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Hi Bill and welcome to the forum The first thing to try is re-creating the bridge, then right-clicking it, and selecting properties. Make sure everything is ticked, especially your two adapters. Once you've done that, click OK to go back to the network connections window. Hold down the 'Alt' key and you should see the menu bar appear towards the top of the window. Click Advanced. At the top of this window underneath 'Connections' you should see a list of your network adapters. As far as I know the bridge should be at the top, followed by your wireless, followed by your LAN card. If that is not the case then try setting them in that order by using the buttons at the side, disconnecting your Ethernet cable, and plugging back in. If after a minute there is no change and you still can't access the internet, then log into your router and make sure MAC based access conrol is turned off in your wireless settings. Which of your network adapters show the yellow '!' sign when you can't connect?

I just use an old pair of netgear routers I've accumulated over the years. A rangemax to serve the internal LAN, and an older DG834G on a seperate network for guests etc. Both use WPA 2 Encryption, and operate on different channels so they don't interfere with each other. Glad to hear I've helped you out, and that everything is working fine.

Hi bdogan and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help. I'll start asking away as instructed: What type of wireless receiver (USB dongle, PC card?) are you using on your laptop? What is the model number of the netgear router you are using? When you scan for available networks, do you see many others around you, or only a few? If you move the laptop closer (up to about 3 meters away), does the connection improve at all? Do you have anything like a cordless phone near your laptop?

I can't say for certain; wireless can be fussy, and getting a perfect signal can be difficult. One thing you can do is to make sure your wireless card and router both have the latest firmware. Firmware for the router will be located on D-link's website: D-Link Xtreme N Dual Band Gigabit Router You could also try varying the distance between your computer and the router. It is normally recommended to keep them at least 10 feet (3m) apart. Other than that, I don't know if there's much more I can tell you. Getting the best signal will probably be down to experimentation.

No problem ;) A connection from one device on both bands (2.4 and 5) isn’t possible, because ‘n’ only uses 5Ghz, and a/g can only use 2.4GHz. Both of the router’s aerials will support both frequencies as long as you keep the mixed 802.11 mode on. If you had two wireless cards in your computer, one ‘n’ and one ‘a/g’ then I suppose you could connect on both bands, but there wouldn’t be much point, since 'n' is so much faster. I think that under the best case scenario, assuming very good signal strength and quality, you will have two connections on one band. Each areal is independent, and will support a connection on its own. The router will automatically make these two connections if the signal is good enough. If the signal isn’t good enough for whatever reason, it will probably revert to one connection to minimize data loss. Factors such as walls or electrical equipment between your computer and the router will degrade the signal. Hope this clears things up a bit more.

Thanks very much wolfey, I do my best to cover all areas, but networking is a pretty big topic.

I've done a bit more reading, and it looks like each of the two antennas on your router will generate a separate connection each, in order to create two simultaneous streams of data, and double the throughput. It definitely looks like everything is working as it should, and that you're getting the most from your router. You don't have to bother changing the 802.11 mode if you don't want too. Excuse my inexperience with the topic; I'm not sure who's learned more here, you or me! :D

Sorry, I should have mentioned that 802.11n isn't a fully established standard yet, so only working Drafts of it are actually built into network devices. 600Mbps is the theoretical limit of the technology. Taking a closer look at the manual for your router, it seems to support Draft 2.0, with a maximum rate of 300Mbps. The actual rate you will get depends on both the signal strength and the signal quality. Wireless access points automatically vary the speed of the connection based on this. I can't be certain why two networks appear, and the manual is short on details there, but I'd guess it might be to allow different devices on the separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks to communicate with each other. You could try switching to '802.11n Only' mode in the router and see if the other network disappears when you next connect.

Hi Paul, Following a quick bit of research, I'm pretty sure your router is operating in mixed 802.11g/a and 802.11n mode. Basically, it is broadcasting on two separate frequencies to maximise compatibility. Older 802.11g/a devices (operating at 54Mbps) can only connect via 2.4GHz, but newer 802.11n devices (going up to 600Mbps theoretically!) connect using 5GHz. According to Wikipedia: "To achieve maximum throughput a pure 802.11n 5 GHz network is recommended" I don't know how accurate this is, having never used an 802.11n network myself, but if you aren't using any older devices then I don't suppose there would be much harm in disabling the 2.4GHz network in your router. From what I can tell from the manual, changing the '802.11 Mode' option in the Wireless Settings page to '802.11n Only' should do the trick. Remember though that after the change anyone who visits and wants to use your wireless will have to have a newer 'n' receiver or it won't work for them.

Hi I4n, Messenger will report this error if it can't find a route to Microsoft's severs. This could be caused by several things, but the most likely reason is the network adapter having the wrong information. So we can check this, please connect the computer to the network you want to use it on, then bring up the command prompt, and enter; ipconfig /all Then right-click on the window, select all, and paste the results into your next reply.

I have seen this happen when the drivers for ACPI (power management) are not installed correctly. Try going to Control panel, System maintenance, then device manager, and checking through the list for any yellow question marks. Did your motherboard or computer come with any driver CD(s)?

No problem; glad to hear it's all sorted :)

Hi Stupo, I have experienced the same problem before. I am willing to bet that your brother in law is using a UK keyboard, but that his keyboard layout in windows is set to US. The " and @ keys are switched between the two layouts. To check and change this in Vista; Go to Control panel, then to 'Regional and Language Options', Select the 'Keyboards and Languages' tab, then click the 'Change keyboards' button. In XP; Go to Control panel, then to 'Regional and Language Options', Select the 'Languages' tab, then click the 'Details' button. If there is a US keyboard layout there, Click Add, and find the United Kingdom layout, then add it. Once both are there, select the US layout, and click Remove. It will remove the US layout after a re-start. Hope this helps.

Hi there, The error you are getting for the '6to4' adapter can be ignored; it is a networking component that allows IPV6 to work over an IPV4 network. It will just be giving this error because your modem can't support IPV6. Basically it's not needed, and won't affect your connection. I suspect the problem might be the driver for your modem. Are there any other yellow triangles with exclamations, or red crosses, in the device manager window? Have you ever been able to dial a connection with this laptop and modem before? Is this your laptop's built-in modem, or an external one?

The above section of your ipconfig output says that DHCP is disabled on your wireless card, and that the adapter is configured with static address information. This way, your parent's router can't give your computer the right information to use to access the internet, but your computer still thinks it is connected. Try re-enabling DHCP by going into control panel, then network connections, then finding the icon for 'Wireless area connection'. Right click on it, and select properties. Find 'Internet protocol TCP/IP'. Select it, and then click the Properties button. In this window you should see the options 'Obtain an IP address automatically' and 'Obtain DNS server address automatically'. Select both of those, then click OK, and then close. Disconnect from the wireless network, and then re-connect. Give web-browsing a try.

I'm all in favour of hibernation and sleep modes to save time, but it depends on the computer I'm using. Older machines tend to have less efficient power-saving options, and less support for standby/sleep modes. I tried using sleep (standby) mode on an old Pentium 4 running XP, and not only did it leave the fans running full blast, but it also must have left the CPU idling away to itself as the heat sink was still hot! Definitely a waste of power. Hibernation on that machine was a much better idea; dump the RAM onto the hard disk, and let it turn itself off completely. A newer core 2 quad machine running vista sleeps like a dream. Turns on and off in seconds, and I've never had a problem resuming a session. Just have to re-boot occasionally for updates.

Hi Cherrelle, It sounds like your problem might be a wireless signal that is actually too strong. If the PC using the connection is placed very close to the antenna of your wireless router it might actually be 'too much' for the receiver to handle, and drop the connection. Can you try placing the router further away from the affected computer, and see if it solves the problem?

Hi vkky, As I understand it, you have recently been unable to browse to the site www.familytreedna.com and after some research, have found a troubleshooting guide that tells you the MTU of your network adapter might be the problem. The Maximum Transmission Unit is basically the largest single chunk of data that can be sent over a network. This setting should rarely need to be altered. If you could browse to this site before, and your connection hasn't changed, then I think it is unlikely that this is the problem. Just a few things first; Is that the only site that gives you problems? Can you browse the internet normally otherwise? You said you could access it through your blackberry, is that over its own telephone network, or through your internet connection? The maximum MTU an Ethernet connection can have is 1500. If you ping a site, specifying an MTU of 1472, then the overhead cause by the ping packet is 28, so 1472 + 28 = 1500. Anything higher would take the packet over 1500, and you would receive error messages telling you that fragmentation is needed. One of the IP addresses of www.familytreedna.com is 66.249.108.74. Can you ping this without any modifiers to the command, e.g, by typing the following into command prompt: ping 66.249.108.74 You should get something like: Pinging 66.249.108.74 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 66.249.108.74: bytes=32 time=153ms TTL=45 Reply from 66.249.108.74: bytes=32 time=154ms TTL=45 Reply from 66.249.108.74: bytes=32 time=154ms TTL=45 Reply from 66.249.108.74: bytes=32 time=154ms TTL=45 Ping statistics for 66.249.108.74: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 153ms, Maximum = 154ms, Average = 153ms If that works OK, then try typing into the command prompt: nslookup [url="http://www.familytreedna.com/"]www.familytreedna.com[/url] You should see something like this in your answer: Non-authoritative answer: Name: www.familytreedna.com Addresses: 72.250.198.229, 66.249.108.74 Let me know how you get on.

Hello everyone, I have a huge interest in computers and networking, and currently work in tech support. I'd like to offer any assistance i can in the forums, and share what knowledge I have. Looking forward to talking with you, and hope I can help out :)