RedSwirl

For some reason I just can't seem to get my wireless internet connection right on this desktop. It's noticeably slower than every other machine on my network (not just the computers).

It's a Dell XPS 420 with a Dell TrueMobile 1300 WLAN Mini-PCI Card for wireless, an Intel Quad-Core 2.4GHz processor, 3GB of RAM, and a 512MB nVidia GeForce 8800 graphics card.

My router is a NETGEAR WGT264 v.3 (it says v.2 on the router but v.3 when I log in) which is connected to a Toshiba PCX2600 cable modem.

I've tried to search for drivers for my wireless card but haven't been able to find any. Dell.com has none that are compatible with my hardware.

A few months ago I got a static IP address for this computer which helped my connection and I forwarded some ports for a few progams (Call of Duty 4 specifically).

Yes, I'm having to connect a desktop through wireless because it's too far away from the only cable outlet in my house and I'm using a pretty old modem that only has one extra port that's being used by the router. The reason I'm posting this in Vista is because the only difference I've been able to notice between this and every other system on the network is that this is the only one running on Windows Vista.

When I first got this computer, it couldn't connect through wireless at all saying something about no communication between the computer and the router when I already had several other systems connected just fine. After a while we called a technician who came in and replaced the wireless card and after that we could connect, but it's never been working perfectly.

The main problem seems to be that after a couple days or so of staying connected, the connection speed degrades. When I check the status I can only get up to around 18Mbps when every other system on wireless is getting 54Mbps. Websites load slowly but where it really shows is downloads. Downloading a 50MB file for instance takes about 30 minutes max on my laptop running on XP, but would take six hours on this desktop after its connection's degraded. Downloading this takes over a day (compared to an hour on my laptop).

The only remedy I've found is to shut down the system, leave it off all night, reboot it in the morning, long in, leave it sitting for about 30 minutes (until I stop hearing stuff going on in the tower) and then try to connect again. Even when it's in top shape it's still noticeably slower than every other system on this network. The same 50MB file might take 45 minutes to download and this about four hours.

Playing online games on this connection (this is the only computer I have that can run anything) is also out of the question now, even with a static IP address and ports forwarded.

The only online program I have running perpetually (as in on my own and not the system running normal processes) is a media server through Windows Media Player which I use to send stuff to my PS3.

The only thing I would call "odd" that I've seen when I check the Task Manager is that under "Processes" there's something called "svchost.exe" that I'm using, but there's 14 instances of this process running.

I really have no good idea as to why internet on this system is so troublesome and was wondering if anyone knew something different about wireless and Vista.

BlazingGeek

I had that wifi problem a while ago... as it turned out (for me anyway) it was the placement of the adapter. I bought a high gain antenna and adjusted the placement and now it works perfectly. I have seen other solutions to the problem (and tried most of them) so if you don't want to buy anything you could do some googling first.

As for svchost.exe I think it is normal to have a bunch of them. It is the process used to execute DLL files so it is normal for there to be more than one.

__________________
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RedSwirl

Would placement mean of the tower or of where the card is inside the computer?