Okay, I have postd this on another forum too, trying to get help. Here's the story: "Wireless router has been playing up for the last 2-3 days, randomly disconnecting. It's always done that, but recently it's been frequent rather than occasional. My brother is constantly shouting about it and blaming me, or trying to form some sort of incorrect theory. It tends to happen to him more than me, but it has been happening an annoying amount of times the last few days, possibly 10 times in the last 2 hours. No settings have changed on the router since it was originally setup about 2 years ago." That's what it was like yesterday and a few days before. Now, using the advice from the other website, I have updated the firmware to the latest release (http://www.usr-emea.com/support/s-prod-template.asp?loc=unkg&prod=8054) and I have changed the channel from 13 to 9 so that my mum's wifi dongle can use it. IT was working fine this morning until my brother turned his laptop on. Nothing appeared on any of our computers, but an error occured on his. I suspect an IP clash, but he wouldn't let me see, nor does he have a clue. Anyway, now, after that problem, we can all see each other across the LAN and exchange files etc, but cannot access the Internet. Using the IP addresses in Firefox, I am able to connect to the DSL modem, but not the Wireless Router. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Immitation is the sincerest form of copyright infringement.

hi first thing that springs to mind is that your brothers ip address is set to the same as your router. check his address and make sure it is set to obtain ip auto from router. this would be the first thing i would try.

I think it may be that an old IP lease has just expired, because now, I haven't done anything yet because I haven't been able to connect to the router, but now everything works the way it should and I can also modify the settings of the router. The DHCP pool has a range of 6 total IP addresses, which obviously I can change, but I haven't. Now, my brother's laptop and his PC and my own Nintendo DS are the only device which use DHCP. The two other computers on my network have static IPs to avoid this problem. I'll come back here if the problem arises again, but at the moment, for soem unknown reason to me, it's working again. Sorry for wasting your time. I expect this problem to crop up again in the future seeing as i haven't done anything, so I'll see how it goes. Many thanks for your help though. :) Immitation is the sincerest form of copyright infringement.

"The two other computers on my network have static IPs to avoid " Did you EXCLUDE these addresses from your dhcp scope??? Doesn't sound like you did. Also sounds like a defective router. Are you ready for where Microsoft wants you to go today?

Yes I did, and many a time has my brother said that the router is defective, but that's simply because he actually doesn't know what he's talking about and that he thinks everything should just "work" without him having to do anything to it. Indeed it's possible the router is defective I guess, but I can't bring myself to accept that. I still think it's fixable by putting the st#ettings right somehow. As for the part about the DHCP scope: Yes. The static IPs are excluded from the scope. In fact, they aren't even in the scope, let alone excluded. Err, would that cause a problem? Immitation is the sincerest form of copyright infringement.