Network Troubles (Final Answer)

It wasn't my laptop. It wasn't my firewall. Slowly every computer in the house lost it's ability to connect wirelessly. Finally the computer in the basement with the adapter matched to the router lost it's ability to connect. So the culprit must be the router's wireless capability. I guess that since it's a piece of hardware that I bought 9 years ago when we moved here, I should be pleased with a piece of electronic equipment that performed flawlessly for that long.

So today I installed a new router. The PC adapter for the old router worked with the new one but since it only connects at 11 mbps, I installed a new adapter on the basement PC. Everything is working just fine...hopefully for another 9 years.

Network Troubles (continued)

Sheesh! I thought I had this fixed, but apparently not. Laptop still goes fubar after and hour or so of Internet connectivity.

So I started shutting off stuff. Like TeaTimer. Yeah, I know it's a pain in the a$$ but it's saved my bacon really good twice so I'll trade some residual slowness for the protection. But TeaTimer doesn't appear to have been the cause of the problem.

Next shut down, the firewall. It hasn't nagged me to update it in a while and that's probably a strong argument for it not functioning correctly. Once it was turned off, things seemed better so I grabbed a recent installation package from the web and did a fresh install. So far the laptop's been running with no connectivity issues for about four hours straight.

Someone say network troubles?

You know, after working on computer equipment all day long, the last thing I want to do when I come home at night is troubleshoot my home equipment. So it's been a majorly crappy thing that the wireless part of my home network has been effed up.

At first I thought it was the wireless adapter on my laptop but I took it to work and it operates just fine on work wireless. My nephew was complaining of connectivity issues before he left for the Air Force, but quite frankly I didn't give a $hit if he could connect or not (long story).

The other wireless user in the house has an adapter matched to the router so no connectivity problems there and if I drag my laptop upstairs and plug in an ethernet cable, we fly.

I've disabled/enabled the adapter, without and with reboots. I've run every ipconfig release/renew/flush/register both via Windows and from the command line. Nothing. Deleted the adapter-reinstalled it. Zip. No Internet.

About the only thing about the router that isn't factory default is the IP Address schema which I had to change because of a VPN conflict with my work network. So today I shut down all the computers but for one cabled connection and set the router back to factory default. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! I am posting this via wireless from my deck.

My world is complete.

Gone in 60 Seconds

No, not the movie about car thievery, though speaking from experience it was realistic from the standpoint of yes, there is usually a list of wanted models that you work from. No, I'm talking about the network. The one where all our little computers talk back and forth to one another and the outside world. It takes so little to make it not work. The diagram below shows just how little it takes to make it not work.

April Fool's?

This just might be one of the funniest pranks I've seen on the web:

Automatic e-mail by G00gle

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

OK, I sort of fell for the hype. I stayed up waaaaayyyyy too late last night to see if the 'puters would go bonkers at the stroke of midnight. They didn't. I did.

Although my ISP apparently had some sort of issue. I had to power cycle my modem and router before I could post this.

The latest from MicroSnot

Seems that in spite of what users of the software might think, MS is ready to release SP3 for MS Office 2003, but is Office 2003 ready for SP3? Well, not any of the versions that anyone I know runs...

In checking to see if SP3 has already snuck onto my system, I went to the Office update site and had it poll my workstation. Yes, I know I could have just checked the about section on the help menu, but I felt like reading some fairy tales. No, I'm still at SP2 and thank heavens I downloaded the full version of SP2 to my local drive so I can deploy that company wide rather than have to fight my way to configuring Office 2003 back to usefulness on 200+ workstations. I love the way MS describes SP3 on the update site: Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3) contains significant security enhancements that practically cripple your ability to work, in addition to stability improvements. Some of the fixes included with SP3 have been previously released as separate updates. This service pack combines them into one update. Note: the colored text is my own, not theirs.

Apparently one of the small drawbacks to installing SP3 is a complete and utter inability to open files that were created before you applied the service pack. In an effort to prevent you from possibly falling into one of the gaping security holes in the suite, MS has decided to prevent the software from actually opening or modifying any existing files. Well I don't know about you, but I've always wanted to have a $795.00 piece of software that just sits on my workstation and does nothing.

Rest assured, they have a workaround. Simply edit your registry to disable all the security features that the service pack just installed. Of course my favorite line in the page describing the download is not the list of things it fixes, nor is it the list of things that no longer work after you install the download. No, my fav section is the To remove this download section...there is no uninstall feature for this download.