Wireless USB Adapter loses connection every 63 seconds...

[Dubbemiah]

We have just finished successfully, or so we thought, setting up a Linksys Wireless Router to allow our 2 computers to access the internet through our cable modem. The computer farthest away from the router has a wireless USB adapter. Everything is working fine, the signal is very strong, except that every 63 seconds (exactly!), the connection drops off for 2 to 3 seconds and then reconnects. In the Status window where it usually says [Connected to: "our network"] it says "scanning" when the connection dies. As I said, it only lasts for a few seconds, but it is quite frustrating when playing a game or even browsing the internet. Linksys tech support had us try a bunch of different things, but couldn't figure out the problem. It almost seems as if there is some setting somewhere that is telling the wireless usb adapter to rescan for the network every minute. Any ideas?

Merry Christmas, btw, and thanks in advance for any help you can give us!

[color_copier]

first off, not to be mean, but it would help us if you told us some of, if not all, the things tech support had you try.
like power cycling everything, updating the firmware, enable SSID broadcast, changing channels, etc..

my first suggestion would be to try a different channel. I am guessing that it came on channel 6 as default, so try 1 and 11. or all of them.

does this help, or did you already try this?

[Dubbemiah]

Well to answer the question, tech support had me change a lot of stuff that I don't even know what means. But I finally got too frustrated after about 5 hours of getting nowhere and decided to re-install the software and the driver. WALLAH! It works 100% with no pauses. So my suggestion to anyone is.. don't get frustrated, just re-install.

[wooki]

hey, I'm having the exact same problem, if you go to command and "ping -t" your router you'll be able to sit and watch the delay change from a few ms to 3000+ ms and then go right back to normal. It's pretty weird. Although yours fixed, I'm still having the problem even after re-install. good luck regardless,

using a netgear ma101 by the way.

[RichardParsons]

Hi, I'm also having an identical problem - 3 second pause in every 63 second timeframe. I have a variety of WLAN kit (USB and PC cards from Sitecom, CF card from Socket) and will post any discoveries I make...

[RichardParsons]

Quick Update:

Machine #1: Win98SE with Sitecom Wireless PC-Card
Machine #2: XP Pro with Sitecom Wireless USB
Machine #3: XP Pro with Sitecom Wireless USB
Machine #4: PocketPC 2002 with Socket Wireless CF-Card

Only the Windows XP machines have the 3 second delay problem. #1 and #4 are able to ping each other without any delay while the other two machines have delays regardless.

I can therefore rule out interference so its time to play with a few XP settings I think.....

[RichardParsons]

SOLUTION!
++++++++

Riiiight. After much hair pulling and net searching, I've come across a possible solution for XP users.

Windows XP has the 'Wireless Zero Configuration' service which is responsible for automatically setting up wireless network connections. It seems this service has an unwanted side effect with some network card drivers which causes connections to suspend every minute while it scans for wireless LANs. Disabling the service prevents the 3 second timeouts but you do lose the automatic configuration.

If you want to disable the service go to:

Control Panel, Administrative Tools and then Services.

Click on 'Wireless Zero Configuration' in the list of services .

Click 'Stop' to disable the service.

To prevent it from running when you reboot:

Right click and choose properties.

Pick disabled for the startup type.


Hope this helps folks, it did for me.

Rich.

[wooki]

Thanks for the input, the three machines we are using all have windows XP on them. Two of the pc's are laptops using the pc card and the desktop was using the usb adapter (all netgear stuff). I tried that step of disabling the disabling the wireless zero configuration unfortuantly that was how my connection was setup. After unchecking the option, it would renew at start-up, soemthing I've only realised after you have just mentioned it above, however I could not get the wireless connection after I unchecked it, I didn't know what to do next.

In the end I just bought a PCI card, first I tried a D-Link, which never worked, no idea why, then a Linksys, which is what I'm using now and it works great, all my problems are gone.