On Home LAN, Cannot Connect 1st Time

I have a Toshiba Qosmio G25 laptop with wireless connection to my Gateway desktop, where the wireless Linksys router resides. Usually the first time I try to do email or internet from the laptop, it fails, but the second time it connects. I’ve read a previous answer about this problem that changing to set to “Automatically Detect Settings” of the LAN would help. I’ve tried that with no better luck. ALso, the speed of download is in the 40KB/second range, while from the desktop it is 300KB to 400KB. When I do a ping, lots of times, it is only 2 of 4 succeed, sometimes all 4 succeed. Any thoughts of what might be wrong?