success(?) with MN-500 and MN-510

It works now-- for me, anyway.

Long story short-- okay not so short:

Plugged MN-510 into notebook (Windows XP Home SP2) that
has built-in wireless Truemobile 1180 and it connected,
got to internet, network group (default MSHOME).

Disabled that and plugged in MN-510 USB adapter. Windows
asked for software CD or whatever else. Put its setup CD
in and finished installing. Found wireless network,
connected. Rather simple. All done while sitting in a
chair in the same room with MN-500 base station, cable
modem, and a new desktop PC (Windows XP SP2).

Went to room next to that and 'clean' installed its
Windows XP Home Upgrade, so no more SP2 on that one,
after an hour or so of setting up.

Plugged MN-510 in, put software on (I know, reverse
order, but worked this way on notebook!) and nothing. Not
even finding a wireless network this time. Hopeless, I
thought. Uninstalled it and retried the original way,
which is to install software off of CD and then plug in
USB when asked. Got a wireless network showing but again
no connection like all other times before!

At least it didn't complain about incompatibility this
round with only XP SP1 on there (I guess).

So... my mother says, "Why not move it closer?" and pulls
the thing a couple feet across the desk toward the open
door to the other room. I said, "Because I already moved
it around to keep away from other things like monitor,
etc. and two feet won't matter." I was wrong. it started
to see the MSHOME (I only wanted defaults like this, no
WEP, nothing!) and after a few attempts to make it
connect it finally worked. I could hardly believe it was
doing it after so many ways of trying to get it to
connect.

I spent an hour talking with tech support (was that ever
difficult to follow!) before all this and ended up
thinking the MN-510 was broken. I didn't want to give up
which is why I tested it out on my notebook computer.

Well, what advice to I have for everyone? Move the
devices around. Didn't matter that I saw strong signals,
excellent connection and all that, something about the
initial connection must be absolutely perfect or else it
fails!

Didn't see this kind of thing happen with my cheap set of
Truemobile 1184 router, 1180 USB, and internal 1180 mini-
PCI card devices.

One thing I'm not sure about still is that their basement
is completely fluorescent tube lighting, about 10
fixtures in all, and the manuals say to avoid 2.4GHz
phones, fluorescent lights, and what-not.

P.S.
Yet another 'good luck to everyone else'!