G73JH wireless woes- need advice.

Okay, this problem has been bugging me for a very long time. Hopefully there's a solution for this.

The wireless performance on my G73 simply stinks. Several times throughout any given day, I start dropping randomly, Windows giving an error message saying that it's connected to my network but something's wrong with the DNS settings. Disconnecting and reconnecting will fix it maybe 80% of the time, or perhaps within a hard reboot or two. Despite this my other devices(HP netbook, iPad 1, and my iPhone 3GS) work fine on my router at the same location in my house; I'm maybe 25-30 feet from my router with a pretty clean path.

Everything's hooked up correctly cable and antenna-wise. Is it correct to assume that the wireless card in this system is going down the drain? I've reinstalled the latest drivers and still get the same result. I think this is the 6250 with Wi-Max, although that service isn't available in my area. Is there another card I can pick up for this machine so I can keep it running along for a little while longer? If so, what should I be looking for?

Just in case it is my router not playing nice, I'm highly considering loading pfsense on a spare machine and using that for a router once I move in a few weeks.

 

Originally there is an Atheros and not Intel card built in. Maybe this is an engineering sample of the Intel card and not a retail one?
Can you recheck what you have built in?
Your described problem can sometimes also happen because of old router firmware, which router do you have?

 

Ack, really sorry about the delay. Been so wrapped up in getting prepared for a cross-country move so I haven't been online that much. I can confirm the wireless card is an Intel Centrino Advanced N+WiMAX 6250. It says the drivers for the device aren't installed, but I've tried a uninstall/reinstall and the same thing pops up.

The router is a D-link DIR-655; I've had it for a few years and it works perfectly fine with my other devices.

 

This may not be relevant... but I have a DIR 655. It is 2 -3 years old and my G73JH wireless connection would drop a couple of times per week. I bought a Cisco to set up another access point in my house, now my laptop connects just to it and the wireless connection has never dropped. Retail routers seem to have a shelf life. I have the intel wireless card.

 

Good to know. That might steer me more towards putting PFsense on my old, kinda broken rig and using that as a more advanced router. I'm getting dropped a few times a day at least on the G73, and all of my devices seem to have issues with streaming video.

I may also decide to refresh the OS on the G73 as well, although that's something I'll have to give a fair amount of thought to. I've got tons of games, programs, files, and etc on here that'll be a major pain to put back in place.

 

I have this issue as well with my G73-JH1. I mean Jesus, in this day and age it blows my mind that a manufacturer can produce and sell a laptop without decent wifi card? I guess connecting to and surfing the internet is something the ASUS engineers couldn't get right? The Atheros wifi card in there is junk. Period. Many people advise to upgrade to the Intel 6200N but even then it seems the upgrade doesn't really affect normal wireless connectivity and speeds though? Read this quote: "If you only use it for internet, there will be little or no benefit unless your internet connection is faster than 150Mbps.If you do a lot of wireless home network data transfers and you have a wireless-N router then you may enjoy the extra speed."

So I guess us millions of people who want to simply surf the net on our G73's can't do so without drops and super slow connectivity. What a joke. (goes back to playing Batman AC)

 

Yes you can, that comment was more about maximum wireless transfer speed than the quality of the connection.

If you got a solid connection to your network on the Atheros adapter, a new adapter won't change much for most people.

If the crappy wireless performance is coming from the Atheros adapter, then yeah changing it will help, but if you're just too far from your router, have a bad router or something similar, a new WLAN adapter won't change anything since it's not the source of the problem.

Personally, the Atheros adapter in my G73 was working fine, solid connection, just low throughput for network file transfers. The one in my N50 though was a real piece of junk.