Wireless LAN fails, all parts work fine.

Small home wireless LAN, Netgear WGR614v4 router, Using WPA, two XP machines, one Vista (home Basic ),

Stage 1) all working ok for many hours, except when
2) Vista machine goes to sleep mode. On wakeup, no connection. Network SSID is visible, good signal, but repeated attempts to connect fail.
3) Other computers connect to router, and internet fine. They can also standby/poweroff and restart fine. Still connected.
4) Reboot Vista computer, no help. Network settings look normal, just no connection to wireless router. Incredibly irritating Vista diagnostic tool suggests I connect to a another network, or recycle the router. (If the router was close enough to be easily recycled, I would just plug in an ethernet cable. But it is not, and I am tired of unnecessary trips to the basement.)
5) Power cycle router, and everything fine again.

Does not happen with every sleep cycle. No clue what makes it fail sometimes and not others.

Any suggestions? This happens about every other day, so of course, it will not fail when I want it to, but if anyone has an idea, I will get ready for the next breakage.

periboob said:

... Does not happen with every sleep cycle. No clue what makes it fail sometimes and not others....

Click to expand...

Just in case anyone else is having this problem, I found more information on the trigger--If Vista goes to sleep while Firefox is active, the connection is broken. The only way I have found to reconnect, is reboot the router.

If Firefox is closed first, before the Sleep mode, all is well. Restart Vista, the connection resumes fine. So, its a work-around, but I am even more confused as whats up. Firefox interfering with some Vista<->Netgear secret handshake?

Hi periboob,

You can try changing the channel for the WLAN,
You need to log into the router page [IP: 192.168.0.1 for WGR614V4], make sure that you are changing the name SSID when you made any changes on wireless settings,

If still doesnt work, try upgrading the firmware for WGR614V4

http://kbserver.netgear.com/products/wgr614v4.asp

- Raj

Thanks for the suggestions Raj. I have already updated the firmware to the latest version. I will try the channel later. I had never thought about that. I am not hopeful though, as the signal strength has always showed fine, but as I really dont understand the handshake process, I will not ignore any suggestion.

At least I get some exercise out of it.

Hi periboob!!

I got a couple questions to try and help you out.

1) Do you want vista to go in sleep mode at all?
2) I'm sure the reason why the wireless signal drops is because in the properties of the wireless network card there is a check box that is allowing the power options to turn off the wireless network card. Please reply and I think we can fix this. Thank You
3) I need to know which start menu are you using? The windows Classic start menu or the default Vista start menu?
Raj

rajinisback said:

Hi periboob!!

I got a couple questions to try and help you out.

1) Do you want vista to go in sleep mode at all?
2) I'm sure the reason why the wireless signal drops is because in the properties of the wireless network card there is a check box that is allowing the power options to turn off the wireless network card. Please reply and I think we can fix this. Thank You
3) I need to know which start menu are you using? The windows Classic start menu or the default Vista start menu?
Raj

Click to expand...

Sorry to be late getting back to you, I missed the alert.
1) I have used Standby for a long time. I am accustomed to leaving my laptop running, in standby (or sleep) for weeks at a time. When I am moving around, I just shut the lid and pack it up. So, I think not using sleep would be an inconvenience, at least a retraining exercise for me.
2) What about when I change networks? I just assumed that the proper way was to turn off the wireless (actually allow sleep mode to turn it off) when on the move. Are you suggesting to leave the wireless on while in standby? What effect would that have on battery life?
3) I use Vista start menu, with Control Panel and Admin Tools shown as menus.

Finally, just now got around to changing the default channel on the router, as was suggested by another Raj? or is that still you?

Hi periboob,
That was Rajaram that suggested the channel change.
My thinking is that you can go to the properties of the wireless NIC (via Device Manger) then tell it not to allow power options to turn off that device. This should stop the "Vista machine goes to sleep mode. On wakeup, no connection".

On your questions about how it will effect your battery and changing networks, I'm not sure. A small test can give you the answer.

Raj

Found "Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN MiniCard" under Network Adapters in Device manager. No obvious check for disabling power manager's ability to control the power to this card. On the advanced tab. Changing "Minimum Power Consumption" to "disabled" will check results later.

Thinking this over, I am not sure I want to go this route anyway. This is after all, a work around. I would rather track down the cause of the problem (if possible) first, because, if I use a work-around, it will quit bothering me, and I will quit looking for the answer.
Just a note,
Event viewer, under "Applications and Services", "Broadcomm Wireless", shows a huge list of "information" events. but after resume from Sleep, it goes like this
-New wireless device available
-Connecting to "Netgear"
-Authenticating to "Netgear"
-Associated to "Netgear"
-Connecting to "Netgear"
-Authenticating to "Netgear" (15 times)
and then the connect-to, authenticate-to process repeats, over and over.

To me, this suggest a problem in the Authentication/Security part of the connection process. I think I will tinker with that for a while. I have a really long authentication key, maybe I will shorten that first. Thanks for the suggestions, If anything else occurs to you, post a note. I will continue to beat on it, and will post any promising results.

Hi!

Here is a picture of what I am talking about.
Right click on the Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN MiniCard and select properties. Then look for Power Management Tab.



Raj

Raj. I am pretty sure I am in the right place, but on this computer, and others, in the Mini-card Properties control, none of my laptop wireless controllers have a "Power management" tab. I remember seeing controls like that on wired LAN cards, but unless there is some place where I have it turned off, I dont think that is going to be the solution.

Hi Periboob,

Hope you doing good,

I don't think that the thing which is going on now is correct..!

because as far as I know, you can try this resolution, when you have the following problem, "when you put your computer [hardwired to the router] in sleep mode, it wont be in sleep mode and it will come up automatically from sleep mode without doing anything, so at that time you need to go to LAN [not the wireless LAN] driver properties, and goto Power Options and uncheck the wake-up from sleep mode"

- so this not gonna to be the resolution for this issue;

- what happen when you tried changing the channel?

-
- I am
- Rajaram

Dont want to be too optimistic, but I think I found it. Initially my router was set to Ch1, so I changed it to Ch11. Still no return from Sleep. Got to thinking, if one channel could be bad, perhaps two?

So, I was changing it to another channel, and while in the router settings, I remembered that the event log was suggesting that the problem was with authentication. So, I looked at the encryption string (? pass-code? I forget the exact terminology). Got an error message that the string was restricted to 63 characters. I had just created a nice long random string (at the suggestion of the guys at Security Now) and pasted it in, there were no errors at the time, and it had been working for a year or more. My string was 64 characters long.

I have no idea why it ever worked with a string too long, only thing I can guess, is that XP was more forgiving of the overflow of the pass code, and Vista was more demanding, remembering a bad pass code, but that resetting the router had some magical effect which caused it to work again? (just a wild guess)

So, I trimmed off a few characters, and started testing. It worked, and came out of Sleep mode just fine. Then I had to do another cycle of testing, to make sure it was not the third channel setting that had fixed it. Indeed, all the previous (broken) channels now work, so I am pretty comfortable that it was the excessive length of the encryption string. That would also explain why no one else has reported the problem. My settings were bad, in a rather unusual way.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. It was your ideas that got me close enough to the solution to see it.

Hi Periboob,
Excellent! If I don't have the answer I try to get the user to think about it This method worked so good deal! Enjoy coming out of sleep mode!

Raj