I installed a netgear wireless usb adapter a few days ago and I am having issues with it not staying connected. I originally had a belkin N150 adapter for about 3 wks upon moving my desktop out of the house 80 ft away in the garage. I have Windows XP and TDS telecom is my internet service provider. The belkin for the most part worked fine but I seemed to have trouble streaming videos without it keep buffering often. It very well may have not been the belkin but i wasn't sure so i went to walmart and bought 3 different adapters. I uninstalled the belkin and installed the Netgear N300 and it was working fine but after about 30 minutes it dropped a connection. I wanted to try the next one so i proceeded to uninstall the N300 and install the N600 and upon uninstaling the 300 , I took out the disc while it was uninstalling and I believe it was at that time it went into safe mode.
I booted it down and back up and one thing i did notice was that everytime i went to add/remove programs, i saw a netgear there but there wasnt a change/remove tag on it. I still instaled the other devices one at a time and was still having issues with the adapter not being detected. I did system restore to before the point of removing the belkin and installing the N300, reinstalled the N300 and I believe it was fine at that time as far as connecting and detecting the adapter. That other Netgear was also not showing up anymore. I still wasnt satisfied as upon restarting my pc, it went into safe mode. I called Netgear and tried several things and the ast thing i was told to do was download the latest updates for that adapter then install using the flashdrive I downloaded to only and not the Netgear software disc.
I did that and everything seemed to be fine. So far it is working the best and last night I wanted to do a disc cleanup and defragmentation. I let it do that overnite and this morning when I came to the pc I had a blue screen saying the pc went into safe mode. I unplugged the adapter, booted it down then powered it back up. So far in the 30 minutes I have been in my garage, it has lost connection twice. I checked the usb connections, the 2 in the front and even plugged it in one in the rear as well. My pc was worked on back in around 2007, was an original emachines and the guy rebuilt and put more memory on . It came back with a dell casing so I'm not sure if its a dell now or what. I need to go somewhere on the pc and look up the information and see what information is on there??????? Also a few yrs ago, I had a guy work on my pc after a virus and he put a 149 GB hard drive on it. So yeah I need to be familiar with what type of machine it is now. I know it doesnt have a high speed usb port on it. I did install a cd burner, ( says on it compact disc rewritable, dvd multi recorder, dvd + rewritable.) It has 2 usb ports on the front and 2 on the rear.
Its keeping the connection fine now for about 30 mins straght since the 2 times it dropped but I just wanted to get with you guys to see whats going on and if theres anything I can do to eliminate all of those troubles. I wanted to make sure the connection of the usb ports are in tact and not just any little touch of the cord of the adapter will cause it to drop connection, though the modem is high and nothing is able to touch the cable. Also, I have an Actiontec 724 or 7224 wireless router thats in the house. My wifes laptop and her desktop and the ps3 is hooked up to it also. It is about 80-100 feet from the garage, maybe as much as 120 including the walls. The technicians say the range of the N adapters would be around 130-150 ft I believe.
I also wanted to make sure that I didnt have any driver problems or anthing go bad and if there are things you guys can tell me to do to check and see nd make sure I am good to go or suggestions I would greatly appreciate it. Darn , i noticed that with the garage door open, the signal is much much better. Its an 18x21 shop and the pc is at the back wall so its about 20 ft from the garage door. It should be able to pull through that door just fine though i would think.
Oops it just dropped again, about 40 minutes after it last did it but its holding 54 Mbps with the garage door up. I have seen it hit i think 48 once with door down, but 36 highest average , and fluctuation between 18 and 24 also and going as low as 5. The TDS tech told me my Actiontec router is putting out a max of 6 Mbps though.
ALSO, WHEN IT DROPS A CONNECTION, I UNPLUG IT AND PLUG IT BACK IN AND IT RECONNECTS RIGHT AWAY