Netgear WGR614 Wireless Router: Intermittant loss of conne..

I've been going crazy trying to figure this one out.

I have a Netgear WGR614 Cable/DSL Wireless Router 54 Mbps/2.4 GHz that I
bought in early 2004. At the time, I only had 802.11b cards in our laptops,
and everything worked fine.

Recently I added a Netgear 802.11g PC wireless card to my wife's new Dell
PC. From time to time, she would tell me "the Internet's been off all day".
When I looked, every other machine could connect except for hers. Looking at
her PC, the card is getting a strong signal, but no communication is taking
place.

I thought the problem might be related to the Windows XP SP2 upgrade that
I'd performed recently, but I've looked through the knowledge base articles,
and none of the reported problems seem to apply to me.

Recently I added a Netgear 802.11g PCMCIA card to my wife's laptop. Now we
have two 'G' wireless devices in the house, and sure enough, she's getting
the same behavior with her laptop now.

When a communication problem occurs:

- The router seems to be operating fine (all wired and 802.11b wireless
clients are fine).
- One 802.11g client will typically be fine while the other can't
communicate
- The affected 802.11g client shows excellent signal strength, but "little
or no connectivity". Web requests, ping, DHCP (through release and renew)
all time out.
- Trying to "repair" the connection on the affected client generally doesn't
work (DHCP time out)
- Powering down the router and powering it back up doesn't seem to do
anything
- Unplugging every other wireless device in the house (cordless phone)
doesn't seem to make any difference
- The problem occurs intermittently. Things can work for days on end, then
one system will refuse to communicate. Once affected, the system doesn't
seem to recover by itself.

Here are some additional details:

- I was using 128-bit WEP. I've tried dropping to 64-bit WEP with no
apparent difference in behavior.
- I have an access list set up by Mac address.
- I updated the firmware in the wireless router to the latest version - no
difference.
- There appear to be many versions of this router (WGR614, WGR614v2 -
WGR614v5). I have the original version with the "v#" suffix.

Does anyone have experience with the WGR614, or just have some suggestions
as to how I can troubleshoot this?

Thanks very much in advance.

-Scott

If your running SP2 on XP disable the inbuilt firewall on the laptop, as a
suggestion to start with
"Scott Smith" <scottseansmith2_NO_SPAM.TakeThisOut@NO-SPAM.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:v30Ad.35545$nP1.32700@twister.socal.rr.com...
 > I've been going crazy trying to figure this one out.
 >
 > I have a Netgear WGR614 Cable/DSL Wireless Router 54 Mbps/2.4 GHz that I
 > bought in early 2004. At the time, I only had 802.11b cards in our
 > laptops, and everything worked fine.
 >
 > Recently I added a Netgear 802.11g PC wireless card to my wife's new Dell
 > PC. From time to time, she would tell me "the Internet's been off all
 > day". When I looked, every other machine could connect except for hers.
 > Looking at her PC, the card is getting a strong signal, but no
 > communication is taking place.
 >
 > I thought the problem might be related to the Windows XP SP2 upgrade that
 > I'd performed recently, but I've looked through the knowledge base
 > articles, and none of the reported problems seem to apply to me.
 >
 > Recently I added a Netgear 802.11g PCMCIA card to my wife's laptop. Now we
 > have two 'G' wireless devices in the house, and sure enough, she's getting
 > the same behavior with her laptop now.
 >
 > When a communication problem occurs:
 >
 > - The router seems to be operating fine (all wired and 802.11b wireless
 > clients are fine).
 > - One 802.11g client will typically be fine while the other can't
 > communicate
 > - The affected 802.11g client shows excellent signal strength, but "little
 > or no connectivity". Web requests, ping, DHCP (through release and renew)
 > all time out.
 > - Trying to "repair" the connection on the affected client generally
 > doesn't work (DHCP time out)
 > - Powering down the router and powering it back up doesn't seem to do
 > anything
 > - Unplugging every other wireless device in the house (cordless phone)
 > doesn't seem to make any difference
 > - The problem occurs intermittently. Things can work for days on end, then
 > one system will refuse to communicate. Once affected, the system doesn't
 > seem to recover by itself.
 >
 > Here are some additional details:
 >
 > - I was using 128-bit WEP. I've tried dropping to 64-bit WEP with no
 > apparent difference in behavior.
 > - I have an access list set up by Mac address.
 > - I updated the firmware in the wireless router to the latest version - no
 > difference.
 > - There appear to be many versions of this router (WGR614, WGR614v2 -
 > WGR614v5). I have the original version with the "v#" suffix.
 >
 > Does anyone have experience with the WGR614, or just have some suggestions
 > as to how I can troubleshoot this?
 >
 > Thanks very much in advance.
 >
 > -Scott
 ><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->