In order to reduce the number spam posts to Microsoft's public newsgroup microsoft.public.windows.networking.wireless, we have decided to require people to become a member of EggHeadCafe prior to posting. This free service is made available for people who do not have NNTP access where they work. For best results, you will want to sign-on to this newsgroup via your favorite news reader and view your reply when you get home.

Strange XP SP3 wireless problem

Gregg Hill posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 2:15 AM

Hello!

I am helping someone remotely and typing this as I attempt to fix the
problem.

I have a user with a Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop that has a bizarre problem
with its integrated Intel 2200BG wireless connection. When hard-wired, the
laptop works fine. When connected via wireless, it cannot browse the web,
but it can ping by IP and by domain name.

It has XP Pro SP3 with all current updates, the driver is the latest from
Dell, and I tried the latest one from Intel. It connects to a Netgear WGR614
wireless router with its latest firmware.

I have a strong signal and either letting Windows manage the connection or
using the Intel ProSet management app results in the same behavior. What is
so odd is that ping by name or IP works (network layer?) but browsing does
not, which is at the application layer. I can Telnet to a mail server on
port 143 (telnet is app layer). Uh, oh, here is an update. It actually just
loaded Google, but only several minutes after opening IE7 (same result with
Firefox). It is EXTREMELY slow. I have a remote control application that
normally takes a few seconds to reconnect if the computer is rebooted (it
does reconnect quickly to me when hard-wired) but it takes over 10 minutes
to reconnect via her wireless connection.

What could be causing such extremely slow wireless behavior? If we plug in a
cable, it is blazing fast. I have reset the TCP stack as well as Winsock to
no avail.

Any gurus with ideas?

Thank you!

Gregg Hill