Poor wireless range...Need advice

[Steelerz37]

I have an HP ze4400 notebook and an orinoco gold 802.11b card. The problem is that with that card in my Hp notebook I get extremely poor range, but with the same card in both of my friends Dell notebooks the signal range is significantly better than in my HP. I have done everything I can think of, even my friends are IT guys and they are stumped as well. I updated my BIOS, tried different versions of drivers, various other things that HP support has asked me to try. I have come to the conclusion its possibly a hardware issue. Are there any utilities that can get me some info on my cardbus? such as amount of voltage going to the orinoco? It is still under warrenty for a few months but I want to make sure I try everything possible before I send it into HP. but here are the specs on the system:

AMD Athlon XP 2600+
Windows XP Pro
256MB RAM
30gig HD
O2Micro Cardbus (OZ6912) <------- Havent been able to find very recent drivers
Orinoco 802.11b PCMCIA


If anyone can help me out I would really appreciate it.

 

[johnjkr1]

Try a different wireless card. The dell just might be a better laptop or might like the card more than yours. I had bad luck with cheap wireless cards, then I got a Dlink for a great price and the performance has improved greatly. Also, was this all on the same wireless router?

 

[Steelerz37]

actually i started out using a netgear card, then i just got the orinoco today and i didnt see much change

 

[johnjkr1]

Were you and your friends using the same router? Do you get full connectivity when right next to the router? If you do, sending it in to HP really will not help you. They will just mess up your laptop for nothing.

 

[johnjkr1]

sweet laptop by the way, i really like those athlon XP HP's.

 

[JK949]

Sounds like the card. it's a no name brand that might your problem.
Try to match the same brand card as your router.
If you have a dlink router try a dlink card ect.
Also do you have wep or wap enabled. this will ad security to your connection but
reduce your range and slow down things in general.

 

[Steelerz37]

its not the card, i am certain of it. and orinoco isnt a no name brand. also the router is a netgear, and i had a netgear card before the orinoco and the range was the same.

yea i do get good connectivity near the router. i was also thinking the same thing that if i send it in to hp they wouldnt find anything wrong with it. It just degrades too much compared to their dells

 

[johnjkr1]

Unfortunately, you can't compare it with two different laptops and say one is broken. The dell might just be a better laptop, have a better chipset (the dell is intel, remember) or just plain like the card better. I had alot of luck going from a netgear to a Dlink.

 

[Bleep]

Sounds like the card. it's a no name brand that might your problem

Amazing what some people will say!! the Orinoco is one of the premium cards on the market and one of the most expensive.

Bleep