I use a gigafast wireless card in my laptop to access my neighbor's cable connection when I need the extra speed for downloads. I've used this method for a month but this week when I connect (have to enter his WEP code) it shows that I am connected, good signal strength, yet when I open a browser window server is not found - can get to no web pages. Does this mean that his cable provider has a down server or has something happened to my wireless card?

Yes, I know I can ask him but he's been away with friends from Turkey. To his knowledge everything is fine...

Have you looked in the Internet Explorer/Tools/Internet Options/Connections tab? What connection is selected there? I think it should be set to LAN (Local Area Network). I haven't used wireless very much and so this may not be correct.

Dwight

It's never been set on it before and the wireless has worked. But I did change it to LAN now and still no luck. I e-mailed my neighbor and told him he might be having trouble with his connection. In the meantime, I restored my system settings tp the last successful date I had a connection and still no luck. Thanks for your help, got any more ideas?

Do I remember correctly, that the laptop computer is a Windows 2000 Operating System?

Do you have a wireless network connection icon down by the clock? If so, double click on that connection is see what the status of the connection is showing.

Thanks,

Dwight

on my lappy i sometimes have to shut down the computer then restart and it will then locate and give me the option to conect wireless .maybe
you can try that.

Dwight, I'm up in and running with the bigwigs now. I have a Sony Vaio with Windows XP - set me back a pretty penny - well hundreds of thousands actually...

Anyway, finally got in touch with my neighbor and he called Comcast, his provider. His internet connection is fine but it's his router that isn't working. Since he never goes wireless he was not aware of it. At least I now know it wasn't a problem on my end. Thanks Dwight and Dodgecity for your input

I also have Comcast.

Once in a while I have the same problem. I have to shut off the cable modem and turn it on and let it re-boot and then works fine for awhile.


Never hand that problem before I installed the wireless router.

I've heard several people say this about their broadband internet, both cable and DSL. I was having the same problem too with my DSL. At various times during the day it just loose the connection until I rebooted my modem.

The interesting thing is that it suddenly stopped happening a couple weeks ago when I did some major maintenance to my computer and got it running it top health.

I don't know what fixed it, but I'm kind of leaning toward a worm virus that affects your Internet connection, but my virus software has never found such a thing.

I had done pretty much everything but call my service provider, which should have been my first step.