News Windows XP Bedevils Wi-Fi Users

This from Wired:

Kevin Gilmore is a network administrator at MicroDisplay, a small company in San Pablo, California, that uses several Wi-Fi access points to give employees the freedom to roam around the office with their laptops while remaining connected to the Internet.

But these days, Gilmore keeps encountering a problem that many Windows XP users know all too well: the sudden and inexplicable loss of their wireless Internet connections. As Gilmore knows from the flow of support calls, there's little point in trying to find a permanent solution to the problem.

"It will and does lose connection for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and then picks it up again, seemingly randomly," Gilmore said. "At first, it was so aggravating. And now, it's considered a normal factor of working with Windows."

Here are the symptoms of the problem: A Wi-Fi-enabled computer running Windows XP is working fine one minute, pulling up Web pages and processing e-mail. Then, for no reason, the connection drops, websites fail to come up and the e-mail flow stops. The small wireless connection icon in the taskbar says the signal from the access point is strong, so the problem isn't that the user wandered out of radio range. The icon even shows that the computer's Wi-Fi hardware is sending information to the access point -- it's just not getting anything back. And manual attempts to re-establish the connection through XP's built-in wireless configuration tool won't do the trick. Even more bizarre, the connection sometimes comes back on its own.

From anecdotal evidence, most users assume the problem is with the Wi-Fi hardware. But the trouble seems to arise from a tool in Windows XP called Wireless Zero Configuration, a feature that was meant to do away with the mishmash of software drivers and configuration utilities.

Full story here

This happens quite frequently on Mrs GOO's laptop. It doesn't on mine though. Can't think why...

Anybody else have XP WiFi randomness?

 

yep, my dad has no end of hassle with wi-fi and XP
that thing ^^ happens, but sometimes it randomly sets itself to open instead of shared (or the other way, i forget)
had the same problem on his old laptop (which i have now got gentoo on ) and that works perfectly under linux
if your card works under linux then its likely to work quite a bit better than it does under windows, in my experiance anyway

 

i have had the same problem both personal and professional. From time to time I set up wireless networks for costumers mainly just to share the internet we provide. but i would say on a minimum I have repeat touble cals to 25% of the costumers because xp starts acting up. which becomes a real pain in the a** because the costumers are mad and some reason its my fault xp sucks.

 

my girlfriend has the same freaking problem. basically- she is doing somthing, and then the wireless just drops. she goes into the software that came with the wireless card (a little utility that scans all the wireless adapters) and hits CONNECT and its back again. there IS no reason why its gone, it just stops. and to make this more weird, i KNOW its not her router (for one its a lynksys) because we were at the airport and it still happened. it is totally retarded.

i hate microshaft with an everlasting passion.

quality? micro$oft? in the same SENTENCE? are you on CRACK!?

 

Could it be there is some kind of power setting in XP that disables the wireless connection to save battery life on laptops? I think this might be the case with my work laptop but I just got it and haven't had a ton of time to test it out.

 

not as far as i can tell
and if it did it would turn off after being idle for a set time, not during use

 

So are there any reports of this problem on desktops using XP and wireless connections?

 

I have this problem on my XP desktop, but with a solid connection, not wireless.

 

A freind of mine uses her Xp laptop on a wifi network with absolutely no problems at all (so far), she has used it on 3 separate networks, hers, mine and another freind's all with no loss of connection that couldn't be put down to something simple like the wireless card not being in the slot properly or some setting being changed in the router while I was playing

I have had no end of trouble connecting my PDA to networks that use encryption but that is something altogether different, it's Sony........

 

yes I had this problem when I was on wireless. It wasn't too bad on my laptop with the internal mini-pci card (and seemed to get even better once I assigned it a static DHCP address in the router settings) but my desktop was driving me nuts. I found that disabling the zero-config thing and using the included software made it a lot better. Hopefully they fix it in SP2.

Now my problem is (since I got a wired connection to my room finally) that the plug going to my laptop seems to pull out from time to time. All of the retention tabs on the laptop seem to have been broken off (PCMCIA and RJ45 LAN). Hopefully I'll get myself a centrino laptop this summer and then I won't need to plug in so often to charge batteries (and then take advantage of that 8-port switch)

 

I have Verizon DSL and it kept dropping my connection every 10 minutes or so on my Desktop(not wireless)

I finally fixed it after installing the drivers in the correct order and disabling the messenger service. It has never come back again.

 

same thing with me, shows the connection is fully active, but the ap/router doesnt respond to pings. i've only ever seen this with a netgear router.

 

My network:

802.11g Netgear AP, netgear cards. Used to be DHCP, now static (hasn't made any difference, its just I could forward ports properly). Using windows' (XP pro SP1 all current hotfixes) built-in configuration because when I switched to netgear's (as it advised me) it just didn't work. Would detect the network but wouldn't connected. Wireless Zero left on. It disconnects and reconnects randomly but only when the connection is idle. So I just disabled the ballons that pop up (reg hack) and I'm happy.

Would be nice to find out why and such but "if it aint broken don't fix it" so I'm not gonna mess with it any more.

 

I get the same deal on our Lappy here at home.

But for whatever reason, windows does not like to reconnect automatically.

And I hate it.

 

it happens to my wife more than me. We have the MS Wireless G router and we both have the wireless G notebook adapters.

 

Ars:

(Maybe) helpful to some people

And GOO, when are we going to see the 2nd part of your article?!?!!

 

I got this runing Win xp and Win 98!!

 

Patience is a virtue you know, one that you seem to lack...

Wait but another 24hrs, and all will be well

 

Ah yes, this sounds familiar. Happened to a PC I built for someone.
It also happens to my dads laptop, which runs win2k. Anyone else heard of this problem also occuring on 2000?

 

My laptop is runnin 2k with a cisco card and i have a dlink access point. It has been absolutly fine, and was easy to set up .

Col