I believe so

I have a Blackberry with Verizon as my service provider. Verizon has a great free service - Back up Assistant - which worked great for saving my contacts from my LG phone. Doesn't work for the blackberry.

I've heard about idrive.com, but it's 4.95/month. Anyone have any other sources for online backup of contacts? I hate to pay.

I think if you just watch movies on the desktop it will solve your problems ;)


Sorry...

Like TK suggested, test with a cable, and see if it happens, as it may be a hiccup with your wireless connection that for some reason WMP, and the network browsing can't recover from quickly.

If you feel inclined, you could use "ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -t" and it will ping until you hit "Ctrl+c" you could try leaving that running while you are watching a movie and switch to it when it drops out.

Another thing you might check into is the power management settings on the desktop. (Control Panel > Power Options > click change plan settings under the plan that is selected) Change put computer to sleep to never. Click on advanced and go through the options, and see if the turn hard drive option is turned on. If so, turn it off.

*EDIT: damn watching tv while typing makes me slow ;)

I checked the PC to see if it went on standby, which it didn't. However, if the hard disk is in use, wouldn't it not stop it from spinning? Besides, it wouldn't affect my ability to see the desktop at all. ;) Thanks, though. These are some suggestions I'll give a shot.
Happens to the best of us. ;)

Well, it happened again (this time with my phone unplugged). I had ping running in the background, and once it started, it timed out. It seemed to start happening once I paused the video. I believe that's the second time it did that.

Trouble with that is that if you have a screen full of ping reports it's not so easy to tell if they're still coming back or one has stalled. Fine if what you're pinging disappears, but not always so useful if it's still there but delaying the response. It will eventually come back with a longer time, but if you're not watching for that you'll miss it.

Was that at the time that the video stopped or in conjunction with you pausing it?

They happened simultaneously. Pings to the computer started all timing out 100%.

OK - so what we need to do now is find out if it is the router or the computer by a process of elimination.

Are you in a position to ping the router from the other computer when the outages are happening?

Sure can.

These outages must happen periodically anyway... I wasn't even watching a video and, when I tried, it happened...

Pinged the desktop and router from my laptop...


Pinged the router from my desktop...


Also, the desktop cannot see my laptop.

OK, so what we know now is that the problem lies with the wireless. This may seem like it was self-evident from the start, but that would have been assumption. We know for certain now.

What we also know are that there are three possibilities. These will seem vague at first, but that's the nature of it.

One: The problem is with the wireless on the router
Two: The problem is with the wireless on the laptop
Three: The problem is not related to either and is environmental

Environmental is the least likely, but it's also the easiest to rule out so we'll start there.

How far away from the router is the laptop normally? Does distance make a difference in the stability of your connection?

What is there between physically between the laptop and the router? If it's walls, etc. is there anything running through the walls that you know of such as cabling or running water - for example, does the drop out happen when someone flushes the toilet, takes a shower or the dishwasher reaches it's rinse phase.

Probably not any of them but better to get them stricken from the record.

Last thing environmental is other wireless networks - do any of your neighbours have wireless?

Google do a free tool - Google Sync.

Well, what I'm doing when I found this happening is using my laptop from my bed, typically, which is in the same room as the wireless router. Signal strength is 99%-100%, according to Windows. It does drop out fairly quickly (to about 10% or so, or nothing at all) when I move into the other room and to the patio, most likely due to the fact that it puts a few walls, lots of piping, wiring, and the furnace between me and the router. Ideally I'd have the router in the middle of the house but the way things are wired right now, that's not possible (which is one reason why I'm idly considering getting a wireless repeater). Though, I don't typically use it there, so that is not an issue.

On the neighbors, I do believe they do but their houses are far enough away that they are out of range. However, we do have a second wireless router, a Linksys WRT54G, hooked up upstairs. It's configured as a network switch and we have an ethernet cable running from it to my router. We use it to provide my parents' two office computers with Internet and network access. It is broadcasting but with a different ssid.

If you have line of sight to the router then that's most environmental issues cleared away right there (unless your router is perched atop a coil of live cabling or inside a decorative Faraday cage...)

If you look in your Network and Sharing Centre (Start > Control Panel) and then click on Manage network connections on the left hand side just check that there is only one network visible. If you can see the one upstairs and it's not being used then it's probably worth turning the wireless off* on that router.

I think the next focus should be the laptop.

First step here is to make sure the wireless card drivers are up to date:

• Click Start
  
• Right click My Computer
  
• Click Device Manager
  
• Click the + next to Network adapters
  
• Identify the wireless adapter and right click it
  
• Click Update Driver Software...
  
• Click the "Search automatically" option

If that doesn't do the trick, next step will be to tell it what it's IP should be rather than letting it take what's given. Do you know if you assign static IPs to MAC IDs from the router?




*Probably worth turning off anyway for several slightly TFH reasons - it's using electricity unnecessarily and could be seen as an additional security vulnerability for starters.

I'll give those a shot. Turning off the other router's wireless shouldn't be a problem, I'm the only one using wireless at the moment anyways.

I'm not exactly sure how they implemented the DHCP server on my router, but it does seem like each device retains its IP address, though that could be because they keep logging in before the IP address lease expires. Other than that, it's automatically assigned according to first come first serve, I believe.

I have to run to work but after I get back I'll give things a try.

My wireless driver is up to date.

geek tip - if you have many sub folders and sometimes need to jump from one folder tree to another in the same window of Windows Explorer - you can use short cuts

Or use Environment variables in the address bar of windows explorer

just type the environment variable with percent signs around it, press enter, to go to that folder like:-
%my1%

of course my1's value should be a valid folder like c:\users\apps\xampv3\htdocs\php\xyz\123\ (on the PC and be a user or system variable)

environment variable

found this here

another image of Windows Explorer with environment variable typed in address bar with %s :-)

Mathematical model builders are too abundant compared to how much modelling problems we have around. Math is too easy compared to the difficulties of asking good questions.

do u all add words you use but your dictionary does not recognize, to the dictionary ? on word/ firefox/ other?
I do not like the red under lines. Usually can add when you spell check or by right clicking a word that is underlined in red