Topic: Any geeks here? I've got a W7 & wireless networks question.

[Kframe]

I've tried googling this issue, but I'm having trouble finding anything relevant.

Toshiba Satellite A505 laptop, only a few months old, Windows 7 home premium, and it's on my home WLAN and has been set up with the wireless router (a netgear also only a few months old) using WPS one button setup. 

Anyway, everytime I open the laptop and it wakes up, I can see my home network SSID in the list, and it has been setup to connect automatically but it only connects on its own about a quarter of the time.  The rest of the time I have to select my network from the list and click connect.  And then it takes at least a full minute or two to connect and then establish internet access.  When it wakes up and does connect automatically, it takes about 10 seconds. 
I always see 4 bars of signal strength.  I've not set the PC up on any other networks ever.

Any ideas on what could be causing this inconsistent behavior?  Problems that are always in a certain state are much easier for me to troubleshoot. 
It's inconvenient as hell.  And now that I've started online college (gonna get my BSN so I can go on to grad school) this problem is really aggravating. 

[edgimeno]

I would suggest you look at the Windows 7 power conservation settings in your control panel.  Sometimes it can be set to not disconnect you from your wireless network when the computer "hibernates". 

I believe the default setting is to close all connections when it goes into hibernation, to conserve battery life, but in all honesty, having a wireless card constantly active should not adversely affect your battery life.

[Retro Rocket]

I have just gotten rid of my netgear wireless set up and couldn't be happier. They are no where as consistent as cable and drop out all the time,i was forever left clicking and repairing the connection, NOTHING,repeat NOTHING fixed the problem and i know my way around a computer and have a good mate who is a tech. In frustration i went back to cable and have had better speeds and not one drop out since.

Mick

[333]

I would try to disable "hibernate".  This has caused trouble with my earlier laptops.  I am a new "7" user as well, so I'm no pro on this.  Just my 2 cents.

[Skunk Stripe]

I do not use hibernate, I use sleep. There is a difference between the two. I also use linksys routers and have always had good luck. I tried dlink and it was such a pain that I took the damn thing back the same day.

[Alan F.]

You may try the router's management console (192.168.1.1) you'll probably have to enter a login and password but once you're in start looking for firmware updates, the manufacturer may be already aware and working on the problem.

[Kframe]

Well I've updated my wireless device driver (from Realtek), I removed my network and re-added it, now the problem is worse.
It shows the networks, but makes no attempt at connecting automatically (even though that box is checked) and when I click to connect it stirs and stews and finally opens a troubleshooting box stating that the connection failed, then it says it reset my adapter and then it connects.
 
-K

[Kframe]

I think I got it figured out...

Logged into the router with the Dell laptop that's always worked well, changed to WEP instead of WPA2P.

On the funky Toshiba laptop, I removed my network from the Manage Networks area.  Went into Device Mgr and uninstalled my adapter driver update that I DL'd last month, rolling back to the previous version.  Restarted the laptop, added my network, manually entered the key instead of using WPS (which isn't supported with WEP). 

Now when the laptop wakes it shows the gray signal bars with the yellow asterisk on it, and in a minute or so it automatically attempts and succeeds at connecting. 
It still isn't nearly as quick of a reconnect as it is on the Dell, but it's good enough and I'm not getting error messages anymore. 

Thanks for all the tips!

-K

[super pasty white guy]

If this is a concern to you... WEP is easily hacked.

http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/isaac/wep-faq.html

I'd try to be of more help if I could... but not a windows user.

spwg

[Skunk Stripe]

Avoid wep if possible but the dlink I had would not work on anything else.
If you can, maybe set up mac address filtering. A mac can be spoofed but it is an extra layer to make it a bit harder if you must use the wep.

[Kframe]

Is there a middle ground between WEP (admittedly not extremely secure) and WPA2P (probably overkill)?

What's the difference between TKIP and AES? 
I see that those are choices with the higher security levels, but don't know anything about them.

-K

[eshumaker]

Per Cisco:
Ideally, you should use WPA2 with AES.  If you cannot get this to work, a satisfactory alternative is WPA with TKIP.  WEP is no longer recommended.
 
The option of WPA2 with "TKIP or AES" allows you to run a mixed system:  Those devices that can do WPA2 with AES will use that system, less advanced devices (such as PDA's) that can only do WPA will do WPA with TKIP.
 
If you are having trouble with WPA2 you should note the following:
1) make sure you have the latest driver for your wireless adapter
2)  Windows XP requires a patch to run WPA2. Go to Microsoft Knowledge base, article ID=893357 and it will direct you to the patch.
Sadly, the patch is not part of the automatic Windows XP updates, so lots of people are missing the patch.


Another note, we use a combination of Dell and Toshiba units at work, with WPA2/LEAP or WPA2/TKIP&AES, and every Dell, PDA, IPhone, blah can connect pretty much in 20 seconds. Two "identical" Toshibas will radically vary, and about 50% of the time fail outright. We set up a WEP network for the Toshibas to solve the problem... which sucks for many reasons.

[Skunk Stripe]

See I have a 4 year old toshiba and it connects flawlessly 99% of the time. But then different computers have different hardware in them. My old gateway laptop connects like a dream. using wpa2 personal with aes on both.