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[broadstairs]

I have just recently started having a problem when my wife's XP PC boots in that it seems to disrupt my wi-fi. Her PC has a wi-fi card as its connection to the router and until about a week ago it worked fine. Now when it boots up it sometimes cannot get a connection when he cards wi-fi manager starts up and I have to turn off and on wireless on my Dlink DSL-2740B at which point the wi-fi manager on her PC finds it and connects OK and the connection stays up. I use WPA personal security and only allow specific mac addresses to connect and reserve IPs to macs. The other day I had my Android phone connected via wireless while my wife's PC booted and during the boot process but before XP is fully up my Android phone lost its wi-fi connection and would not reconnect. Now I've double checked and they both have different macs and I have reserved different IPs and indeed the phone had connected using the correct IP, as does my wife's PC when I have reset the wi-fi on the router.

Has anyone any ideas as to why this might happen or any suggestions as to how to diagnose the problem?

Stuart

[geep]

It could perhaps be a hardware problem related to your wife's PC - especially the Power Supply.
Had a problem here when son's PC caused interference on startup which upset the ADSL modem and caused a resync.
We could actually hear the PSU making an unusual humming - we supposed something wrong in a transformer
or inductor. He also had been having unexplained crashes. The only simple way to eliminate a PSU as the source
would be to swap it - a bit drastic unless you've a spare one lying around. Or borrow one from another PC for a while.
Good luck.
Cheers,
Peter

[broadstairs]

Happened again tonight. The PC is good and I have had no other problems with it. I'm wondering if it could be something in XP which is attempting to connect prior to the cards own software starting up as I dont use any XP wireless stuff. Cant find anything to turn off thought. Its interesting that as soon as I disable and re-enable wireless on the router the proper software connects immediately with no intervention from me.

Stuart

[pintosal]

I had a similar problem with my wife's laptop. Strange it's always the wife's laptop :-)

Anyway, I switched channels and that seemed to cure my problem.

[silversurfer44]

That's a thing worth trying pintosal.
Another thing you could do is run something like wireshark and see what is happening when you boot your wife's pc. It may pick up any abnormalities.
Are you in close proximity to other wireless networks?

[broadstairs]

Well I seem to have sorted mine although I dont really know why it happened. The wi-fi card has its own software and so I un-installed it completely and re-installed the latest level from the TP-Link site and it now seems to be working, I have booted my wife's PC some 5 or 6 times and each time it comes up fine and connects OK without disrupting anything else connected. I think this is just a quirks of XP as nothing has changed on it, I have not even loaded any fixes on it for months. Now if only I could get my wife's PC over to Linux that would solve most things I think 

Stuart

[pintosal]

Perhaps there might be a new Linux WiFi distribution specially for women, called Wife-OS.

[HPsauce]

The wi-fi card has its own software

My experience is that it's usually more reliable to ONLY install the minimal driver subset from the manufacturer and let Windows XP manage the wireless entirely via WZC.

My usual process is to NOT install any manufacturers software at all and see if Windows Update finds something suitable.
If it does I leave it at that.
If not I try to find the minimal driver install from the manufacturer and then again, let Windows Update see if it finds anything later/better.

If the manufacturer only supplies a big "package" I always try to find a way to uninstall or disable their management tools; there's usually at least an option to switch to WZC.

[tickmike]

I have not even loaded any fixes on it for months. Now if only I could get my wife's PC over to Linux that would solve most things I think 

Stuart

Now is a good time to put dual boot on it for her and tell her XP is not supported anymore .
I put dual boot PCLinuxOS and Win7 on my daughters laptop and I think you can count on one hand how many times she boots into Win7  .

[pintosal]

I agree with HPsauce.

XP is best at managing wireless. Other manufacturers' management software is usually unreliable - at best.

[silversurfer44]

I agree with Stuart, get the missus on Linux. 

[broadstairs]

I agree with Stuart, get the missus on Linux. 

Well the first step will be to convert her email to Thunderbird which runs well on both XP and Linux and you can share the data files as well. She already uses Firefox so that's OK. Main problem is that she has a Kodak dye sub photo printer and I have not yet found any software drivers to make it work.

Stuart

[tickmike]

I agree with Stuart, get the missus on Linux. 

 Main problem is that she has a Kodak dye sub photo printer and I have not yet found any software drivers to make it work.

Stuart

Is this any good       http://www.openprinting.org/printer/Kodak/Kodak-EasyShare_Printer_Dock_Series_3

Michael.

[broadstairs]

Is this any good       http://www.openprinting.org/printer/Kodak/Kodak-EasyShare_Printer_Dock_Series_3

Michael.

Michael I had just found and installed that but as yet not had time to connect the printer to my Linux PC and test it, hopeful but not overly so!

Stuart