Wireless network connection lost frequently...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

I have several machines, 2 Windows notebooks, a Mac, and another Windows
desktop running XP, that all keep their network connection perfectly. The
only machine that drops the connection constantly is the one running Vista.
I'm using a Linksys WUSB54GS wireless card and a Linksys WRT54GX router, and
this equipment worked fine under XP. The computer itself is more than
sufficient to run Vista.

Does anyone know why this problem continues? Any suggestions on how to solve
it? Please don't tell me to go back to XP, I paid way too much for Vista to
not use it.

Now, a bit of a rant...why the heck, in the months of beta testing, were
problems like this not solved? I have to say that Vista seems very much like
a still-in-progress beta, rather than a commercial product. When is this OS
going to start coming together?

Sorry, but I am just frustrated with the continuing problems with Vista. I
feel like I'm part of some unsolicited testing group.
 
This could well be an issue with your router. Differences in the networking
stack between XP and Vista have exposed a lot of router bugs which were
hitherto hidden.

Vista uses UPnP much more heavily than XP ever did, and we've found that a
lot of routers have suboptimal UPnP implementations, causing them to crash.

1. Does this happen on both a wired connection to the router AND a wireless
connection?

2. when Vista "loses" connection, does it come back automatically, or do you
have to reboot your router? Do the other xp machines also lose
connectivity?

3. If ONLY the vista machine loses connectivity, then there is an issue with
your vista machine. Make sure your drivers are all up to date. If
wireless, make sure you have the latest drivers for your card. Go to
linksys' website and verifiy that what you've got is the latest.

4. While you're there, make sure you have the latest firmware for your
router. We found a lot of bugs in router firmware during development, and
the vendors posted a lot of firmware updates.

5. Then, try running the router tool at
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/using/tools/igd/default.mspx, and see if it
passes the tests.

If we can narrow the issue down to your router, that is, that when Vista
loses connectivity ALL the machines (xp too) lose connectivity, then there
are some things worth trying:

A possible solution worth trying is to turn of UPnP. This can be done on
the router (you would have to log onto the routers config page, find out
where it has the UPnP on/off switch, and turn it off) or from the machine
itself.

You can also try disabling window scaling.

So, please try these out:

1. Go to the webtool, and when the test is finished, click on the "view
detailed report" link, and copy that data off & save it.
2. turn off UPnP, either on the router or on the vista machine:
from an elevated command prompt,type the following:
a. sc config SSDPSRV start= disabled
b. net stop ssdpsrv <or> reboot the system
3. Try your test again. If it still fails after some perioed of time, turn
off Window Scaling:
From an elevated command prompt, type the following:
a. netsh in tcp set gl auto=di
<no reboot required>

K.
 
Karl,

Thanks for the reply. I upgraded the firmware and checked that the card
driver is the most recent. I ran the test you suggested and found that UPnP
was "not supported." As I was going through the router settings, I noticed
that UPnP was disabled and I enabled it. I ran the test again. The first time
everything except UPnP was good. After enabling UPnP, the test listed Network
Address Translator Type as not supported. On the first test (before enabling
UPnP), "the IGD's NAT type is RESTRICTED CONE." After UPnP is enabled, "the
IGD's NAT type is SYMMETRIC."

My limited understanding of all of this suggests to me that, for now, my
problems may be solved, since IPv6 is not widely in use. However, I would be
curious to know why turning on the UPnP changed the NAT type?

Thanks again.
 
Ogman, theoretically it shouldn't. I've been thoroughly through the
process, and I'll dig into this with the developer for that.
It may be becuase we're using an algorith developed for Teredo (Teredo is a
technology for tunneling IPv6 over IPv4. It's in Vista), and for Teredo to
work properly it has to have access to port mappings for the UDP "bubbles"
it uses.

However, I will follow up with more specifics. Aside from that are things
working well for you now? Does Vista still lose connectivity?

Cheers,

k.
 
Hi,

Me again. The wireless connection is gone again. I'm going to go ahead and
re-install XP so I can get some work done here. Anyone in contact with
Microsoft needs to tell them that they have royally screwed wireless
networking in Vista. I googled the problem and it is widespread, with most
solutions not working for more than a few hours. I need a stable system, so
enough of Vista.
 
I have exactly the same problem:
I have wired and wireless connection, and my wireles connection is being
constantly disconected after one or two hours. I have to reboot my windows
machine , rebooting my router doesn't help.
XP machine on same router doesn't disconnect.
My router is Siemens Gigaset SE555 WLAN dsl. In the begining, maybe some ten
months , my wireless connection worked just fine, and this problem started
recently. I think it started after one of the regular Vista updates.
Thank You in advance.
 
When I first started using my new laptop with Windows Vista installed (January 2009), I had no problems connecting to wireless networks. It was perfectly fine for over a year, when suddenly things went awry.

The main symptom was my connection shifting to "LOCAL ACCESS ONLY" (LAO). It would do this and last for a number of minutes before going back to Internet access. But then it would happen again sporadically anytime after that. I hadn't done anything differently to the computer. I surmised that it might have been a Windows update of some kind. In attempting to compensate, I went to my laptop brand website to obtain updated drivers. This made no difference.

This sent me down a rabbit hole of searching the Internet and collecting all kinds of tips and tricks about Windows Vista wireless networking problems. I was overwhelmed with the number of problem reports, and confused by the myriad of different solutions.

I even got to the point where I was going to reinstall the latest service pack, in hopes of clearing it up. But before I did that, I ended up deleting the wireless network connection and recreating it. I also went to my router and registered a reserved IP address for my computer. This seemed to help.

Another thing... my router (TP-Link) has a power conservation feature whereby it'll disconnect a user from the Internet when the connection goes idle. It is supposed to automatically reconnect, but I think Vista gets confused by this. The address reservation somehow helped.

MEANWHILE, I have a Windows XP desktop connecting to the same router and have had no connection problems whatsoever. It really looks to me like Vista tried to get too complicated with networking in an effort to improve performance. I really hope things are better with Windows 7, as I am eventually going to upgrade to it.
I have several machines, 2 Windows notebooks, a Mac, and another Windows
desktop running XP, that all keep their network connection perfectly. The
only machine that drops the connection constantly is the one running Vista.
I'm using a Linksys WUSB54GS wireless card and a Linksys WRT54GX router, and
this equipment worked fine under XP. The computer itself is more than
sufficient to run Vista.

Does anyone know why this problem continues? Any suggestions on how to solve
it? Please don't tell me to go back to XP, I paid way too much for Vista to
not use it.

Now, a bit of a rant...why the heck, in the months of beta testing, were
problems like this not solved? I have to say that Vista seems very much like
a still-in-progress beta, rather than a commercial product. When is this OS
going to start coming together?

Sorry, but I am just frustrated with the continuing problems with Vista. I
feel like I'm part of some unsolicited testing group.
On Thursday, March 29, 2007 2:43 PM Karl Froelich [MS] wrote:
This could well be an issue with your router. Differences in the networking
stack between XP and Vista have exposed a lot of router bugs which were
hitherto hidden.

Vista uses UPnP much more heavily than XP ever did, and we've found that a
lot of routers have suboptimal UPnP implementations, causing them to crash.

1. Does this happen on both a wired connection to the router AND a wireless
connection?

2. when Vista "loses" connection, does it come back automatically, or do you
have to reboot your router? Do the other xp machines also lose
connectivity?

3. If ONLY the vista machine loses connectivity, then there is an issue with
your vista machine. Make sure your drivers are all up to date. If
wireless, make sure you have the latest drivers for your card. Go to
linksys' website and verifiy that what you've got is the latest.

4. While you're there, make sure you have the latest firmware for your
router. We found a lot of bugs in router firmware during development, and
the vendors posted a lot of firmware updates.

5. Then, try running the router tool at
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/using/tools/igd/default.mspx, and see if it
passes the tests.

If we can narrow the issue down to your router, that is, that when Vista
loses connectivity ALL the machines (xp too) lose connectivity, then there
are some things worth trying:

A possible solution worth trying is to turn of UPnP. This can be done on
the router (you would have to log onto the routers config page, find out
where it has the UPnP on/off switch, and turn it off) or from the machine
itself.

You can also try disabling window scaling.

So, please try these out:

1. Go to the webtool, and when the test is finished, click on the "view
detailed report" link, and copy that data off & save it.
2. turn off UPnP, either on the router or on the vista machine:
from an elevated command prompt,type the following:
a. sc config SSDPSRV start= disabled
b. net stop ssdpsrv <or> reboot the system
3. Try your test again. If it still fails after some perioed of time, turn
off Window Scaling:
From an elevated command prompt, type the following:
a. netsh in tcp set gl auto=di
<no reboot required>

K.

news:[email protected]...
Click to expand...
On Thursday, March 29, 2007 4:00 PM ogma wrote:
Karl,

Thanks for the reply. I upgraded the firmware and checked that the card
driver is the most recent. I ran the test you suggested and found that UPnP
was "not supported." As I was going through the router settings, I noticed
that UPnP was disabled and I enabled it. I ran the test again. The first time
everything except UPnP was good. After enabling UPnP, the test listed Network
Address Translator Type as not supported. On the first test (before enabling
UPnP), "the IGD's NAT type is RESTRICTED CONE." After UPnP is enabled, "the
IGD's NAT type is SYMMETRIC."

My limited understanding of all of this suggests to me that, for now, my
problems may be solved, since IPv6 is not widely in use. However, I would be
curious to know why turning on the UPnP changed the NAT type?

Thanks again.

"Karl Froelich [MS]" wrote:
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
On Thursday, March 29, 2007 4:11 PM Karl Froelich [MS] wrote:
Ogman, theoretically it shouldn't. I've been thoroughly through the
process, and I'll dig into this with the developer for that.
It may be becuase we're using an algorith developed for Teredo (Teredo is a
technology for tunneling IPv6 over IPv4. It's in Vista), and for Teredo to
work properly it has to have access to port mappings for the UDP "bubbles"
it uses.

However, I will follow up with more specifics. Aside from that are things
working well for you now? Does Vista still lose connectivity?

Cheers,

k.

news:[email protected]...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
On Thursday, March 29, 2007 4:44 PM ogma wrote:
Karl - So far, so good. I will let you know if anything changes. Thanks again
for the help.

"Karl Froelich [MS]" wrote:
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
On Wednesday, April 04, 2007 12:24 AM ogma wrote:
Hi,

Me again. The wireless connection is gone again. I'm going to go ahead and
re-install XP so I can get some work done here. Anyone in contact with
Microsoft needs to tell them that they have royally screwed wireless
networking in Vista. I googled the problem and it is widespread, with most
solutions not working for more than a few hours. I need a stable system, so
enough of Vista.

"Karl Froelich [MS]" wrote:
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Back
Top