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Daughter's router issue

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Cobra951:
I think its transmitter is dead, plain and simple.  But I want to ask about any other possibilities.  She suddenly couldn't see the wireless LAN at all from her laptop.  She was blaming the laptop, but nothing she did with the network settings/wizards made the network visible.  Hole in the ether.  So I asked her to try her old, dying laptop to see if it could connect.  Nope.  It can't see the wireless point at all either, and it does see a weak network somewhere in the neighborhood.  So it's receiving, just nothing from their router.  I had her check the router settings, power-cycle the router, and even change the broadcast channel from 6 to 11.  Nothing.  Router says "I'm working fine!" even under the Wireless tab.  Everything else says "you're full of shit."  This is a Linksys WRT54G.  Anything I might be missing here?

Cobra951:
Unbelievable.

I spent over 90 minutes on the phone with her.  I had her try out 2 different laptops, both of which couldn't see the wireless point at all.  One saw a faint network elsewhere briefly, so I concluded that radio interference was not the culprit.  They had a 2nd WRT54Gx laying about, which took a while to find, so the first conversation ended.  After it was found, I get the 2nd call while I was outside taking a walk.  They got the spare router from some random client of her mother's, so she had no idea what the login name and password were.  (Not admin/admin.)  Had her look up how to reset the router completely.  Did that.  Then tried to set it up.  By then I was back at the house, so I started walking her through all the different pages in the web applet for the modem.  No way would it see the external IP address, so ended up using the setup CD, which did the trick.  After all that, same problem!  Wired internet works.  Wireless is a hole in the air.  Nothing!  No network detection.

Then as an act of desperation, I suggested she turn on the Nintendo Wii and enable Connect 24, to see if it could detect the wireless point.  The system wouldn't turn on.  Why not?  It was unplugged.  I asked why it's unplugged.  Because the plug it was using was now taken up by the new wireless camera security system.  When was that installed?  Today!  FUCK!

So, bad logic in an early diagnostic step.  IT WAS radio interference.  Nothing is wrong with the original router.  Had her start going up the channels from 1.  2 did the trick.

Problem solved.  Goddamn.  For a geek, I sure hate technology.  And I didn't even mention the phone conversation getting cut off when the install CD told her to unplug the modem.  They have IP phone.   ::)

Quemaqua:
Haha, man, that's a pain.  I'm sure we all feel your pain.  Technology can be infuriating on many levels, even when you're as close to it as we are.

Cobra951:
At least I got to talk to her for a long while.  She was so upset.  She started crying at one point.  After we got it all sorted out, I mentioned it wasn't as bad as all that, right?  "Yes it was!"  I told her that now she knew how to deal with router issues from scratch--setup to security, so it wasn't a waste of time.  I also told her the original router is a perfect spare, and it's already set up the exact same way.  She seemed willing to accept that, or maybe she was just happy she could finally get on the internet on her own computer.  Either way, she was happy, which made my day.

Quemaqua:
Well, that's how one learns.  That's how I learned everything I know about computers... from my computers screwing up and me having to figure out how to get them fixed.

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