and work?
also double check your are pulling valid IP addresses with subnets and gateways. You may need to just repair the connection.

Also try setting the preamble to long in wireless NIC settinsg
 
Well, what kind of signal strength are you getting from home and work?
Signal strength is excellent at my home, work, and school, and the speed is usually 54 or 48 Mbps. It worked fine all weekend at my home land line, then only worked for about five minutes at my job all day long. The problem was at first that my wireless network would not enable, then once it enabled, windows could not connect to the network. I was getting ready to leave and noticed that it had connected on its own, and it is now working fine.

also double check your are pulling valid IP addresses with subnets and gateways. You may need to just repair the connection.
I have no idea if these are valid. Here are the numbers that I have:
IP addresses - 192.168.1.12
subnets - 255.255.255.0
gateways - 192.168.1.254

Also try setting the preamble to long in wireless NIC settinsg
How do I get to the wireless NIC settings?

Thanks for the response,

whitepotatoe
 
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