Hi, I have a Linksys WAG54G 802.11g ADSL gateway. I am using it to connect three of my computers to the internet(One Dell Laptop and two self-built Desktops with 802.11g PCI cards) The laptop and my first PC connected straight away, very little setup needed. The laptop works on the internet in any room in the house. The third PC (The one listed at the bottom of my post) Doesn't seem to want to work. The 120GB drive was my primary drive, the network just wouldn't connect, occasionally, the IP address would change itself to either 0.0.0.0 or one starting with 168.xxx.xx.xx, rather than the 198.168.1.103 that the gateway had it down as?? ( I found a program called newdotnet which I removed in control panel and it fixed the IP problem for a few hours, then the problem returned, but no sign of suspicious applications) Anyway, I swapped the drives over and re-formatted the 80GB and installed Windows XP on it and i'm now running that as my primary drive. At first, I installed basic drivers, Nvidia graphics/motherboard drivers, monitor drivers, sound card drivers and then the network card drivers and it's setup utility. The network connected instantly as if by magic and I had full use of the internet. Signal strength was stable and at 90% and it was running at between 48Mbps and 54Mbps. I installed Panda Platinum Internet Security 2004 and Pest Patrol and ran the machine for a day and a half with no problems, then I decided to set up the gateway to permit only my computers MAC addresses (ideal since my neighbour got a new laptop for Christmas) I turned my computer back on and it kept blue screening, I removed the MAC address filtering from the gateway incase that was the problem, but eventually I managed to uninstall the 802.11g card and the problem stopped. Then I re-installed it and it was fine, but it would not connect to the network. I reformatted and re-installed windows again and hoped to be able to connect as quickly as it did first time, but it won't. It can see the network (SSID linksys)on the icons in the system tray,my machine seems to be trying to connect to it for hours but it always says "connection unavailable", sometimes it says "One or more networks are available to connect to, click here to view", when I do, I can see linksys, I tick "Allow connection to this network even though it is not secure" and then press "connect", the box disappears and a bubble apears over the system tray icon saying "One or more networks are available to connect to, click here to view" again, if I click on it the tock box saying: "Allow connection to this network even though it is not secure" is unticked and i'm going round in circles. To sum up (Long post) One out of three computers will not connect re-formatted drive and it connected as soon as the drivers were installed with no manual configuration required and remained stable, then started to blue screen when MAC address permit was configured on gateway (I checked the MAC addresses over, and over). re-formatted and re-installed drivers, now it won't connect (gateway has been re-set back to normal (no MAC filter).. No ammount of adjusting settings makes any difference. Uninstalled card drivers and software and borrowed card from other desktop PC (same make and model same drivers disk (one got lost))but it makes no difference so it's not the card at fault. It can't be the gateway because regardless of what settings I change, the other two PC's connect first-time every time. It can't be my PC, because it has worked for prolonged periods before and I have a fresh install of Windows on a freshly re-formated hard drive. Can't be a range problem because It's not that far away and when it did connect' the signal strength was consistently excellent. Not due to appliance interference, tried it in the day with all lights, TV's off etc and no difference?? Basically i'm completely stumped! When it does work, it's almost as if by accident with no effort, when it stops working and I repeat what I did first time, and then try everything it doesn't work???????? Any suggetsions? Sorry for the long post! AMD Athlon XP2200+ Aero7 lite 512mb Crucial pc2700 Abit NF7-s V2.0 80GB Seagate SATA 120GB Seagate SATA Geforce4 Ti4200 128mb Benq FP767-12 17" 12ms SB live 5.1 Digital

Lets make it simple. - Keep aside the laptop for a while. Remove all 3rd party cards, if any, from your desktops. We are talking abt only the 2 desktops. - Remove the H/w profiles, if you have saved any. - Remove all H/w in your existing profile; Restart your pc's; Reinstall Just have the minimum required for both h/w & s/w. - Now install your drivers in the foll order: Chipset/Motherbrd, Display, Audio, NIC. - Check the Duplex Speed's of your NIC's in both pc's are the same. - Now assign IP's - Before conn your pc's tp your ADSL gateway, try connecting them both & ping them. Also do a loopback test. - If everything wors till this point, conn one of your pc to the ADSL - see if it works, If this goes well then add your 2nd PC. This should fix it. - Observer if your connection is stable & then try connecting your laptop to this network. Best of luck Regards, Chakravarthy