I just spent an hour of my life on the phone, talking my family through the process of connecting my sister's iBook to the family's wireless network. This involved relaying the WEP key multiple times over the phone, resetting the router, checking with the ISP to re-enter the network settings into the router, and downloading, unpacking, and upgrading the router firmware. Ultimately the router's broken-ass firmware was at fault, and hence upgrading it to version 5.3 was the solution. Curse you, Netgear MR814v2 router, and curse the horse you rode in on.
But although the router was at fault, it can't take all the blame for the situation. The crufty complexity of all the surrounding systems made it hard to isolate the problem. I could write an arbitrary amount on how broken all this was, but I don't have time. Suffice it to say I am annoyed.
You think that's bad? I had been having intermitten USB problems recently-- if my notebook (thinkpad) was not placed on a perfectly flat surface, the USB ports would become disabled and nothing short of a reboot would fix them. It would also happen if I jiggled the screen a certain way or put too much pressure on the right-hand palm rest. I started getting little system messages saying there was a power surge in my USB root hub, when no devices were connected.
ReplyDeleteI finally discovered this week that the source of my problems was an uninsulated solder joint in the cabling for my fingerprint scanner. The joint was directly under the spot on the palm rest where my right hand typically rests. I thought IBM/Lenovo was better than this.
I fixed the problem with some duct tape.
hey,
ReplyDeletei've a broadband wireless internet connection which runs three computers. every now and then i loose internet connection and i've restart it to get it back. do you know how to fix this problem ?