Problem with my wireless card

[digby]

Pertinent information:

WinXP home SP1
Netgear PCMCIA 802.11b card
D-Link DI-614+ 802.11b router

Until yesterday, the card worked perfectly under both XP and Knoppix. Now, when I boot, Windows gives me a reading of excellent signal strength, but I can't connect to anything.

ipconfig /all gives this:

C:\Documents and Settings\Ryan>ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

        Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : Mycomp's Name
        Primary Dns Suffix  . . . . . . . :
        Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Peer-Peer
        IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
        WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection:

        Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
        Description . . . . . . . . . . . : NETGEAR MA401 Wireless PC Card
        Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-30-AB-22-74-A2
        Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
        Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
        Autoconfiguration IP Address. . . : 169.254.200.64
        Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0
        Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

        Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
        Description . . . . . . . . . . . : 3Com 3C920 Integrated Fast Ethernet
Controller (3C905C-TX Compatible)
        Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-06-5B-D4-43-D9

I can also ping 127.0.0.1 just fine. Obviously, since it's not connecting, I can't ping anything else. (I did try, just in case)

EDIT: Now it gets really bizzare:

After plugging in the cable to post this, the wireless connection is working fine... I unpluged the cat5 to try some more stuff, and I'm still connected wirelessly just like I should have been from the start...

[Vanquish]

I dont know if this could be the problem or not, but every once in a while my Dlink router will just start going off adding like 99 new DHCP clients, with no hostname and all the same Mac addresses. It dont happen with my Linksys but the Dlink one seems to have some issue with the DHCP server. Next time it happens, check out your DHCP table and see if its full, if it is then disable it and reenable it. Thats a quick fix if it is the problem, I havn't had the time lately to look into it more.

[digby]

no... the DCHP table is fine... just 2 addresses... my wireless and the onboard NIC I used when the wireless was down... after some experimenting, it seems like it is just taking much longer than usual to connect... I still can't figure out why, though....

[BuDDaH]

Use the program that came with the card and change the type of connection setting from peer to peer to adhoc.

[santafe5000]

Mine does the same thing occasionally and all I do is open "view available wireless networks" and check the box to connect to the network. This seems to fire everything . Just might work for you.

[digby]

well, we did the easy fix. format, reinstall.

Everything works now... I did find an option: "Automatically connect to non-prefered networks" that might help too, but I'm not really sure. I keep changing too many variables at once.

[numist]

*koff*