I finally broke down and bought a Linksys wireless router today. I also got two Linksys notebook adapters which each cost as much as the router itself. So far, the whole damned setup is flaky as hell. My old router was a Linksys as well, so I figured setting up the new one would be easy. My first problem was that I couldn’t get the router to connect to the internet through my DSL modem. The crappy Linksys auto-setup software didn’t work, so I manually configured the router through my web browser. After playing with my settings for a long time, then resetting the router to factory defaults and playing with the settings some more, it finally worked even though I hadn’t done anything differently the second time around.
After installing the notebook adapters and making sure they worked (even after rebooting a couple of times), I took my laptop to my mom’s house to see if I could get a signal from my router. Her computer is about 350′ away from my router, and I was hoping she’d be able to use my internet and do away with her dialup connection. I couldn’t get a signal anywhere inside her house, but I could from her patio. So I went back home, but when I got there, I had no internet access. The Linksys adapter utility said that my laptop was connected to the access point, but that “the internet cannot be found.” I found some help on Linksys’ website, which said to use winipcfg to release and renew my IP. That didn’t work (the existing IP wouldn’t even release), and rebooting several times didn’t work. Finally I physically removed the wireless adapter while the computer was turned on, then replaced it, and suddenly I had a connection to the access point and the internet. I’m almost afraid to turn the computer off now. Good thing I bought everything at Wal-Mart so I can easily return it if I keep having problems.