Hi all,

I finally thought to remove the UPS units from the area, they were causing interference. Wireless worked in 5 minutes in Windows. Using ndiswrapper, Mandriva worked in about 1 minute (1.5 minutes if you count the rebooting). But now I am having a different problem.

Wireless will randomly fail. Sometimes after 5 minutes, sometimes after an hour. Instructing the software to reconnect (either OS) doesn't work. Rebooting the computer is not enough. I must also reboot the router and sometimes move it. I even moved the broadband router away from the wireless router, still no improvement. The signal bars can be over 90 percent (in Windows) and this will still fail.

The fact is, when I reboot the router and the computer, I do not need to change any settings in either for it to work again. So I think the software settings are probably correct.

Looking in /var/log/messages, I thought dropping out was due to "link beat not detected" at least once, if not more than once. I don't know what this is, but if it happens with 90 percent signal strength, I may give up on wireless. Any ideas? Signal threshold? Preamble? Anything?


Equipment:

Abit KV7-V w/Athlon 2900 (TigerDirect)
one Gig PC-3200 RAM (400 MHz)
KT-600 chipset, VIA 6103 onboard ethernet (wired, not used)
D-Link DWL G-520 (PCI, revision B3 = atheros chipset)
D-Link DI-524 router
350W ATX PSU by PC Power and Cooling
Running Win98SE and Mandriva 2006 retail


Any serious thoughts would be seriously appreciated.

Mike (saturndude on slashdot, spywareinfo, etc.)

Have you tried different wireless channels (in the router setup)?
You might be getting interference from someone else's wireless network nearby. They would not necessarily be visible if they are not broadcasting their SSID.

berneid has an excellent suggestion. my understanding is channel 11 has the least likely chance of encountering interference with common other electronic devices (e.g., microwaves, phones, tvs, etc.)