Vista Wireless Problems

[Jayce]

I have a Toshiba laptop that came with Vista Home Premium 32 bit and RTL8187B wireless. The situation here is an odd one... it involves two networks with the exact same router. The only different with my router is mine is secure, whereas my girlfriend's is not. (before I hear an earful of not being secure, there's no neighbors within 100 yards of her house).

My network:

WRT54G wireless WPA secure - no problems.

Her network:

WRT54G wireless with no security - random problems.

I let her borrow my laptop for a while. She calls me up... can't connect. She's not the most computer savy person but I walked her through connecting and she said there was an error. I got her brother on the phone, who's familiar with PCs and built a couple. Same thing. Error. "Windows did not receive a response from the access point to connect." I go over the next day, connects perfectly... yet nothing changed since the day before. Okay, fine. Tonight (two days later) it's working great. Battery gets low so I shut it down and laid down. An hour later I plug it in and turn it on. Didn't connect. Error. "Windows did not receive a response from the access point to connect."

I rebooted the laptop to Ubuntu... connected just fine.

Why?

 

[Osiris]

100 Yards, 1000 Yards, doens't matter. That setting is there for a reason wether it be someone that doesn't know how to crack it or just a bump in the road for someone that does, it's always safe to have it.

Have you tried the latest firmware on both the router and laptop wireless card?

In the wireless config, try moving her network up to the top, I need to do this at work. Usually engineers travel a lot so its no surprise to see 50 or so networks in the wireless properties for them to connect to. I either move ours to the top or delete them all but ours.

 

[Jayce]

It is at the top.

And we live in amish country. She's surrounded by corn fields. Do you think a cow poses a risk to breaking into the network?

 

[mikesgroovin]

I wouldn't worry about it being or not being secure. Have you thought about swapping routers for a week?

You mentioned that she borrowed your laptop for a while. What OS does the other one (that you didn't mention) have?

Save your config, dump it to your desktop... disable security and set it up for her... then reload your config in the new one you got from her house and use hers for a while... see what happens. Could also grant you complete access to it for troubleshooting too if you happen to stumble upon a problem.

EDIT: not 100% if you can save your config (export) from the wrt54g or not... I took a shot in the dark. If not, then just write a few things down and then "import" your notes to the new one LOL

 

[Osiris]

Why heck yea, they do a lil war driving at night

What about the drivers/firmware?

Malfuntioning router?

Reset router to default?

 

[mikesgroovin]

^^^ Try swapping routers after you spend "quality time" over your girlfriend's house doing all of those things Osiris mentioned first Of course!

 

[Jayce]

There's only 1 laptop in question. This Toshiba laptop with Vista Home Premium is mine. It works great on my network. On her network, it's not so hot, having these intermittent problems I spoke about above.

So there's 1 computer, 2 routers, and only 1 difference I can see... mine is secured, her's is not. I know security shouldn't make or break this situation, but that's the only difference.

We both have the same ISP too...

 

[mikesgroovin]

Ahh, gotcha. Welllllll, if thats the only difference you see.. try enabling WPA on hers too. Thing is, if it resolves the problem, then you may have another problem on your hand.. but at least you would know. I've seen weirder, for sure.

 

[Jayce]

I would, but it's her parent's network, and I'd really rather not tinker around with their stuff. Last time they asked me to work on their network was after a storm came through and lightning knocked out a string of stuff. Not fun.

If anything, I'd rather take security off of MY network. This just confuses me because I normally let her borrow my laptop when she's sick or something like that... and she was home for a month so she used it with XP and it was perfectly fine. I put Vista back on it (what came with it) and problems arise instantly.

 

[Jayce]

You know what I think it may be...

His router has the default SSID - linksys. I know I've been on other "linksys" networks... so I wonder if the SSID is what's messing with the wireless network stack and due to the common name, perhaps Windows is sincerely not sure which linksys I'm going for... hence why Ubuntu works cause I never use Ubuntu on my laptop. But even still, when I browsed for nearby networks I could see 1 linksys and it wouldn't let me on. But maybe the name alone was enough to confuse the almighty Vista?