This exact thing happens to me ALL. THE. TIME. (I mean the wireless internet connection failing.) And I mean almost DAILY! I have a Linksys wireless router hooked into our cable line, and without warning when I try to connect, I will get a message that my computer can’t find the server or such.

The fix—for me—is very simple, though it is annoying. I simply have to unplug the power and “Ethernet” cables from BOTH the Linksys box and the cable box (but NOT the cable connection itself). Then I count to about 30 (1-freakin-mississippi, 2-freakin-mississippi) and plug them back in. Works every time. My internet connection is re-established, and it seems to stay that way as long as I am online. I generally have to do this in the mornings when I first get on my computer, which is, of course, after an entire night of being offline.

So you might give this a try. I don’t know what causes it to fail, and I don’t know how this corrects the problem, but it does.

Oh, glad I looked before heading out the door. Thanks, Pablo. I’ll give that a try first. How nice if that fixed her problem...annoying thought it would be for her. At least she could fix that herself.

And whatdya know. 1-freakin-mississippi, two-freakin-mississippi (etc) worked like a charm. Along with a drawn diagram of where she’s supposed to plug the cords back in when she reaches 30.

It *would* be nice if I could tell her why that’s happening and how to make it stop. I couldn’t see anything in her settings that looked out of line. Maybe she does have a wonky router. But I saved her $50 and she’s thrilled to death about that.

That’s interesting.  I don’t have a router problem, but my mom’s WebTV occasionally decides to keep the phone line active as though it were connected (no dial tone on the phone is the obvious symptom), even though she’s hung up.  My solution is the same as above: unplug the WebTV phone line, then replug it.

Whenever I have weird telephone connections that’s always my first attempt at a remedy, now.

From the solution and the time between failures, it soulds to me as if the modem doesn’t respond correctly to the automatic rotation of IP addresses (I know there’s an acronym for that, but it escapes me). 

When you unplug/replug, it’s a “hard reboot” of the modem, which probably goes through different routines to find the IP address than it does while still connected.

But what do I know?

When in doubt, unplug, wait, and plug back in.

N, re the IP address changes...that was my initial thought. As far as I can see, the router is set up to do that automatically. We were a little pressed for time so I didn’t have a chance to look at how the modem is configured. She lost the connection again this evening so is going to exchange the router for a new one tomorrow. If the problem persists, we’ll know it isn’t the router, but the router’s or modem’s configuration. (I’m wondering if the modem is set to bridge mode.) Dunno. I’ll go back and spend some quality time with the set up in the next couple of days if the new router does the same thing.

She has one of the most gorgeous and lovable cats I’ve ever met. Her soul kitty. What a beautiful red stripey fellow! I wouldn’t mind visiting him again. He likes to sit by the keyboard and lend lots of moral support.

Speaking as a former professional, my bet is that the router is bad. These routers are pretty basic and are designed to require as little intervention as possible, so there’s not much that can go wrong.

You didn’t say if he tried upgrading the firmware, but I would have tried that first, and replaced the router second.  But I might not have charged for the second call.

I’ve been completely trouble free with my router—the same router/modem set-up as hers. All her router settings are the same and look right. I feel very fortunate tonight.

I hope her new router does the trick. Don’t know what the guy did or didn’t do. He charged a lot for whatever it was.