FIOS and 64-bit Vista problems, continued

Not quite perfect, but a hell of a lot better

Published on May 1, 2009 By Animesh Karna In Personal Computing

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been having problems with my wireless connection with my laptop, which is running Vista 64, and my FIOS connection (using a Verizon-provided Actiontec router). Basically, I connected a Linksys wireless router to the Actiontec router, and I'm connecting to the Linksys.

First problem is that Vista keeps trying to initially connect to the Actiontec. This makes sense, as that was to what I was connecting all this time. I think I might have fixed that.

Speed doesn't appear to be a problem. The connection still seems nice and fast.

I tested last night. I fired up multiplayer matches of Demigod and Battleforge, and the connection seemed fine. I also downloaded a game from Steam, and again everything seemed fine.

This morning, I did drop to "Local only" mode once, but selecting "repair" fixed that. With the Actiontec router, it would take several tries to get this to work, so this is a huge improvement. Let's see if this happens more often: one time can be "just one of those things". I played an online game of Dawn of War 2, which ran well, but when the match ended I saw a message on screen saying that it had lost its connection to Steam. I exited the game, but I saw that Steam seemed to be fine and the Internet connection seemed to be fine.

I'm tempted to say that "Day 1" is a success, since this is a huge improvement. I'm going to push this for a week, so let's see how that turns out.

Comments

blackcurtain

on May 01, 2009

quoting post

First problem is that Vista keeps trying to initially connect to the Actiontec. This makes sense, as that was to what I was connecting all this time. I think I might have fixed that.

what kind of config settings does the Actiontec router offer?

you could try something like a MAC address filter to BLOCK your laptop from connecting to the Actiontec router, and then config the linksys and your laptop for a static IP from the linksys router.

you can also check the netwrok settings in Vista, go manage network connections and set the connection to the linksys router as "connect automatically" when that network is detected, also if its showing a wireless connection from the Actiontec router, delete/disable that network.

it might be that when you set up the Actiontec router network you had the box for auto connection ticked, and then the same when you set up the linksys router so the OS is confused as to which wireless connection to take, it trys the AT router first and then the linksys????????? just a thought.

another thought??? are you using a verizion wireless USB modem on the laptop? if so it may by default try to connect to the version router. Don't know much about ISP's like Verizion and their wireless modems, never used them.

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