My wireless router hangs once in while for no apparent reason. It usually just requires a power off and power back on to re-establish the connection. Once the software itself became corrupted and I needed to re-install that but that was months ago. Does it recognize any other wireless networks?

Hope this helps

Cheers

Mike, I think your instincts are good. If the router itself "hung up" from something like a power blip, it would break the wireless connection with every machine connected to it. If only your laptop lost its connection, it probably was signal strength. There's usually some sort of status page for your wireless connection that should show you info about the signal strength. You can slowly walk around with your laptop and see how your signal strength varies. Depending on where you want to be able to go with your laptop, you may want to relocate your modem & router. Sometimes, it can matter if the router antenna is vertical or horizontal. Usually, it's more a question of how many walls and how far the signal has to go to get between the router and your laptop.

Also if your wireless router hangs frequently, you might want to try 3rd party firmware like DD-WRT. I have a linksys router I had to power cycle every day with factory firmware; haven't had to reboot it once with DD-WRT.

Barney,
I don't know for sure what NiceMedTexMD's problem is (although comments about the signal strength look reasonable) but it is sure that it is not the problem you are referring to. In the case you mention the impossibility to connect was not intermittent, it was definitive until the patch was uninstalled or ZoneAlarm was upgraded to the new version.

Cheers. Jean.

Get a free tool like Network Stumbler if only to get the nice Signal Strength Noise Ratio meter part. But for the little systray icon, my 11N D-Link does not have anything.

Visit http://www.portforward.com/ for guided/interactive instructions on hundreds of routers. If not listed, choose the closest of the manufacturer.

If you are connected to LAN, but not internet look via your browser at your router config status page. Ideally set DNS to automatic. Myself, sniffed out the best and used that with a back up.

Make sure no one is hiking on your wifi as that can degrade performance. Use the highest encryption, WPA2 is the present highest offered on recent make wifi-adsl routers.

On Vista, make sure to configure Private Network, else you will only see the LAN but not the internet.

There's several patches, also latest kb952709 that can cause Wifi issues on Vista. (still not been able to install this one)

Strictly personal, if happy with ZA, keep it.