Maximum PC

Long story short I have a desktop with a wifi adapter since I can't feed an Ethernet cable through to the other end of the house and plug into the router. The router is a four-year-old Linksys WRT54G2. As of late, I've been experiencing a VERY spotty connection, slow transfer rates, and a frequently dropped connection. Today, the DNS went out on my desktop. I powercycled the router like I always do in the hopes that it would fix the problem. No such luck. I rebooted my computer. Stil nothing. I dug out my laptop and, to my surprise, everything seemed fine. No DNS problems, decent connection, etc.

I'm stumped and I'm about at my wits end. The wireless card is brand-spanking-new.

My first thought when this happened was to look at buying a new router, but I want to see if there's another underlying issue before I drop $100 on a new router.

Thanks, y'all!

I have the same problem. The only thing I can think of is that the laptop is a factory install, and my desktop is a rig that I built myself. Maybe it's a driver problem.

What OS do you have on your desktop computer, and what OS do you have on your laptop computer? Do you have the latest firmware revision installed on your router?

Both computers are win7, 64 bit, home edition.

I can pretty much guaranty that my router does not have the most recent firmware running on it.

My ISP is not as reliable as what I expect a cable company is. I really don't know. But if all I had to go by was my desktop, I would have dumped them already. I think it goes without saying that it's a good idea to have more than one computer because, resetting the router (almost daily) usually solves the problem, unless it's a "DNS server not responding" type of thing. That problem has to be solved a little further up stream. Anyway, once the router is reset all the factory built and installed Mac's and PC's work just fine, except for my gaming rig which is currently running just fine and is otherwise very stable.

Maybe I should uninstall and remove the wireless card and start over. It would be nice to have a decent connection to Steam.

Let's narrow down who's at fault here some more. Does a hardline connection work?