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Wireless connection problems with lap top to Live Box


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We have a live box (wanadoo) connected to ADSL no problems.

We have just bought a lap top with wireless capability and have set it all up eventually!! and are now networking and sharing the internet access BUT the wireless connection keeps disconnecting.

Sometimes it will stay on for ages then last night it was going off every two minutes  and you have to right click and press repair, it does repair and reconnect but then will go off again.

I have just been ok for an hour and then bingo off it goes again.

We have moved the phone, reading that it could cause a problem, but to no avail.

Any suggestions, I am not a complete wiz on the technicial side but any helpful ideas would be appreciated or a referral to a web site perhaps.

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The most likely case is a poor signal between the livebox and the laptop. Mine (albeit the external USB wifi adaptor) can "drop out" because of the very thick walls in our house...

I can't see what the 'phone has to do with it, I'm afraid.

Failing that, reload the drivers for the livebox (as far as I can tell, you need to remove the entire program first), I needed to do this about 3 times before my set-up settled-down.

What OS are you using? And it's not a Mac is it?

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We had the same problems. We changed modem/router from the Freebox and now use a Netgear DG834G, best thing since sliced bread, never dropped the connection once, and I use my laptop all over the large farmhouse with very thick walls. Unit costs about £60.

[:D]

 

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Please pardon my ignorance folks, but what is a 'live box', I don't

live in UK so am probably out of touch with current terminology. Is it

a wireless modem?. I presently use a Siemens Speedstream on wirless

broadband with 'Etisalat' here in the UAE, is such a unit compatible

with French systems as I would like net access when visiting house in

Normandy. My present system works well with a wireless adapter on the

PC usb port and a 'creative' notebook adapter on my (ancient) toshiba

laptop. There are, no doubt, lots of technicalities involved but its

just not my field, I just hit the keys!!!!!!!!

I suppose my basic question is ....how to get the cheapest (pay as you go???) broadband access in area 50?

Any help to a computer-phobe will be very appreciated.

Regards

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Livebox is Wanadoo's gimmicky (in my view anyway) wireless router. It offers some other facilities too like cable TV. I found it wasn't very reliable. They provide a USB 'dongle' as the wireless connector for your laptop and I found it got in the way. Also the Wanadoo software takes over your machine! In the end I removed the Livebox and uninstalled all the software and connected instead using my Netgear DG834 brought form UK. It works fine... better in fact.

For the dropout problem at the start of this thread I agree with the earlier suggestion of trying different channel numbers in the router configuration. Ours works up to about 50 metres into the garden.

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I wouldn't bother with the "helpline". My last (and only) call lasted 50 minutes and cost around 12€ from memory, and at the end of the call I was no wiser then when I started.

You could call into a FT shop if you happen to visit your nearest big town? Or post it AR to Wanadoo support?

Incidentally did you notice how hot the dongle gets?

You don't really need another piece of wire hanging off your laptop, it makes the pc rather cumbersome, n'est-ce pas?

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How can you take away the livebox and continue to operate wi-fi, you have lost me there, or is this Netgear thing a router?

Just a word of caution, some may recall that I tried to load another PC onto my Livebox using a Netgear dongle, it just would not work.  Despite being told by FT that only a SAGEM dongle would work, when they could not get one, they decided that the Inventel dongle was OK with a SAGEM livebox ( there are two different makes of LiveBox) , it then became clear that  you have to have the Livebox CD from Wanadoo that comes with their SAGEM ot Inventel product to add another PC,  the Netgear one would probably worked have with the Livebox CD but as it works OK, I'm leaving it welll alone.

 We now both PC's on the same Livebox and it works absolutely perfectly, in fact faster than some UK PC's on Broadband I used over Xmas in the UK[:D]

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The Netgear DG834 (and there are other similar pieces of kit by Lynksys and others) is an ADSL modem/router with a built-in firewall. So it makes the internet connection and you can connect to it either by a LAN cable (up to 4 connections) or wirelessly. In my case my laptop was already wi-fi enabled woth n onboard card, but for the Livebox and Wanadoo software you need to load the provided USB dongle. I hope this makes it a bit clearer.

In my opinion it's far superior to the Livebox.

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Interesting use of the word ''dongle''. I assume it the very

descriptive term for the wireless adapter that is plugged into my PC

usb port on a trailing lead (presently blu-tacked to PC case). The lap

top wireless adapter is a card type which slots into the card port,

leaving the usb port free for whatever.  It works very well and

doesn't cause any inconvenience.

Regards

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Steve

That's it! Perhaps "dangle" would be better! The actual "aerial" is too thick for it to plug directly into my USB sockets so I had to use the supplied extension lead, and thus the clutter. I'm now back on my internal wireless card.

Sid

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