SC

"The wireless Firewall router always has power and WLAN lights on,"

Have you tried re-booting the router? Mine sometimes gets into a muddle. I suggest that you turn everything off and let it re-start.

TP

Will try TP. Thanks.

My exchange has been updated over the past week and my connection has been disrupted.

Whatever you do, do NOT ring Pipex, I used to be with them until one day they kept me on hold for over two hours and then disconnected me as "the office is now closed"!

I also think there may be universal problems with the internet as many sites are running very slow. Barclays has just gone!

Try this test for your connection: http://www.adslguide.org.uk/tools/speedchart.asp?id=1d6fba5910610f500da5feb647e

ADAM, Barclays were having major problems last night as well.

Barclays are not compatible with Belkin modem/routers! I have had lots of problems and Belkin have been very helpful but I keep having to enter their website and do settings again. They tell me that the Barclays stockbrokers website is mentioned by many of their customers - it just shows page cannot be displayed.!

jj50, are you sure about that? I think it might be relate to the firewall? I use a belkin router with Barclays and it works fine.

Barclays internet banking is defiantly fussy about security settings and setup and changes often cause problems wit them. I use Egg Money Manager to logon to 6 different banks and when I do hit a problem its always Barclays ! I have not looked into them very thoroughly but I think that they have more layers of security checks than the others.

Interesting Spaceman - the banking I have no problem with, it is the www.stockbrokers.barclays.co.uk and I can use it but the problem keeps recurring. I tried switching my firewall off as a test and still couldn't access the site and it is the same on all my computers. Belkin have been very patient and gave me a formula for clearing the black list and it lasts a couple of days and then problems start again, till I reset.

Suppose the security is a good thing though but it is not good for instant trading!

jj, interesting, i also use barclays stockbrokers and dont have problems with them either. Sometimes these problems are not where you think, what else do you have running on your machine? do you run any popup blockers, adaware, realtime scnners etc? if so could you ist them (or email if you would prefer).

Will do Spaceman, thanks for the help shall check.

Firstly though, I had forgotten that on my first call to Belkin, the fact my desktop has Intel Pentium 4 Processor 640 with HT tech, 3.2GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 800 MHz FSB, 1024 MB memory, 320 GB hard drive (all dutch to me!!) something in that lot seemed to make things worse! Haven't really changed the settings on this since I bought it 3 months ago with E-Virus installed. On my Tosh laptop, I have Norton Security and I did install a pop up blocker on that some years ago - shall check what and the fact I spent days fiddling around with the security settings to see if I could fix the problem myself was probably the worst thing I could have done! Belkin had me change the MTU value to 1400 from a higher setting.

I think it may be the model of modem/router I have as it seems to get a special mention on the helpline recorded tape - it is a F5D7632, do you think this might be the case? I have noticed that once I get it running smoothly, the childrens' laptops seem to be able to trigger "the page cannot be displayed" too, so it is not just the desktop. We are all Windows XP if that matters!

I really appreciate your help, as you can tell, I am clueless when it comes to computers!

jj,
Sorry but this isn't going to help you much !

I have done a bit of searching for your router and it seems that there is a known problem with it, I have not found a reliable workaround, it looks as though it will need a firmware upgrade from Belkin. I am not convinced that fiddling with MTU will do anything much to help.

Although they have been helpful they have not resolved the problem, I would be very tempted to tell them that you want a reliable fix within a week or so and that if not you want the router replaced with something that works.

As I am involved in IT I would do a bit more fiddling, specifically I would turn of all security (WEP or WPA) and the routers firewall and see if that solved the problem, I would then turn the security back on and see if it was still OK. I would not want to run without any security but it might give a clue to what the problem is.

By the way there is nothing in the spec of your machine that would make me think it could cause the problems, its a nice fairly powerful PC.

As a complete aside I have belkin Pre N wireless router which I had loads of problems with until I changed the channel it uses from Auto to 12, it now works reliably however I do not know why !

jj50

If your router also has Ethernet ports then it would be worth trying to connect directly. If it works, it would at least tell you that it is the wireless part rather than the firewall.

Thanks Spacey and optimist.

Optimist, it has 4 ethernet ports and I think (!) my desktop is connected directly, i.e. the wire goes directly from the ethernet port to my pc ... or is that not what it means!!

Think if it keeps cutting out shall take your advice Spacey. After all, it claims 3 minute set up and doesn't mention a degree in IT and I have wasted a lot of my time (and now yours) on it, so if it can't be made to do what I want, then it is not much use. I feel more confident about challenging them now because it doesn't take much for them to make you feel stupid ... well, that's another issue :-) Thanks.

jj, if you have a wire from your PC to the F5D7632 then you are doing what Optimist suggested (well assuming you dont also have wireless from the same PC!).

jj

If you had a wired and a wireless connection simultaneously to the same computer, that has the potential to cause problems.

:-)

I set the thing up according to the instructions and wired the desktop. Then when I spoke to the helpline they confirmed that I was doing the reset from the computer that was wired, not from the wireless - so hopefully, that should be OK. They asked me how many laptops I was operating, etc. and seemed happy with what I was doing, so fairly confident that isn't the problem. With only the desktop running and others switched off, I still have the problem.

I conclude it is a "dud"!!!

A long time ago now, I suffered audio blackout on my PC after a Windows update, gave up trying to solve the problem and resolved myself to a silent internet world.

My laptop keyboard has been playing up for a while - due largely to the daily hammering it gets - and I have bought a Labtech wireless keyboard to use to help me out. Having installed it (and the software to go with it) I now find I magically have sound again.

Wonderful! Wish I knew how it solved the problem, but its great to be able to listen to Radio2 again.... :- )

I am losing my Pipex ADSL connection every 1 and a half hours , try connecting again but nothing happens, until I reset the pc and it works again, checked for viruses and spyware and updated zonealarm etc everything seems OK, any other ideas ???

I recently had an email from Plusnet stating that to increase the bandwidth for everyone they are going to introduce idle time shut off. I.E if you haven't used your connection for X amount of time they disconect you.

Sort of goes against the whole concept of "always on connection"

Might be worth emailing them to see if they have introduced this policy.

If so set your router to reconnect when the line is dropped.

ADAM, they haven't done so yet and actually have no imminent plans to do so. If they do, all you do is set up Outlook Express to read your mail every 20 minutes!

Adam, thanks

But it doesnt seem to be that, as it stopped after 45mins this time ;-((((

I am getting error code 0721, which means cant connect to remote computer, resetting my pc, it suddenly finds it again for a while, ummmm