Intermittent Wireless Connectivity

[Mr.Funsocks]

I have officially tried everything I can think of to fix this, and looked at every possible option. I'm looking for just about anything that you think might work now (short of a motherboard replacement), so crazy ideas welcome.

The problem: My wireless occasionally drops on my main PC. This manifests in a couple of ways.

The main way is that I can be doing something (downloading, playing a game, browsing the internet, etc.), and suddenly it stops loading at anything like a respectable rate, sometimes going to full disconnect. Messenger services disconnect, I get "server not responding" messages in MMOs (sometimes retaining connection, after as much as two full minutes of nothing, sometimes outright disconnecting), webpages fail to load (long load time ending with a "page failed to load" error), etc.

The other way this manifests is sometimes my wireless card simply can't find any wireless networks in the area, or tells me the network has no or limited internet connectivity. Which is odd, considering there are upwards of 8 networks I can detect from here, including my secured and my neighbor's unsecured wireless.

The things I've tried/other useful diagnostic information:

• There are a number of wireless networks in the area, I can detect several and get good connectivity with both my (secured) and my neighbor's unsecured networks. For a while I would switch between the two when the problem happened to see if it would fix it, and when the problem wasn't happening, I could use my neighbor's just fine for extended periods.
• My laptop, and my girlfriend's computer, both in the same room, don't have this problem. At all. My girlfriend's computer even has the exact same network card (I bought both at once). My housemate's computer, usually connected by cable, does not have this problem.
• I have used different network cards. I have a Rosewill USB wireless dongle, which works fine (as far as I know) in other computers, but does not change the problem at all on my computer. It gets acceptable reception (2/5 bars minimum), but doesn't seem to do much. My main card is a PCI Rosewill card, the same as my girlfriend's, which works fine in her computer on my network.
• I have also tried a Linksys dual-band PCI card (WMP600N), as well as swapping the PCI slot my Rosewill is in, just on the off chance. My first attempt at installing the Linksys card involved it not being detected by the install software, then a BSOD while restarting, then it installing correctly but not detecting any networks, then it causing my system to hang and refuse to finish booting (usually on the loading windows screen, before user login). I dunno wtf is up with that one.

Edit: Minor update to this. I now have the card installed successfully and it is fully functional. Minus the fact that it still doesn't detect any wireless networks whatsoever in the area.

• I have no firewall aside from the Windows Firewall, which I've tried disabling, and AVG antivirus, which has no things that would be impinging on network traffic.
• I tried enabling/disabling port forwarding and setting this computer to either a static or dynamic ip on the network, to no avail.
• Done the usual driver updates, but the drivers for Rosewill cards are pretty flaky seemingly so I wouldn't necessarily rule that out.
• When it works, it works FLAWLESSLY. 600-800 k/sec downloads, no issues with games, no issues with messenger connectivity, no complaints. But those times seem to be coming less and less as time goes on, it seems to have issue more and more.

I just quite simply give up. I do not know how or why or what is wrong with this computer. The PCI and USB cards are even on different busses, I've tried different cards, I've checked any firewall-type issue I can think of, different computers do fine, different networks don't solve it, it really appears to be something with my computer specifically. But I can't figure out what, because near as I can guess, it would have to be two major hardware flaws simultaneously or just some esoteric software problem. So literally, any idea, no matter how obvious or exotic, anyone might have, might be worth trying.

Relevant specs:
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
eVGA P55 LE (socket 1158) motherboard
Rosewill RNX-G300EX/LX (main PCI card)
Rosewill RNX-EasyN1 Wireless N (USB dongle)
Linksys WMP600N Dual-band (second wireless card attempted to install)

 

[wanderer27]

The first thing I would look into is the Channel numbers of all the surrounding WiFi networks - try to make sure your network has as much Channel separation as possible.

One of the other symptoms that caught my attention suggests that you may need to go into your Hardware Device manager and look at your IRQ assignments.
Usually certain slots share IRQ's with some System resources/devices and this can result in some weird and intermittent problems.
If you have a PCIex card or PCI sound card (etc.) sharing the same IRQ as your Wireless device, then most likely you've got an IRQ issue.

 

[mlc]

something causing interference in the immediate area ? (e..g cell phone, motor, etc.?)

try a different usb port.. the one's in the back are directly mounted to the board , and may be more stable than the front case headers.. the power to those may be erratic.. Though this doesnt explain your PCI issues..

Run VIRUS and MALWARE scans. as you never know... try rebooting into safemode with network enabled.. and that may help to rule out that.....

 

[Mr.Funsocks]

Ok, weirder new things:

I finally got the Linksys adapter properly installed without much incident. It still says there's no wireless networks, but hey, it's installed, right? Linksys support was, of course, no help whatsoever, but here's the weird thing:

The problem is basically gone (it still happens occasionally it seems) since I installed a (nonfunctional) second wireless card. wut?

I'm just gonna not touch it for now unless it starts breaking again unless someone has a really good idea...

 

[Mr.Funsocks]

So, it's started misbehaving again.

It seems to only be particularly bad when attempting to do higher bandwidth things, notably playing Champions Online. Not as in, the server has connection issues, as in, I try to connect to the game, and suddenly everything else starts slowing down and working poorly (can't browse the web on my 2nd monitor, messenger programs have connection issues, etc.). I was able to download at good speed though, so I'm kind of unsure about that. But since it's intermittent I haven't found a good test. I also can still occasionally play an online game without incident, at least for a time.

I checked IRQ assignments, none appeared to conflict, but I don't know of a way to look at all of them at once, I was just checking individual devices which is slow. I'll investigate changing channels, but that would seem odd since other computers have no problem with it.

And the 2nd network card still doesn't work. It's installed properly and reports no errors, it simply does not see any wireless networks. None. And I can't get it to. Linksys support has thus far been utterly worthless.