So, I have a weird problem.
I have a Linksys WAP (I forget the model but it's the 8.0211b/g model and a
couple of Linksys WPG54G PCMCIA cards that I use in a few different laptops.
When I first installed everything, the first laptop I used was my
girlfriends VAIO laptop (I don't know the model off the top of my head but
it's sort of irrlelevant for the purposes of my tale.)
Needless to say, things didn't go very well. First, there was the very
confusing installation procedure (well, it wasn't really that confusing, it
was just confusing that Windows XP had a different installation procedure
and it was really poorly indicated that there was a difference.) Aside from
that, though, once it was installed I had a connection and the signal
strength was indicated as excellent. The WAP wasn't very far away but it was
in a closet.
But then, for no apparent reason, the network connection dropped. Clicking
on the icon and reconnecting the network worked fine, but it dropped the
connection every few minutes like clockwork.
At first, I assumed it was some kind of interference problem. I unplugged
all the cordless phones and turned off the handsets, to no avail. I was
beginning to think maybe the neighbors were running something that generated
a lot of periodic interference.
But then something else happened. I just happened to try the exact same card
out in a Toshiba laptop. It worked perfectly. It maintained a solid network
connection for several hours with no loss. I put the card back in the VAIO
and the connection would drop about every 3 or 4 minutes.
So, I tried a different laptop. It was also a Toshiba, but a completely
different model and really old. It was running Windows 2000, since XP won't
really run on it, but it worked solidly and reliably for several hours.
I suspected that there was a problem with my girlfriend's VAIO until today.
I picked up a brand new VAIO myself a week or so ago and just now tried to
install the wireless card in it. This is the exact same card that works
perfectly in the 2 Toshiba's.
Guess what? (No really...guess. You're never going to guess it....) The
brand new VAIO (which appears to work perfectly in every other respect) has
EXACTLY THE SAME PROBLEM!!! It drops the connection every 3 or 4 minutes.
(If I measured it with a stopwatch, I could probably use it to cook eggs.)
The connection has dropped 6 times while I've been sitting here composing
and typing this missive.
So, my question for the audience is: What the hell is going on? Why are the
VAIO's such pieces of **** that they can't run the ****ing wireless
networking without dropping the connection every 3 or 4 minutes (making them
completely useless for a surprisingly large number of tasks...oops, just
dropped a 7th time...one sec....)
So, it's clearly not an interference problem since the Toshiba's are
completely unaffected in the exact same locations under the exact same
conditions. It's clearly not just a broken computer since both VAIOs of
completely different vintage have exactly the same problem.
I'm at my freakin' wits end here. It's bad enough that I bought this
piece-of-junk VAIO because I wanted a decent graphics accelerator, only to
find that it doesn't support pixel shaders (my fault for making unverified
assumptions). But to be unable to use it to download files over a wireless
connection is completely intolerable.
Does anybody have any knowledge or ideas about what's going on here? Is the
Linksys WPC54G card incompatible with the VAIO cardbus controller (drop
number 8 just occured)? That's about the only difference I can discern
between the VAIOs and the Tohsibas. But if it was a compatibility problem,
why would it work at all?
The clockwork nature of the disconnections seems to suggest perhaps some
kind of periodically scheduled operation that might be causing the VAIO to
bail on the connection? I dunno...it seems improbable.
Can anyone help me out here?
Thanks, in advance,
Doug Harber
P.S. The connection dropped 2 more times while I was proofreading this. How
very pathetic.
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