Disconnections with an USB Wireless-G Adapter

Hello.

I have a Hawking Technology HWU54D Hi-Gain USB Wireless-G Adapter (USB; original version).
Randomly (no specific time lengths -- could be within minutes or hours), I would get
disconnected from my old Linksys Instant Wireless Network Access Point (802.11b; 2.4 Ghz; 11Mbs;
v2.6; WAP11). My WAP unit is only about 2' away and sitting on top of a 20" Sharp brand
television with a set of rabbit ears (is it a bad place?; I don't really have room to put it
anywhere else). During the disconnections, I lose the IP addresses. ipconfig /renew doesn't
usually work. See below:

C:\>ipconfig /renew

Windows IP Configuration

No operation can be performed on Local Area Connection 5 while it has its media disconnected. An
error occurred while renewing interface Wireless Network Connection 6: unable to contact your
DHCP server. Request has timed out.

Envara Configuration Utility v2.5.1 (driver v1.4.46.23) does not autoreconnect either. I have to
do reconnect manually via it. Both Windows XP Pro. SP2's wireless statistics and Envara's
program during disconnections show signal/link quality at about 99%, 30 dB SNR, 5.5 Mbps Network
Rate (fell from 11), WEP (best encyption I can use with this old WAP device), channel 11 (other
channels don't seem to work), etc. What does this speed loss mean during the disconnections?

The fastest way to reproduce this problem if I were to download a file via SSH2 (e.g., zmodem
from Linux/Unix boxes) with SecureCRT v3.4.8. It only takes a few minutes.

Other laptops and desktops with other types of network cards seem to be OK like downstair and in
other rooms. It is very rare that they have disconnections.

Any ideas? Thank you in advance.
--
At length, when they came to a (lowly) valley of ants, one of the ants said: "O ye ants, get into your habitations, lest Solomon and his hosts crush you (under foot) without knowing it." --Surah 27. The Ant, The Ants, line 18
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