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Have to restart router every time wife turns on laptop, at wit's end
Delzhand
Registered User, Transition Team regular
Registered User, Transition Team regular
I have a netgear WGR614v7 router for my home network, and like the title says, (very nearly) every day when she comes home and turns on her laptop (windows 7), she has no internet. My desktop is connected via a cord, so I'm never offline and I can go into the router and see all the connected devices. Her laptop doesn't show up in that list.
I've tried reserving IPs by mac address for all devices that connect to prevent IP conflicts, but her laptop, even though I've set it to a static IP that matches the reserved address, never connects at that IP. Immediately when I first set up the ip reservation, she happened to be connected and when I ran ipconfig release/renew, it picked up the new IP address. But that only works if she's already connected, and just not on the right IP, and hasn't happened since. At one point I created a batch file that would run ipconfig release/renew, but since she isn't on the network at all, it doesn't do anything.
There are maybe 8 or so devices in my house. My computer and a chromecast are always on. My android phone is on when I'm at home, her phone and laptop are on when she's home. Occasionally there's a 3ds, android tablet, PSP, or my work laptop. All the various other devices seem to pick up their reserved IPs without issue.
My router has the latest firmware, every device which ever connects to the network has an IP reserved, but it seems like the laptops don't respect that setting. Is there anything I can try? As a last ditch effort, I'm thinking about picking up a new router to see if the issue goes away, but I'd rather exhaust all options that don't require money and me to return a purchase if they fail.
I've tried reserving IPs by mac address for all devices that connect to prevent IP conflicts, but her laptop, even though I've set it to a static IP that matches the reserved address, never connects at that IP. Immediately when I first set up the ip reservation, she happened to be connected and when I ran ipconfig release/renew, it picked up the new IP address. But that only works if she's already connected, and just not on the right IP, and hasn't happened since. At one point I created a batch file that would run ipconfig release/renew, but since she isn't on the network at all, it doesn't do anything.
There are maybe 8 or so devices in my house. My computer and a chromecast are always on. My android phone is on when I'm at home, her phone and laptop are on when she's home. Occasionally there's a 3ds, android tablet, PSP, or my work laptop. All the various other devices seem to pick up their reserved IPs without issue.
My router has the latest firmware, every device which ever connects to the network has an IP reserved, but it seems like the laptops don't respect that setting. Is there anything I can try? As a last ditch effort, I'm thinking about picking up a new router to see if the issue goes away, but I'd rather exhaust all options that don't require money and me to return a purchase if they fail.
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Spend the $100 on a decent router. You don't necessarily need to go all out on an AC router unless you live in a larger house and need to add powerline adapters or something to spread your signal out, but a good modern router will pay off in other ways. Grab an ASUS or Netgear router and throw that old thing away.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Is it coming out of sleep mode or a direct power on? I've noticed a direct power on usually works a lot better than a sleep/wake type situation.
Anyway after a couple years it started to die on my Chromecast. It would just randomly lock up but only when the Chromecast was in use.
I kept coming up with little fixes that would make it better but all it really did was just make the times it'd lock up take longer in between and then it started to happen with more devices as time went on. Just a word of caution that even if you can fix it you'll probably only be buying time until it does it to more devices.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I had a lot of fights with my wife where I was blaming the chromecast when in the end it was the router. If that hadn't happened to me I'd say the laptop is to blame as well.
Have you tried to connect it to a friend's WIFI and see how it acts there? That'll be a quick test to see if it's the router or the laptop.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
The problem is that it's really not working. Thirteen years is an age when it comes to routers. The fact that it doesn't support WPA2 means that your network is vulnerable, plus newer routers have beefier innards, allowing them to handle more traffic.
I'd say an upgrade is in order at the very least.
I had an old linksys wrt54g (forget the specifics beyond that), that worked 100% without fail in every situation... except when I brought my iPad in from somewhere else. If I did that, as soon as the iPad was within range, it would bring down the wireless on the router.
If I turned the iPad off, or turned it's wifi off/airplane mode, then brought it inside and restarted/turned wireless on it would work without a problem. My router would keep running like nothing happened.
It was just that one specific situation where I brought the iPad in from outside while completely fired up that would kill it. And it would do it every time, reliably.
Just restarted the router? Yup, walk outside with the iPad and go far enough away, then walk back in and poof, my wifi is dead.
Wifi up and running for like 4 months without fail? Yup, accidentally forgot to deal with the iPad and it killed it dead.
Some devices just do strange things to some routers.