I have a problem that it seems a lot of people share in that periodically, although randomly, my wireless connection will drop suddenly while the signal strength is excellent. Then when trying to manually reconnect (it won't automatically connect sometimes) it will not connect. Cycling the router doesn't help, shutting down the computer doesn't usually help. Then all of a sudden it starts working normally again. It may be several hours before it happens again or it may happen five minutes later. I've tried all of the fixes that everyone recommends in just about every forum on the topic. I have tested the problem out with different wireless routers, PCs, and different versions of XP. And the problem persists in all scenarios. I have no wireless phones, not under a power line. Signal strength is always excellent, no other wireless networks in the neighborhood that I can detect. I've come to the conclusion that it must be some geothermal or solar flare activity causing this, or just simply the wireless boogey man is on the loose. Would appreciate any insight.

Anything that transmits on the same frequency as your WLAN can screw up your connection. That includes airplanes flying overhead and people on cellphones in cars on the street as well as what you said, solar flares, etc. All it takes is a transient that wipes out part of your encrypted packets then your client "thinks" it's lost connection. There are a few things you can do to help: Set your MTU packet size to the length of packet from your provider, etc. Go here: http://cable-dsl.home.att.net/ and apply the TCP/IP tweaks Navas suggests. That will at least make your client work as well as possible.