Wirelss breaks after a year of working perfectly

[Dapper Dan 0]

My wife has a Toshiba Satellite laptop that has happily connected to the Internet for over a year under Morphix-Gnome 4.1 and Mepis RC4 using an Orinoco Gold card. We use a Linksys Wireless "B" router.

 

She powered down the Satellite yesterday after successfully checking her Email and surfing the Internet. This morning after firing it up, it will not connect. I've checked everything I know and can't figure out what the problem is.

 

We also have another PC that uses a Netgear MA311 wireless pci which is working perfectly on the same network, so I don't think the problem is with the router.

 

On the laptop, the Mepis Kwifi Manager shows a signal strength of 152, "ultimate," and all five bars are green. We are using 28 bit WEP encryption, but it won't work with or without WEP enabled on either end.

 

When I pull the Gold card out, wait, and then push it back in, it seems to load. The Mepis wireless utility says the connection is through eth1 as it has always been, yet when I try starting eth1, is won't initiate.

 

I booted the Ubuntu live CD, and Morphix 4.1 live CD, configured the card under both and tried the connection without success.

 

In short, everything appears normal, but I cannot get a connection.

Can a wireless cards pick up a signal and still not connect to the Intertnet? I'm out of ideas...

 

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[adamvjackson 0]

Have you tried power-cycling the WAP? Sometimes that's all that's needed.

[Dapper Dan 0]

Well I'll be danged! I must have shut that router off, waited thirty seconds, and restarted it five times last night to see if that would straighten out the problem to no avail.

 

I just did it again per your suggestion, and she came right up! I probably wouldn't have tried it again if you hadn't suggested it! Thanks!

 

Now, I'm wondering why it worked this time and not the others...

[clutch 1]

You could *possibly* have some interference on the same channel, so you might want to switch channels on the router if it happens again. In addition, upgrading the firmware on the router might help in the future.

[adamvjackson 0]

Glad it's working for you, Dapper Dan. As Clutch suggested, you may want to check to see if there's a newer firmware revision, sometimes routers/WAPs have some instabilities. Also, I've noticed that the vendor-supplied changelog on the firmware is not always all-inclusive.