BELKIN - ggrrr

LemonGrove

The_Pedant wrote: »

I've always found Belkin electronics to be of rather poor quality. Ever since they seem to have taken over the shelf space at PC World etc I figured there must be a huge markup. To be honest, I know a few folks who have used Belkin, & all pretty much have the same opinion. The only items I touch of theirs now are cables (when not marked up to crazy prices).

If something isn't working & you're getting no joy from support, you could just try writing to them at the address on the site.

Belkin and PC World, what a horrible combination.

thor

I have a belkin and find that I sometimes need to reset. At worst it happens only a couple of times a month so it is no big deal. Before that I used to have a netgear which was the absolute pits and used to go off every 2 or 3 minutes and I ended up binning it.
Their customer service standards must have slipped a lot recently if this thread is anything to go by because I contacted them about a router problem(I thought) and found they were excellent. I was initially worried because they were based at an Indian call centre but they had an 24 hour freephone service which I used at odd hours and the techie on the other end actually knew what they were talking about. The problem I had was a Windows networking issue on my PC so they had no obligation to help but did so nonetheless and even called back a couple of days later to see if all was ok. They have top marks in my book!

sylvia2406

I also have a Belkin N1 wireless router.
Of the three computers I have only one loses connection.
I have discovered that it is the Windows Zero Wireless configuration utility that causes the problem.

You will find this in Services - start/programs/administrative tools/services/Wireless Zero Configuration)

To overcome the problem:

I start the zero wireless configuration utility and once my computer is connected I then go back and disable the utility. My computer then keeps its connection to the internet until its switched off.

I have to repeat the process every time my computer is switched on again.

To be fair, this one computer has an old Marvel wireless adapter that is probably not very compatible with the Belkin Router. The other two pc's have Belkin USB 'N' adapters and they work fine.

I believe the cause of the disconnects is that the Windows Zero Wireless configuration will intermittently scan for a network SSID and loses connection when it can't find one or will attempt to connect to another SSID (i.e. your neighbours) which may have too weak a signal and so the connection drops out. Your network SSID is probably hidden (i.e. not broadcast) so Windows cannot find it.

So your options are:

1) Purchase a Belkin wireless adapter that will use its own configuration utility - Windows utility can then be disabled.

or

2) Don't disable SSID broadcasting.

or

3) Get updated drivers if you are using an old USB adapter in your PC. This may solve the problem if you can find an updated driver. You can then use this adapters configuration utility instead of the Windows one. I cannot find new drivers for my Marvel adapter.

or

4) Do as I do above -- start and then stop the Windows Wireless utility.