losing connection.

peter_the_piper

Wife and I both have inspiron 1501 running on XP with all updates. She like hers to go into hibernation which is the only difference between them. Her problem is that sometimes when coming out of hibernation she is unable to connect to the internet. Firefox and IE both show "looking up BBCco.uk" for a rew seconds and then goes into a box saying unobtainable etc. Restart sometimes works 1st time other times I have had to reinput the WPA key into the Dell wireless utility. Nothing to do with the router, I don't think, as mines ok all the time this is going on.
any thoughts to a cure would be gratefully accepted.

kwikbreaks

I've had this with wireless in the past after upgrading from WEP to WAP encryption. Now I use HomePlug so don't get this annoyance.

I tried using a fixed IP as I thought it was caused by DHCP lease expiry but that made no difference. I think the problem is that it is taking the renegotiation of the connection with the router longer than some timeout period in Windows but don't know what period needs increasing.

I was mostly able to reconnect manually and don't recall ever having to reboot or input the password again to get going. The main irritation for me was that I had some network drives mapped which didn't reconnect automatically when I restarted the WiFi connection.

aerostar

The only difference between Hibernation and standby is that on hibernation, the current memory is written to the disc, and when restarting reads the file back into memory, this uses no battery power when unit is unplugged from the mains.

On standby, the electrics are mostly closed down, with some things written to disc, but the memory is held still running, so that when it is unplugged it will use a small amount of battery power. Your power settings may indicate how long it will last in standby, but if she only has it in hibernation for short periods, then standby would be better. Try it and see.

peter_the_piper

I may have confused hibernation and standby, never use them myself. Will check and see what is set up. Thanks. Peter.

kwikbreaks

From the research I did at the time I had the problem I doubt that would make any difference as it is a common problem when resuming from either.

A quick google will throw up hundreds if not thousands of reports of this. It may be that there is a fix documented which will work but at the time I had the problem I couldn't find one in a reasonable time.

totalsolutions

there is a tick box to close the wifi connection to save power when not in use, try to find that setting. When PC wakes up the connection is lost.

peter_the_piper

Just thought I'd let you know that at present the wifi save power trick seems to have worked. Thabks.

kwikbreaks

If that is so it must have been standby and not hibernate because with hibernate the power to the wifi adaptor would be cut off regardless.

totalsolutions

Thanks

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for letting us know

kwikbreaks

Just out of curiosity - did you turn power save on or off? I've always had mine turned off and saw the problem but don't recall the default.

I'm wondering if turning it on causes extra code to be run on restart which would re-establish the connection. If it worked well I'd find it handy if I ever use WiFi again regularly.