Major problems roaming between access points

I have a problem similar to the KB article
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;828940 ; when I go to
my campus and connect to one access point, the connection usually sticks.
But, if I put my laptop to sleep and go to another access point, I am unable
to connect to the network at all (although I am assigned an IP through DHCP
successfully, no hostnames resolve).

Often, rebooting does not help the problem, and in the rare event the
connection is successful, I am usually kicked off a few seconds or minutes
later. While I'm not sure, I believe this may have started after I installed
SP2 (this is a clean installation of Windows XP Professional).

When I try disabling the internal wireless connection, I am denied access so
I cannot even attempt the listed workaround in the KB article.

Filburt,
This strongly seems like a driver issue. A great percentage of the problems
that we find in troubleshooting wireless networking problems is the fact
that there are less-than-fantastic network card drivers out there.

In your scenario, you are most likely not getting a _new_ DHCP address after
roaming to a different WiFi network, but rather holding on to the old one
that you were given, because the card is not telling the OS that is has lost
connectivity with the previous network. I would highly recommend that you:

1) Update to the lastest version of the manufacturer's driver via their web
site.
2) Update your Windows installation to SP2. SP2 improves the visual and
connection information presented to the user and works around various
wireless networking problems found in SP1. There is much better security
features in SP2 as well, which makes it worth your time.

As to the problem of not being able to disable your network card, are you
certain that you are using an administrator account? I am not sure if
normal users can enable/disable interfaces.

Please let me know if this works for you. I hope I can resolve your problem.

Brian Wehrle
(E-Mail Removed)
Software Test Engineer/Wireless Networking
Microsoft Corp.

"filburt1" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:73E23755-EAF6-4B80-88C3-(E-Mail Removed)...
>I have a problem similar to the KB article
> http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;828940 ; when I go
> to
> my campus and connect to one access point, the connection usually sticks.
> But, if I put my laptop to sleep and go to another access point, I am
> unable
> to connect to the network at all (although I am assigned an IP through
> DHCP
> successfully, no hostnames resolve).
>
> Often, rebooting does not help the problem, and in the rare event the
> connection is successful, I am usually kicked off a few seconds or minutes
> later. While I'm not sure, I believe this may have started after I
> installed
> SP2 (this is a clean installation of Windows XP Professional).
>
> When I try disabling the internal wireless connection, I am denied access
> so
> I cannot even attempt the listed workaround in the KB article.

Filburt,

I think that your idea of trying a different network card is an excellent
one; when you do roam, open up the View Available Networks window for your
adapter and check to make sure that the adapter doesn't still think that it
is connected to the previous network. When you roam, or wake-up the system,
this Window should show that you are no longer connected, and the Wifi
network that was in range before should not appear on the Available Networks
list.

I understand what you are saying about the type of WLAN you are connecting
to. It does DNS spoofing in order to take advantage of web page login.
This should not affect the situation after you have disconnected from that
network. I believe, and check this out with a different card, that the card
is lying to Windows and hanging on to that last network for too long.

As for the enable/disable problem, this appears to be a driver issue. You
will also be able to test this when you use a different Wifi card.

Please let me know what you learn from these small tests,
Brian

Filburt,

I have inquired about the "goodness" of this card. There are some cards
that are not very good. I have not had trouble personally, but the way
things work now the cards have a lot of control over what is going on. If
the card stays connected and refuses to disconnect from a SSID, then there
is a real problem. (I assume that this was the screen shot that you send me
in which the card reports staying connected for over 1 day. Or was that
screen shot showing the fact that the USB nic works exceptionally better?)
What you are describing is a special case where the SSID is the same, but
the network is different (or not), but essentially the card needs to handle
these funny situations and notify Windows that things have changed. If
windows is not being notified, the rest of your network functionality will
start to not behave correctly.

If the USB NIC appears to work much better, I would reccomend that you go
with that one. For a lower power solution, spend $20 and get a good PCMCIA
card that is reliable and does not have the power problems of the USB card.

--
Brian Wehrle
(E-Mail Removed)
Software Test Engineer/Wireless Networking
Microsoft Corp.



"filburt1" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:6764E47A-DC00-4745-A19B-(E-Mail Removed)...
> The USB adapter is definitely more stable than the internal. I haven't
> been
> dropped off the network once except for signal dropoffs, at which point I
> was
> able to automatically reconnect without problems.
>
> Here are two screenshots for the internal wireless:
> http://www.turtletips.com/status.bmp and
> http://www.turtletips.com/error.bmp .

The screenshots were for the internal wireless (after the screenshot, I
renamed the connections so they are more intuitive now). So, the SSID is the
same but the AP is not. Obviously I was not sitting there on my laptop for
over a day, so I suppose the drivers are at fault.

My USB WLAN was free after rebate (the only reason I got it) so I'll just
stick with it for now, but I may also soon be replacing this laptop with a
Toshiba Portege M200 tablet (Centrino) which would certainly fix the problem.


Thanks very much for all the help.

Filburt,

If you would be willing, it would be a great favor to me if you would run a
simple test and mail me some information. We here are working on a list of
bad hardware. We also have someone from Interstil to whom we can forward
these problems. So, if you don't mind here are the steps:

1. Open command window
2. type: netsh ras set tr* enable
3. Go to the first cyber cafe and connect to the SSID.
4. Make sure you can use the same command window and type: ping
www.microsoft.com
5. Now close the laptop
6. Go to the second cybercafe (same SSID, like you said) and open up the
laptop
7. Now, try to sign-in, etc.
8. Try doing the same ping command again
9. Mail me the c:\windows\tracing\wzctrace.log file.

That would be very helpful. I'm glad that your problem was finally
resolved, but unfortunately it was not the best experience for you, because
the OS could have helped you out a little more. If you have future
problems, please post again. You can also try the "Repair" option on your
wireless network connection, as there are more repair capabilities in SP2
than before.

Brian

P.S.
Regarding enabling/disabling a driver, you can sometimes do this better by
using Device Manager. Run "devmgmt.msc", find the device and disable it
from there.

-
Brian Wehrle
(E-Mail Removed)
Software Test Engineer/Wireless Networking
Microsoft Corp.



"filburt1" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:788664C3-9C53-4A31-82B4-(E-Mail Removed)...
>I also forgot to note in my previous post that while DHCP may not be giving
> me a new IP (which is actually understandable on many DHCP networks), the
> lease time and lease expiration time are both updated--the lease is the
> exact
> date and time I attempted a connection to the WLAN and the expiration is
> exactly one hour ahead of that as the web login page states ("You will
> need
> to login again in one hour...").
>
> Also, the new Wireless window in SP2 that displays wireless networks and
> their statuses occasionally locks up when I disconnect from or reconnect
> to
> the WLAN, and when it does, it brings explorer (the Taskbar and desktop)
> down
> with it, although explorer restarts on its own.

It's possible that I won't have the laptop that long, but if I do, I will
follow your procedure.