See if you guys and gals can help.
I changed over to AT&T Uverse service last week. Their modem has built-in wifi service so I set everything up to use that. The integrated wifi in the AT&T box is WPA (or better) protocol capable. Unfortunately the older wifi card I have in my computer is WEP. I got (actually, they gave me) a Netopia 3D Reach USB wifi adapter. It fired right up, connected instantly, and the connection is blindingly fast compared to my previous setup.
Then this niggling problem started cropping up...
The USB modem regularly goes dead, no activity or link lights. In a few seconds it will come back up, reestablish the link, and everything is fine. It might happen every couple of minutes, or the connection might be stable for hours before it occurs.
The wifi signal from the router seems stable. The problem appears to be on the computer end. The the connection goes away, so do all the networks on the "available networks" list. As soon as the activity light begins to blink on the USB adapter, the list quickly repopulates.
I have updated the drivers to Win7 64-bit compliant, changed the power settings for the adapter so the computer is NOT powering it down when not it in use, and swapped USB ports to make sure it wasn't a flaky port. Even tried swapping the adapter to make sure it wasn't a flaky unit causing the problem (using an identical Netopia 3D Reach USB adapter).
Thoughts?
Brad