Ok, this'll be a bit longer while I explain the situation. I have a 3 year old MSI S262 notebook, rebranded by a local IT company and later heavily modified by yours truly (now featuring the specs in my sig). Since about 3 months ago, my wireless has been acting extremely stubbornly. Our wifi AP was a Canyon 802.11b/g router-modem (I really can't remember the model), but the poor thing died in a thunderstorm. It's been replaced by a Linksys WRT-54G2. Shortly after that, my notebook started dropping the wireless connection and had trouble detecting ANY network, especially mine. At first, I thought it was due to the fact that the Linksys uses an internal antenna, and, I'd expect it to be weaker than the normal external one on the Canyon. But, the other three notebooks my family uses don't seem to have any issues with signal strength or quality, so I'd rule that out as the problem. I replaced the stock Intel's WM3945ABG wireless module with a new one (same model). That seemed to fix the problem... for about a week The current situation is this: After booting, my notebook takes about 1-2 minutes to detect ANY wifi network in my range, no matter what OS I'm in (Win XP Pro SP2 or Ubuntu 9.04). If/when it does see my network, it connects normally, works ok for about 2-10 minutes and then disconnects, fails to re-connect or detect my network at all, and generally doesn't work untill I reboot. I am now at a loss as to what might be causing the problem. The module doesn't seem to be the problem. I would also rule out the router since all other notebooks don't seem to have any problem with it. The antenna in the notebook is, quite frankly tiny, but I doubt a simple piece of wire/metal could get broken enough to cause something like this. (and there seems to be no physical damage on it) Other than that, the notebook seems to be working perfectly. Could it be that it's... borked in just the right way to make networking a pain in the behind? Any and all suggestions are welcome and appreciated, no matter how silly (completely desperate now)
Sometimes there can be externalities that will affect how your network connects. I have had similar problems. For me, I've found it's my LG Shine cell phone. Once I started charging it somewhere other than in-between the vector from my laptop to my neighbor's router (yes, I'm one of those) my connection quality increased dramatically. Or maybe I just have weird luck with phones. My previous Sprint flip phone used to set off my friend's Valentine One Radar/Lidar detector.
