Unable to Get Wireless Internet - Interference? Adaptor issues? Etc.

[platyzz]

Buckle up, fellas, this is a long and frustrating tale.

I am so fed up with technology that I was in tears this afternoon haha.

Anyways, so my family and I live in a 40 year old pretty normal house. We have a Leopard apple computer in the family room. It had a year and a half old (Netgear, G) wireless router. I myself have a (3 month old) Windows Vista desktop computer and a (two and a half year old) Windows XP laptop in my bedroom which is upstairs and on the far side of the house. Our house honestly is not huge. Back to the point, my laptop has built-in Wifi and I bought a Linksys adaptor for my desktop. We pay for high speed internet from Comcast. Over the past 2 months, the internet on any and every computer in the house gradually got worse and worse until it was unbearable. We called a guy from Comcast over, who said it was the router's problem, to work on it. Well, he broke the Netgear G router in the process. So, we went to Microcenter and bought a Netgear N150 router. He installed it professionally to the Leopard and said it would give us great signal throughout the house. Umm, sure... The Leopard got fantastic internet speed but no matter how many bars of signal I received on my laptop or desktop (almost always 4 bars up here), the internet was painfully slow. Then, it just stopped working altogether. However, if I brought my laptop and sat next to the router, I could get just as good internet as the Leopard. Around this time, I, being the most technically knowledgeable in my family of four, fiddled around with the adaptor on my desktop trying to get it to work. Nothing budged. Four bars and no internet? Why?! Maybe it was the adaptor in my desktop that had an issue. (I didn't lay a thought to how my laptop had the same issue without an adaptor as it was old and probably shouldn't be compared to newer supposedly more efficient computers). So, on my Vista desktop, I went to Safely Remove Hardware, stopped the device, and pulled it out of my computer to examine it. What happens next? Blue screen of death. Something about Multiple Complete IRP Requests or something. (It disappears so fast!) And the computer shuts itself down. I turn back on the desktop and start it normally without the adaptor, within 5 min of not touching it, the same blue screen pops up and the thing shuts off. Next time, I start the desktop WITH the adaptor in but now the adaptor no longer functions. It says its installed incorrectly all of a sudden. Doesn't recognize the device. Well it worked for 2 months! What now?! I yank the bloody thing out and wa-lah! Blue screen. So I restart the computer for the third time (except, now I start it in Safe Mode) and I Run.. 'msconfig', go to Startup, and uncheck the Linksys drivers that usually automatically start up. This time when I turn on the computer, it works fine. Angry, I head to the local computer store and tell them my story. They said to exchange the adaptor for a properly functioning replicate and that interference from wireless house phones that were 2.4 Ghz were likely causing my issue. I unplug, take the batteries out, and disable every 2.4 Ghz phone in the house. I uninstall the original Linksys drivers and reinstall the new CD and adaptor. I'm getting pretty good internet on my laptop now, right, but absolutely nothing on my desktop despite the four optimistic green bars from the new adaptor. I take out the adaptor. Guess what? Blue screen. Again. I decide, silly me, to test something out. Maybe the adaptor just has an issue with my desktop. So I install the CD and adaptor to my laptop, keeping my laptop in the same area of my room as my desktop. I notice I'm getting 2 bars and slow internet through the adaptor. I get internet - slow internet - on my laptop in the same corner of my room as my desktop. What is this? Are the settings on my desktop for the adaptor just frozen there with those unwavering four bars? Since then, I've taken the bothersome adaptor out of my laptop and reconfigured Wireless Zero Configuration on here so I'm getting good internet. But I /need/ internet on my desktop.
Is it both interference and a faulty adaptor that is keeping me from getting the internet we pay for? What can I do to get internet there? Why would removing the adaptor give me a blue screen?
Please help me. I'm just so frustrated and lost. Thank you so much. I hope I wasn't too confusing. I know its quite a block of text. I'll stop now. :]

[johnwill]

I can't even begin to read that amorphous blob of text! You really need to post a coherent and concise description of the environment and the issue.


Please supply the following info, exact make and models of the equipment please.

Name of your ISP (Internet Service Provider).
Make and exact model of the broadband modem.
Make and exact model and hardware version of the router (if a separate unit).
Make and exact model and hardware version of any other network equipment, like a repeater, a booster, hi-gain antenna, etc.
Model numbers can usually be obtained from the label on the device.
Connection type, wired or wireless.
If wireless, encryption used, (none, WEP, WPA, or WPA2)
Version and patch level of Windows on all affected machines, i.e. XP (Home or Pro), SP1-SP2-SP3, Vista (Home, Business, Ultimate), etc.
The Internet Browser in use, IE, Firefox, Opera, etc.




Please give an exact description of your problem symptoms, including the exact text of any error messages.

• If you're using a wireless connection, have you tried a direct connection with a cable to see if that changes the symptoms?
• For wireless issues, have you disabled all encryption on the router to see if you can connect that way?
• For wireless laptops, have you made SURE the wireless switch is on?
• For wired connection issues, have you booted in Safe Mode with Networking to see if that changes the symptoms?
• Have you connected directly to the broadband modem to see if this is a router or modem/ISP issue?
• If there are other computers on the same network, are they experiencing the same issue, or do they function normally?

On any affected computer, I'd also like to see this:

Hold the Windows key and press R, then type CMD (COMMAND for W98/WME) to open a command prompt:

Type the following commands on separate lines, following each one with the Enter key:

PING 74.125.45.100

PING yahoo.com

NBTSTAT -n

IPCONFIG /ALL

Right click in the command window and choose Select All, then hit Enter.
Paste the results in a message here.

If you are on a machine with no network connection, use a floppy, USB disk, or a CD-RW disk to transfer a text file with the information to allow pasting it here.