Quick Fix For Bad Router Connections at Home

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This happened to me recently. I have a small wireless home network to enable my spouse to use the internet without busting up my routine. (She swears that I live online. (:O) Anyway, the network was working well until she started logging in to game sites. Suddenly, she started having log on problems.

One time, she could not get past the log on screen for some other internet service which had hijacked her connection. (Yep, they can do that!) Solution: Use System Restore to reset your connection settings. Roll back to at least 4 days before the problem began.



Then she began logging into the slowest wireless connection available. That could easily be stopped by resetting the connection to our own home network. However, after this had been going on for about a month, she lost all connections to our home network. She could only access other networks in the general area, but without the correct information, could not access the internet. The problem: she could see our home network but could not log in.




The network consists of:

1. a personally built IBM-compatible p.c. running Windows XP sp2
   
2. Motorola Cable Modem
3. Netgear 54 mbps wireless router accepting connections from 802.1 b@g cards
4. Acer laptop with built in LAN running Vista Home.

The Solution:

1. I uninstalled the drivers for her LAN
   
2. I reinstalled the drivers for her LAN
3. I assigned unique workgroup names to both computers. Do this from control panel. Most home computers are set to use "ms-home" as default workgroup name.
   
4. I removed security from the router
5. I changed router settings to include the Acer MAC information
6. I unplugged the router for 5 hours to enable a fresh system reset.
7. After 5 hrs, I reactivated the router and voila! Problem solved.
8. I reset router security for both computers.
   

Summary: Because of the number of available networks in the area, my router got its signals crossed. To prevent security breaches, it refused to allow non-specified access. By taking the steps above and resetting the system, the router was able to allow access to the specific system in its MAC record.