I Hate Stupid Bloody Wireless Internet!!! Grrrrr

Flakey Sugar Butt · I Hate Stupid Bloody Wireless Internet!!! Grrrrr

I guess by the title of this thread that you can pretty much gather I'm pissed off with my wireless. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...

My daughters have wanted to be on the internet on their computer for ages now so for Christmas their dad got them, among other things amazingly, a router and dongle (wtf??) I spent the better part of boxing day trying to get the damn thing set up for them. I was going to have the router fixed to my computer, they were going to be wireless with the dongle. First problem was the stupid router wouldn't work on my machine. I tried allsorts and after eventually making a call to Virgin figured that the ethernet port on my pc doesn't work properly. So, the girls have ended up with the router which installed like a charm on their machine, and I've got the dongle and am wireless.

Well, what a right flaming chew on I'm having with it. I've set up security on the advice of my dad's mate so no one can piggy back off my signal, which is fine. Thing is, I keep losing the flipping signal, pages won't always load up cos it says it can't find the server. This I could live with at a push, it's irritating as hell but I just figure it's one of those things. However......

Since installing this dongle and going wireless EVERY DAY my computer crashes. Total lock up. Screen freeze, no mouse, no keyboard, not a sausage. I have to use the reset button. It happens anywhere between 1 - 4/5 times. On the worst occasion it crashed about 4 times in an hour. This can't be doing my pc any good at all, they don't like to be reset do they?

I'm at a total loss as to why this keeps happening. All my old speedtouch modem software has been well and truly unistalled so there can't be a conflict there, I took out the old internal dial up modem cos it kept appearing on my device manager list with a ! next to it, so that can't be the problem either and I know there's no software on for that. I don't think I ever used it.

Does anyone have any idea's about what the problem might be? I'm on the verge of a meltdown because of it, and I'm really worried that it's going trash my poor 'puter sad

INFO: Netgear Wireless-G Router DG834G, Netgear 54mbps Wireless USB Adapter WG111.

Chris

Well if you have Vista on your PC, the problem may be there...

Flakey Sugar Butt

Nope, XP

Mala

What's the problem that Vista has with wireless? I want to get a router I can use for my laptop so that both me and the bf can be on the internet at the same time. I have xp on the pc and vista on the laptop.

Maverick

Dont understand why the dongle would freeze your computer up, I suppose you could try putting it in another USB port (I take it thats how it is connected) because we had a problem on someones pc at work and basically one of the USB ports wasn't working properly.

Regarding the loss of signal, wireless routers need to be central in the house, the hall or landing is ideal. The more walls it has to pass through the weaker the signal gets. We used to run off wireless at home but when the reports came out that although the radio waves are low they could still be harmful to children. So I ditched that and we are now using a homeplug system which works fantastically well. The ones we use are made by Devolo.

Our wireless worked brilliantly because the router was in the hall and central.

Flakey Sugar Butt

Ok, after mucho Googling and reading of other forums I've come to the conclusion that my dongle is pretty much a bag of shit. T'would seem I'm far from being the only one who has crashing problems using this particular dongle, particularly with XP SP2. So I reckon a trip to the shops to get a different one is in order.... There may be light at the end of the tunnel yet, but who thinks that it's looking waaaaay to easy!! ha ha

Haywood

We went Wireless and I know a fair bit about it since I spent 2 weeks trying to sort it out, since im the only one in my house that knows 'tech'. We initially had AOL without wireless, which was fine that all of a sudden we lost signal, and since we live in a big new housing estate we were told that the signal isnt strong enough in our area we were gonna switch to BT, but AOL offered us a dead cheap wireless package so we took it. They sent us a router turned out it isnt compatible with our computer, then we went and bought our own, and it doesnt work with AOL, so then we got a thomson speedtocuh, I installed it and Bam we were back on the net. We still occasionally dont get a single as wireless isnt completely reliable for us. but 95% of the time its fine.

and Snowie your right whenver it seems easy with PC's it just goes wrong again, the cleverest thing I think would be to get a wireless adapter for 20 quid that compatible with the router, so you can share the internet with that, it doesnt weaken your signal, or if it does only slightly as I go online on pmy PS3 while people are on the computers internet.

I dont actually know what a dongle is maybe its another name for a network adaptor. You can also get cards as a wireless reciever though. Linksys are the best from what Ive heard for wireless make sure to get one that works with your router and internet provider though.

Maverick

funkymonkey

Chris a dongle is just a generic term for anything that you plug into your computer that doesn't attach to anything else at the other end. Serial, USB, Firewire or Ethernet if it's one ended it's a dongle!

Flakey, have you installed McAfee Firewall on your PC?
If you have, that has a serious clash with the Netgear USB driver. Apparently it will cause Internet Explorer to max out your processor at 100% until it eventually crashes Explorer, but the max out will cause your whole computer to freeze. Are you're crashes more often than not when Internet Explorer is running?

If you have the McAfee firewall installed try uninstalling it completely and use XP's built in firewall which can be found in your network settings.

If you don't have McAfee firewall installed try turning off what ever firewall you have and see if that helps. Obviously you can't spend any length of time online without a firewall but it will show you that it is the firewall and then you could possibly try another firewall product.

Hope that helps.

Flakey Sugar Butt

^^ I only ever use my computer for the internet ha ha ha! I use Firefox instead of IE, but I'm guessing it would cause the same thing to happen either way?

I'm already using Windows Firewall, so is it worth disabling it for a bit to check? I'm a bit scared to do that because the crashing is a bit unpredictable. Yesterday it never crashed at all, but today it crashed within 10 minutes of me being on. Usually I have at least one crash a day though.

funkymonkey

hmmmmm the fact you use Firefox and XP's firewall would suggest it might not be the problem I found. As your crashes are irregular it might be hard to pin it down just by turning off your firewall and obviously you are open to attack while it's turned off.

The main problem lies with the drivers supplied by Netgear which are flakey. You could try visiting Netgear's site and downloading the most current up to date driver from their support site and installing that?

cosmicrichie

My internet sucks at the moment. Our computer was broken so the net wasn't being used, so when I came back from Uni and turned it on and it didn't work, god knows how long it's been like that as no-one's been using it.

Then we had tons of powercuts so I thought it might be connected to that, and the line may have been affected. It continued though and I found a booklet about what you should do. I phoned Sky as it didn't say anything for this particular issue, and they were about as useful as talking to a baby, but I did see a solution to another problem, so I tried that (which was to pull out the multifilters and reconnect them), and it seemed to work. However the net kept cutting out after a while and I'd have to do it, again and again and again. Then I noticed a wire from a multifilter had come out, so I replaced it with a simple phone connection thing from B and Q, as the wire was a bit superfluous really, and it got it working again (it had gone over 24hrs not working at all!). However it cut out again, so not sure what the exact problem is as it usually cut out about once every few weeks and all that would mean was resetting the router and it worked again.

Ah well I'm going back to Uni on Friday, and my housemate there hasn't phoned me complaining about the net so I presume it's alright. Then this internet will be my mum's problem!

Flakey Sugar Butt