New wireless router install: PC keeps dropping DSL connection

[Pekmboyd]

I'm a computer novice (I can USE them, but anything else is foreign) trying to get my home PC and laptop networked and using the same internet connection. My DSL modem is outside of the apartment complex, and the old configuration was an ISP-provided router connected to the wall jack and then to my PC. I bought a wireless linksys router with the intention of having the PC connected to it by cable and bought a wireless network card for the laptop. The CD that came with the router kept detecting a cable connection, but we have DSL, so I had to call tech support. After several hours on tech support with linksys, the current cable route is: Wall to old router. Old router to Port 1 of wireless router. Port 2 of wireless router to PC. She also had me pinging things and configuring things and disabling something...This works, and I was happy. The laptop works great, no problems. The PC, however, drops the internet connection every so often (could be 5 minutes, could be half an hour), no consistency when it happens. Sometimes I have to restart, sometimes I have to restart and power cycle the routers, sometimes I just have to wait a little while....very frustrating. Suggestions for things to try? Please be as specific as possible, I don't want to inadvertently make it worse.


I haven't been able to set up the network between the two yet because of the internet issues, but if anybody has suggestions for that too...I appreciate any help.

 

[Pekmboyd]

Update on problem - more details

My husband has been trying different things to bring the internet connection back up, and it turns out that the ethernet cable that goes from the PC CPU to the new wireless router Port 2 - unplugging it from the router and plugging it back in works to bring the internet back up everytime it fails....so I need suggestions on how to fix settings or something to keep from having to do that. It seems to me, in layman's terms, that the computer stops looking for a connection, so when we disconnect and reconnect, it goes "hey, there it is"....how do I get it to always be looking for the connection? Is this even really my problem?

 

[alesh]

Is it possible you have a dial on demand turned on?
Or disconnect after n seconds of idle?

A.

 

[Nodsu]

I hope you do not have to "dial" a connection when you connect the laptop or the PC to the internet..

When the PC disconnects, do you get the "network cable is unplugged" icon and message in the lower right corner?
If yes then you might have a bad ethernet cable or a problem with ethernet speed autonegotiation.
Try with another cable and/or set the ethernet link speed manually to 100Mbit full duplex in your networkcard properties in Device Manager.

 

[Pekmboyd]

Problem Solved

Thanks for the suggestions - if you're interested, this was the problem:

When I originally installed the wireless router and finally got the PC working on it, everything looked fine. Then I installed the wireless adapter into the laptop, and it seemed to work great, but the PC started dropping internet. Tech support and almost everybody I talked to thought the problem was in the settings of the PC somewhere. Turns out, it was the laptop...when I had installed the adapter and configured everything, I hadn't disabled DHCP server capability from the laptop, so it kept resetting the router IP address (I think this is what the tech guy meant, I might be a little off on the wording). Once I disabled DHCP from both computers, everything worked fine.

 

[jpgnmt]

Along those lines

I was following this thread to see if it helped with a problem I am having. I have eight computers and a printer hooked to a network. Three of the computers use wireless to hookup. All is great and then a computer we call Gserver will lose the connection with one we call Netprinter. Gserver can still see the other computers on the network. I thought it had something to do with one of the wireless units elbowing in. I hooked those two up to their own router and they love each other but that won't work long term as we need to send files to Gserver.

I looked on this laptop and it is set to automatically obtain IP and DNS server and under Advanced under IP it has "DHCP Enabled". Should I get rid of that? I also use this laptop at home on a wireless network that works great.

Thanks in advance.