I'm stumped and trying to avoid the obvious fix, which would be to reinstall XP clean or try Win 7.
I have a Dell XPS M2010 "luggable," and the wireless has been quirky for some time (and XP Pro has been getting more and more quirky as I have accumulated a lot of programs over the past year plus). I do not travel with this thing, as it is huge, so I am talking about my home network. I have recently replaced the wireless router, with the same symptoms on the new state-of-the-art router, so networking hardware doesn't seem to be the issue.
After a certain (usually fairly long, but not always) period of time, the wireless connection WILL fail. I will go down to the system tray, and, in odd symptom number one, the wireless icon will no longer be right- or left-clickable. If I hover, in odd symptom two, the popup will no longer say the name of my router, i.e. instead of "Wireless Connection (MyRouter) Speed: 24 mbs (etc)" it will just say "Wireless Connection() Speed 24mbs (etc)".
In odd symptom number three, when I go into start, networking, wireless connection and click on that, the wireless networking window EVENTUALLY comes up, but it takes a good two-to-five minutes. Bizarre.
If I plug in a cable at this stage, I'll get the "Limited or No Connection" yellow triangle, and it seems like the computer cannot get a DHCP lease.
If I disable then re-enable wireless, it gets a "failed to connect error."
My network card driver is up-to-date. I have all SPs and am all updated Windows-wise. I am desperately opposed to re-installing Windows because I have so much software on there that I use that it will be a nightmare to set it all back up, and these days, so much of it is downloaded, so you don't keep the disks handy anymore, do you?
Anyway, I would be most interested in any thoughts on this. I run two other laptops during all these odd outages and they experience no troubles with the wireless.
I have utilized the WinSockFix app with no lasting results. Virus and malware scans are up to date.
Thanks for any help.
NY
I have a Dell XPS M2010 "luggable," and the wireless has been quirky for some time (and XP Pro has been getting more and more quirky as I have accumulated a lot of programs over the past year plus). I do not travel with this thing, as it is huge, so I am talking about my home network. I have recently replaced the wireless router, with the same symptoms on the new state-of-the-art router, so networking hardware doesn't seem to be the issue.
After a certain (usually fairly long, but not always) period of time, the wireless connection WILL fail. I will go down to the system tray, and, in odd symptom number one, the wireless icon will no longer be right- or left-clickable. If I hover, in odd symptom two, the popup will no longer say the name of my router, i.e. instead of "Wireless Connection (MyRouter) Speed: 24 mbs (etc)" it will just say "Wireless Connection() Speed 24mbs (etc)".
In odd symptom number three, when I go into start, networking, wireless connection and click on that, the wireless networking window EVENTUALLY comes up, but it takes a good two-to-five minutes. Bizarre.
If I plug in a cable at this stage, I'll get the "Limited or No Connection" yellow triangle, and it seems like the computer cannot get a DHCP lease.
If I disable then re-enable wireless, it gets a "failed to connect error."
My network card driver is up-to-date. I have all SPs and am all updated Windows-wise. I am desperately opposed to re-installing Windows because I have so much software on there that I use that it will be a nightmare to set it all back up, and these days, so much of it is downloaded, so you don't keep the disks handy anymore, do you?
Anyway, I would be most interested in any thoughts on this. I run two other laptops during all these odd outages and they experience no troubles with the wireless.
I have utilized the WinSockFix app with no lasting results. Virus and malware scans are up to date.
Thanks for any help.
NY