Wireless lan issue with new M50vm-b1

I just got my brand new M50vm-b1 and so far this is a much better notebook than the Dell XPS m1530 that's been causing me so many problems. Best of all, the thing is nearly silent, unlike that 1530 that sounded like my vacuum cleaner.

I am having one problem right now though - i notice that the wireless connection is intermittent. Windows doesn't give me any error message saying the connection was lost, but when I try to ping the router, I keep getting a message saying "General Failure" about 20% - 30% of the time. I check with my other machines and they're pinging the router just fine in the mean time.

I've already uninstalled the Norton crap, but that didn't help the problem. Any ideas? Do I possibly have a defective notebook?

edit: For some further investigation, I had two windows open, one pinging my router IP and the other pinging the loopback IP. Nothing ever failed on the loopback IP. I did notice, though, that right before I was going to get a "General Failure" message, the response times would rise from < 5ms to maybe ~50ms to > 100ms and the first response after the error message would also be >100ms but then things would return to normal.

edit 2: I thought maybe it was a power saving thing, so repeated the same experiment with the laptop plugged in. Same results.

 

i think it might be your router because that happened to me with my router. forgot how i fixed it though

 

I suppose it's possible however, since everything else is working fine and I've never had a problem with this router before, I'm going to reserve judgement.

The router is a Linksys WRT54G with DDWRT installed. Is that similar to what you have?

 

I also had a similar issue with my network about a year ago that did not look like a router problem and then about a month later after trying everything my network died. It was the router.

I have had D-Link and Linksys and I can say now that both are total rubbish compared to the quality and reliability of my Buffalo AP/Router I have now.

You could still be having a system related issue tho, I would make sure there are no newer drivers for your wireless card. I would go into the device manager and turn off manually power saving mode for the wireless card. Also I know the C90 comes with things like wireless control panel, I never have installed or used them, only the drivers.

 

I take it that Windows is managing the connection, do you have the same problem if you let Intel's software handle it instead? Does moving closer or farther from the router effect it at all?

 

Yes, Windows is managing the connection - haven't tried the Intel software yet. My location relative to the router doesn't seem to have an affect on anything.

I'm going to hit up a Borders or some other place with free WiFi today to see if I can replicate the problem at another location.

 

That's a very good idea. If it happens at two or three other locations, you should be able to discount a problem with your router. Let us know how that goes.