XP wireless internet problems please help.

Because if you don't, even being "[i]barely on the internet[/i]" is long enough to have a raft of infections. Moreover, if you are using the laptop to communicate with TR, your online exposure is increasing all the time.

So having 'downgraded' from, I assume Vista, when you got all of the required drivers did that include your installed wireless card ?

What is the make and model of your laptop ?

Way to go. Scare the crap out of him.

I've left Windows PC's on-line for hours, if not days on end without a firewall, and never had a single infection of any type.

I think the questions/comments here are lacking enough detail.

A Windows PC behind a NAT router/firewall and running Windows firewall is more than enough. ZoneAlarm is overkill for someone simply browsing the web while installing and tweaking a fresh install.

Should one surf all their favorite porn sites that way? No.

But give me a break. Going to HP's, Dell's, TR's, etc websites while rebuilding a PC isn't going to do anything.

If you think the probability is that high, I would suggest some real estate somewhere in the middle of Iowa...something akin to a former Titan missile silo.

My advice would be to try a USB wireless stick (made for XP) just to see if it really is the PC or if it is driver related. USB wireless sticks go for about $10-$20 around here anymore.

If the USB stick works, I'd say it's probably a driver issue with whatever it is you are trying now.

If the USB stick does the same thing, well obviously, I'd say it's something to do with the PC.

Check the signal strength by hovering the mouse over the wireless network icon in the system tray. If the signal strength is low, that is the most likely reason.

Wi-Fi is short range 2.4GHz radio, essentially worthless beyond 150 feet from the access point. Here are some tips that may help reduce dropped connections with your laptops:

1) A vertical booster antenna for the router can enhance horizontal coverage by ~50%

2) If the router is located one floor up or down from the laptops, consider relocating the router to the same floor

3) If the wireless adapters are 802.11g, program the router to broadcast only in G mode

4) Enable SSID broadcast in your router setup

5) WPA encryption is more squirrely than WEP, but WEP is less secure

6) How important is encryption for your use of these laptops? If there are no likely snoopers within 150 feet, consider disabling encryption. With encryption disabled, connection is faster, data transmission faster, and there are fewer dropped connections

7) If you disable encryption, it would be wise to enable the MAC address filter in the router setup. Enter the MAC addresses of the wireless adapters, and the native MAC network card addresses of any desktop computers

8) If you disable encryption and enable MAC address filtration, periodically check for intruders. With Linksys, open the router setup, and navigate:

Status > Local Network > DHCP Client Table

The only MAC addresses posted on that table should be your own equipment. Any other MAC address is an intruder, and you can banish that person by adding that MAC address to the naughty list:

Wireless > Wireless MAC Filter > Prevent PCs listed below from accessing the wireless network

9) check for 2.4GHz radiofrequency interference near the laptops (cordless telephone base stations)

10) check for RF interference (fans, motors, hard drives, etc.)

11) check for shielding (metal cabinets, etc)

12) If still no connection, try disabling the proprietary wireless chip driver and enabling the Windows driver. Sometimes the Windows driver works better.

13) Before blaming the router, try a USB wireless adapter such as Linksys:

http://tinyurl.com/3vs8r7

My embedded Sony notebook wireless chip started acting squirrely, and I decided to simply disable it and go with Linksys. For the past couple of years, my Linksys router/USB adapter have worked seamlessly.

That about exhausts my suggestions.

Rick/Portland, OR

To be honest, you did feed us your system information in a rather piecemeal fashion.

Glad you like the site - maybe you had a laugh into the bargain. I particularly enjoy it when Mussolini's great-grandchildren pop in for a spot of verbal diahorrhea!! :D

Hope to see more of you. ;)

Hi.

This is sometimes caused by a glitch in service pack 2. Are you running service pack 2? If so google wireless internet patch xp sp2 - download and apply.

Hope this helps

If you find it difficult to coexist within a public forum, that is entirely your affair.

At present, as far as I can discern, you and that idiot above would need at least one more wagon before you could even form a wagon-triangle.

But don't let me stop you from trying.

However, apart from Peconet's doubting post, I had rather formed the opinion I was flying solo on this one. ;)

Hardly a circling of wagons, but THANK YOU for comparing me to a force to be reckoned with!

Oops, silly me - "[i]that idiot above[/i]" [b]was YOU![/b] So how did you manage to lose your wingman - or haven't you ever had one? :^0

My computers appear to be well protected against passive malware infestations using just Windows Firewall and a NAT router. The [i]Shiels Up![/i] test reveals 100% [i]stealth[/i] mode:

http://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?rh1dkyd2

Whenever I have attempted to defend this in the TR Forum, I've been pummeled with abusive commentary regarding my intelligence and pedigree.

AV applications transform an excellent machine into molasses. The most effective means of improving performance is to jettison Symantec System Works.

Rick/Portland, OR

The OP comes along with a definite, undiagnosed problem and happened to mention that he had gone online with limited security protection + the Windows firewall (which you can spit peas through!) but only for a couple of minutes - clearly what I should have done was tell him to carry on doing exactly the same because there's at least TWO peers on TR that believe that you can surf the net for years and never catch any infection.

The mere fact that I mentioned a list of alternative means of security, all of which are easily down-loadable and also free of charge, was reckless and ill-judged on my part and I shouldn't have done it.

What I should have done was dismiss the poor bloke from my mind, stifle my own self-beliefs, ignore my thirty years experience and sit back, safe in the knowledge that the guy was panicking over nothing.

Now that we are all agreed on our future course of action, what do we do from here on in? Card games? FPS's?

Oh, and which one of you two jokers is gonna propose the disbanding of TechRepublic?

Hmm ?

In a working environment?. If so please give proof. No company would do this to their working servers or computers, period. Why? because tax records have to be kept along with everything else that has to be documented.
Your post in a working environment would be seen as a joke and laughed at. Now do you want to repost and make me wrong on this?. Go on give me a post to laugh at. :) :)

https://www.techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=101&threadID=264385&messageID=2504688

Here is a peer who condescends those that practice the usage of anti-virus scanners, having successfully run his systems without any anti-virus software for years - and never had an attack from passive malware.

Yet he has a practice of regularly Ghosting his systems for the 'unexplained' times when they misbehave!

I warrant an anti-virus scanner would provide the explanation.

Yeah it puzzles me that software that came with my graphics card and ran after I "tuned" my system was what was stopping my internet connection. When I was running the tune it of course froze and restarted my computer, although it says this is normal I wonder if that service did not get removed by Nvidia by mistake or something. Oh well. And I have good security set up on my computer that I dl torrents on, which regularly alerts me when it finds crap in them, I was just curious on how the NAT router alone would do with my setup. Guess I have my answer, sorry Rikk, gotta agree with everyone else. You're still either super lucky or crazy, or you just go only to microsoft.com. And btw, Mycroft it was great to have someone just caring about my problem. Thanks a lot! I'll be a regular around here now.
JZ

Notebook/laptop machines may be inherently less stable than desktops due to less efficient processor cooling. My desktop machines are rock stable running XP Pro, with no AV applications installed.

The Sony desktop is [i]water cooled[/i] and never causes me a moment's uneasiness. If your argument be credible, I should have the same problems with my desktop machines.

[i]Rickk[/i] gave you a challenge: try the experiment, and report your findings. I do not need to invoke esoteric explanations for occasonal notebook squirreliness, just processor temperature.

[i]Minority[/i] viewpoints are infrequently expressed when established pedagogy ridicules those they accuse of reckless heresy. Need I remind you that Gallileo incurred humiliation and threats by postulating that the earth orbited the sun?

Rick/Portland, OR

1) If the Windows firewall is so easy to get around, please enlighten the crowd. And don't send me some theorical paper that you can download from some university.

And forget about the outbound/inbound issue. Keep the details pertinent to the case here, namely, keeping a PC safe for hours, days, weeks (whatever) long enough to rebuild it, patch it, etc.

Assume for the moment that the purpose here, as I expressed in my other post, was for rebuilding the PC or at least using it responsibily and not being rebuilt for a professional porn surfer.

2) Your suggestions for the easily downloadable and free software was good advice...it's how you sold it that was deceiving.

I've run a mostly but not completely patched PC running Windows 98 for years now on a properly secured network without one incidence of malware. And Win 98 isn't nearly as hardened as XP.

3) Your sarcasm is what is misleading people. It's your delivery. Your advice isn't bad, it's the misleading interruptions. Simply visiting an on-line forum like TR on an unpatched PC isn't significantly rising any risks.

4) Now, if you'd like, please prove me wrong. I'd be more than happy to provide you my public IP for a few hours (even though you speak and act as though you'd only need it for a few minutes).

I'm an all Windows network. But rest assured, there are enough measures in place I might as well be running Win 95 because it wouldn't do you any help. And most of those measures aren't reliant at the local level, they are network level.

I'm sure our good, retired doctor on here would agree, stop giving us an infomercial and start proving something.

Absolutely, I can give you plenty of examples.

For one, until our most recent upgrade to Symantec 11.0 AV which includes a built in firewall, we didn't run firewalls other than the Windows firewall on any PC's in our organization.

Not a single one. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

And as a side note, Symantec 11.0 AV with the firewall, build in "Network Threat Protection" and "Proactive Threat Protection" blows.

I turned everything off but the AV protection on most stations.

Second, like most companies we don't always have the time to review, test and patch all systems routinely and timely. I suppose you do but the vast majority of the world doesn't. I don't feel less secure.

In my day job, I support close to 100 people, as many PC's, 14 servers ranging from email, file and print, IIS, reporting services, SQL, project server, 2 websites, a portal, all cell phones, all PDA's, the phone system, 25 remote locations, all internet connections including over 50 cable and DSL lines in addition to multiple T-1's, etc.

The list goes...

Anyways, I'm an IT staff of 1. Me.

The way to properly secure a network isn't to sweat and lose sleep at night about individual PC's. It's about the network.

Perhaps you need to read some of George Ou's articles but I digress.

When you can hack your way past our border, you let me know. Not saying that you or someone else couldn't, eventually, but the information you'd obtain wouldn't be worth your time.

Security is about layers, my friend. If you think leaving a vulnerable PC on your network is a serious threat to your company's tax records, PLEASE FIRE YOUR IT STAFF IMMEDIATELY.

There isn't a network in the world that has properly and completely secured each and every node. If one poorly secured PC on your network leaves you that vulnerable, please, please disconnect your internet connection, close the biz down for a few days and bring in the consultants.