I have had a severe problem with the wireless on my laptop for nearly an year. Last week I, by chance, came across a solution. What I want now to understand is why this happening and the reason for it. Let me explain the sequence of events.
1. I have a BSNL 900UL connection at home.
2. For a long time (about 4 years) I had a Belkin wireless router that was working well. About two years ago that got burnt and I to replace it. I checked with Belkin as they have a life time warranty, but at that time they did not have a support base in India. So I went out and purchased WGR614 from Netgear.
3. Contrary to hope that the setup would be easy, the router took me a month to setup with 2 or 3 experts trying their hand. One day it suddenly started working.
4. For about a year my laptop - Dell Inspiron 8600 - was happily chugging away with the Netgear router. Basically I had chosen 802.11b and 802.11g as the setting. In other words it will use either of the protocols.
5. About an year ago, my laptop connection to the Net started slowing down and the browser would hang for hours without refreshing the page. What would happen is that my laptop's connection would start at 54Mbps, drop to 36, then to 24. But essentially no browser page would work.
Thinking BSNL was at fault, I registered a complaint. They checked, rechecked and showed to me that, at the connection point within my house, the speed was 512kbps consistently. When I connected my laptop through a cable, it would surf quite well.
6. When I switched over to wireless, the laptop would slow down again. In particular, when I logged into Gmail, it will just hang after I had entered my password.
7. I took the laptop to a service centre. they removed the wireless card inside, cleaned the connection points, tested it for a full day, and said everything was working well. In fact, I sat at the centre for an hour, and the laptop did work well.
8. I came home, and the browser hanging started me in my face again. Thinking the fault was with the wireless router, I tried a few other laptops that, to my chagrin, chugged along at good speeds, including logging in and checking gmail.
9. I took the laptop to Dell service centre, who first refused to look at the machine, and then said the issue was with the OS.
10. I then reinstalled the XP Professional on a new hard disk. I reinstalled all the drivers, and I faced the same issue again.
11. About a week ago, the screen of my laptop conked out. As part of replacing it, I asked the service centre to change the wireless card. By a strange incident, he installed the same model of wireless again which is Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG.
12. When the laptop came back. the wireless connection failed me again.
13. Not understanding what was happening, I started fooling around with the Advanced Settings of the Wireless on my laptop when I suddenly hit pay dirt. When I changed the wireless mode to 802.11b ONLY, the laptop stayed connected to the Net consistently at 11 Mbps. Gmail worked well as did all other sites.
Though I am happy with the 11Mbps connection, I am curious to understand what changed in the laptop. From a wireless connection that was working consistently on 802.11b and 802.11g at 54Mbps, to one that worked on 802.11b only - what brought about this change?
Other laptops including my wife's continues work on b&g at 54Mbps.
Cheers
1. I have a BSNL 900UL connection at home.
2. For a long time (about 4 years) I had a Belkin wireless router that was working well. About two years ago that got burnt and I to replace it. I checked with Belkin as they have a life time warranty, but at that time they did not have a support base in India. So I went out and purchased WGR614 from Netgear.
3. Contrary to hope that the setup would be easy, the router took me a month to setup with 2 or 3 experts trying their hand. One day it suddenly started working.
4. For about a year my laptop - Dell Inspiron 8600 - was happily chugging away with the Netgear router. Basically I had chosen 802.11b and 802.11g as the setting. In other words it will use either of the protocols.
5. About an year ago, my laptop connection to the Net started slowing down and the browser would hang for hours without refreshing the page. What would happen is that my laptop's connection would start at 54Mbps, drop to 36, then to 24. But essentially no browser page would work.
Thinking BSNL was at fault, I registered a complaint. They checked, rechecked and showed to me that, at the connection point within my house, the speed was 512kbps consistently. When I connected my laptop through a cable, it would surf quite well.
6. When I switched over to wireless, the laptop would slow down again. In particular, when I logged into Gmail, it will just hang after I had entered my password.
7. I took the laptop to a service centre. they removed the wireless card inside, cleaned the connection points, tested it for a full day, and said everything was working well. In fact, I sat at the centre for an hour, and the laptop did work well.
8. I came home, and the browser hanging started me in my face again. Thinking the fault was with the wireless router, I tried a few other laptops that, to my chagrin, chugged along at good speeds, including logging in and checking gmail.
9. I took the laptop to Dell service centre, who first refused to look at the machine, and then said the issue was with the OS.
10. I then reinstalled the XP Professional on a new hard disk. I reinstalled all the drivers, and I faced the same issue again.
11. About a week ago, the screen of my laptop conked out. As part of replacing it, I asked the service centre to change the wireless card. By a strange incident, he installed the same model of wireless again which is Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG.
12. When the laptop came back. the wireless connection failed me again.
13. Not understanding what was happening, I started fooling around with the Advanced Settings of the Wireless on my laptop when I suddenly hit pay dirt. When I changed the wireless mode to 802.11b ONLY, the laptop stayed connected to the Net consistently at 11 Mbps. Gmail worked well as did all other sites.
Though I am happy with the 11Mbps connection, I am curious to understand what changed in the laptop. From a wireless connection that was working consistently on 802.11b and 802.11g at 54Mbps, to one that worked on 802.11b only - what brought about this change?
Other laptops including my wife's continues work on b&g at 54Mbps.
Cheers
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