Wireless home network, one laptop has internet/connection issues

[blotsome]

I have Verizon 1.5M DSL shared with 5 computers via a Westell VersaLink 327W router. 2 computers are wired via cat5. One AMD/OSX86 connects wirelessly through a PCI card. One IBM notebook connects through it's internal wireless card. All four of these computers can connect to the internet just fine. The issue is with a Dell Latitude D620 with an internal 1390 card (new roommate moved in last week). First, we could see the router, but couldn't connect. I tried messing around with a bunch of stuff, and now, apparently, if you leave the computer alone for 5 minutes or so after boot up, it may sometimes connect, but the connection will be slow or disconnect after a few minutes. It has loaded some web content wirelessly, but the connection is real iffy (and distance isn't an issue).

I should state that the router is WPA - PSK security enabled. I have also updated the router's firmware to VER:4.04.03.00, and re-installed the 1390 wireless drivers. I've also tried using Windows wireless connection utility and the driver's connection utility. I've also tried out MAC authentication with the router and manually inputting the IP/Subnet mask/default gateway into the TCP/IP properties of the Dell, but I could have done something wrong so I'm willing to try those things again.

Anyway, any ideas? It seems like, searching the web, other people have had similar problems, yet I haven't found any solutions that have worked for us. Seems like the 1390 card just isn't compatible with some routers. (the card does work, and has connected to a VPN university wireless network, free hotspots at public libraries and coffee shops, but has had issues with another wireless home network which may have also had WPA encryption).

[johnwill]

Did you try disabling all encryption and MAC filtering on the router as a test to see if that allows a connection?

[blotsome]

Good idea. But, it showed no difference. It took about 5 minutes to connect (well, the wireless signal connected relatively quickly, but then it took a while "Acquiring network address"). Then when it connected, the internet was slow (though we were able to load a bandwidth test that said it had full bandwidth). For example, when we loaded icanhascheezburger.com on two separate computers simultaneously, the laptop took about 2 minutes to load, didn't finish and then lost connection, while the wired PC loaded the page in 10 seconds or so.

Anyway, looks like it isn't an encryption issue...

[johnwill]

Please do this.

Register at DSLReports and run their Line Quality Tests. It's best to run this test with a direct wired connection to eliminate any wireless issues from the results. It's useful many times to run this test several times, and we'd like to see each of the results. Post the results link from the top of the test display page for each test run here.

The link to post is near the top of the page and looks like:

If you wish to post this result to a forum, please copy/paste this URL
http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2357195 <- sample only, yours will obviously be different!
and your IP will be disguised.

Copy/paste that link here.

Note: You will have to enable PING (ICMP) request response either in your router (if you have one), or in your computer's firewall for direct modem connections. This is very important to get the most important part of the test to run.