Wifi - connection drops when any security is enabled

My wifi network has been running great with no problems at all, all fully
secured using 128bit wep
and then the two wired laptops in the house started losing the connections
or getting "limited or no connectivity".
if i turn off the encryption both work fine, turn it back on and set the
passkeys and it will connect perfectly for a couple of minutes then both
will lose the connection. (this i have tried using both 128bit and WPA-PSK)
Both laptops are XPsp2 and all the kit is 3Com which has worked for almost a
year flawlessly. The wired connections are not affected.
any help with this greatfully received.
Richard

Blackrat999 wrote:
> My wifi network has been running great with no problems at all, all fully
> secured using 128bit wep
> and then the two wired laptops in the house started losing the connections
> or getting "limited or no connectivity".
> if i turn off the encryption both work fine, turn it back on and set the
> passkeys and it will connect perfectly for a couple of minutes then both
> will lose the connection. (this i have tried using both 128bit and WPA-PSK)
> Both laptops are XPsp2 and all the kit is 3Com which has worked for almost a
> year flawlessly. The wired connections are not affected.
> any help with this greatfully received.
> Richard
>
>
After you confirm that the encryption keys match, completely shutdown
the wireless devices. After about 30 seconds or so, turn the devices
back on. This oftens solves those type of problems.

As for the "two wired laptops" losing connections or getting limited or
no connectivity, that might be DHCP having difficulty assigning IP
addresses. Still, I can't see how disabling WEP affects the wired
computers.

Make sure that DHCP is assigning the correct IP addresses. If you see
something similar to 169.254.x.x then you definitely have a
misconfiguration of some kind.

> After you confirm that the encryption keys match, completely shutdown
> the wireless devices. After about 30 seconds or so, turn the devices back
> on. This oftens solves those type of problems.
>
> As for the "two wired laptops" losing connections or getting limited or no
> connectivity, that might be DHCP having difficulty assigning IP addresses.
> Still, I can't see how disabling WEP affects the wired computers.
>
> Make sure that DHCP is assigning the correct IP addresses. If you see
> something similar to 169.254.x.x then you definitely have a
> misconfiguration of some kind.

Ooops - sorry first rule of asking a question - get it right -
its the wireless only that i have aproblem with the wired are not affected.
no matter how many time i restart etc after putting in the passwords it wont
work for long.
thanks

>> After you confirm that the encryption keys match, completely shutdown
>> the wireless devices. After about 30 seconds or so, turn the devices
>> back on. This oftens solves those type of problems.
>>

And it has indeed - thanks very much !!
and i even have a little hair left too.
cheers