W3J Wireless Problem

Three days ago my wireless started acting up, my connection slowed dramatically (about 1/6) the dload speed it normally is and often dropped completely. It now takes a minute or two to load a page that normally took 2 seconds. My fiancee seemed to have similar problems with her Mac so I started diagnosing with our router. After re-setting the router, messing with security settings, and installing different firmware her computer seems to be working fine.

My w3j still isn't however. I've tried re-installing the drivers for my wireless card, I reformatted my computer, and I even took the wireless card out to make sure it was plugged in correctly. After all this my connection is still considerably slow and still drops completely every 20 minutes or so.

One other thing, I took my laptop to school hoping to find out whether the culprit was my card or my router. The wireless seemed to work perfectly at school but I didn't mess around with it for that long.

If I hook up directly to my router through network cable everything runs fine. My signal quality is generally good-very good-excellent though it will at times fluctuate quite a bit now (something I don't recall it doing before these issues). I have a Netgear WGR614v5 router. I've disabled my firewall (Windows) and don't have any anti-virus currently installed (because I just reformatted). Thank you for any suggestions. Really hoping I don't have RMA my laptop.

Also was wondering what the grounds are for battery replacement. I have over 50% battery wear but I got my w3j right when they came out in May of 06.

 

last netgear i had was like that... the radio just clunked out on it, it was like it stopped transferring data. if the card works perfectly at school, the problem is your router. i wouldn't worry about the laptop if it works fine everywhere else but home!

i would try resetting the router to factory defaults again. then connect to it and test your connection. make sure you try the 'turn everything off and turn it back on trick'...

does this happen when your laptop is on batteries? there is an option in vista (if you are using vista) for the wireless card power under battery use in the power configuration options, make sure it's set to max performance.

 

I will have to go test my laptop at school again. My suspicion is that if I let it run for an extended period of time my wireless will crap out on me.

I'm skeptical that it is the router because my fiancee's Mac is running wirelessly in our home just fine.

 

i hate it when macs work fine. i'm sure we're gonna get a fanboy comment here soon. are you using vista? xp?

 

I am using XP Pro. I took my comp to the computer lab and hooked up to the wireless at school. Again, I only used it for maybe 5-10 minutes but everything seemed to work fine. I'm gonna get a friend over here and see if he has any problems connecting (he has Vista). If he does I'll start looking into some new routers. Never been a huge fan of this one, always had trouble trying to get Open Nat with my 360 and such.

Anyone have any recommendations for a new router - preferably something that works very well with a 360 and isn't terribly difficult to achieve Open NAT. I'd prefer a router that is pretty lax with UPNP that actually works and don't have to bother with firmware updates, portforwarding etc...