I am so p.o.'d with this wireless connection...how can it go from "excellent" to dropped in less than a minute? Some days it seems o.k. - will be up for hours, then on days like yesterday and today, i have WD (wireless dysfunction) ... it won't stay up. So now I am on the desktop, where the modem is connected directly, but which is virus protection challenged so is vulnerable. Any ideas? I really need to have this family available when I need you, not when the stupid wireless thingy wants to work!
TexasJoe, do I understand that you have a router so more than one computer can go out on the internet at the same time? and that that's what's not working?
I've had luck just turning everything OFF (not just to sleep, a full shutdown). All computers, wireless modem, router. Everything. GO make a cup of coffee and come back in 5-10 minutes. Then start up the modem and router. Drink the coffee. NOW turn on the computer.
I don't like and won't use the standard virus protection (Norton or MacAfee) on my computers. I have a mac (which doesn't need it) but also a pc. There are things you can download for a pc for free (or maybe a shareware donation) and guaranteed safe. I'd have to go chase them down to tell you exactly how, but if you're interested tell me what version of what operating system you're running. My email's on my profile.
The router in my house is connected to the desk top PC in my office. Sid sits with his laptop (on his lap) in the den. Often his connection goes down, so I have to unplug the router, leave it unplugged for a few seconds, and plug it back in. That usually fixes the laptop connection.
As for virus protection - I paid a fortune for Norton for years and it LET THROUGH ALL THE VIRUSES. Then I had to pay the computer doctor to fix everything, and put on AVG virus protection - it's a free download, and so far (knock on wood), it is catching quite a lot before it infects the computer. Also Mal Ware.
Texas Joe - I have lost my internet connection - was using my son's wi-fi. But they finally decided to disconnect (and having withdrawals) to save money since they have little income. I am left to use my cell phone as a modem via Verizon National Access. This means nights after 9 and weekends, otherwise i would use up minutes. I can go 2 -2 1/2 hours before it goes dead. But at least I have a internet -slow and disconnects often.
As for anti-virus: I too use AVG which I have been pleased with - the price is right (free) and it has not let anything through that I know of. Avira is also good from what i hear from others.
I don't know how old your router is, but you may need to buy a new one. Another problem could be it just needs to have the address reset. My son was having to unplug his router to reprogram the computer in it about once a week.
I run a website for the Monhegan Associates. A couple of years ago there was a big discussion about whether or not we should go non-profit. I put up a forum (phpBB) for discussion. No one used it much but I left it up, just didn't point to it except in one obscure place. Yesterday I got a note from someone I didn't know telling me that it had been discovered by porn spammers! I didn't mind deleting it, so I went onto it and looked to see. OMG! THOUSANDS of postings, many of the most horrible you've ever seen, if you can go by the titles. I checked the dates - it apparently had been taken over about a month ago. And there were literally thousands of posts in that length of time. The nice guy (really he was, it turns out!) said I'd probably been getting a lot of spam mail (I had some forwarding addresses (which came to me) on the site. I had NOT. Not ANY! Apparently the spam-catcher on my internet host had caught them all, assuming there were some. The cable internet provider catches any addressed to my cable address, but that isn't used; everything goes thru the server I use to host my websites. Interesting that it caught all the spam MAIL, but not the forum. Have you ever been spammed here, Joan?
I told my g'son that I thought on a scale of 1 to 100, I maybe used 5% of my computer. He laughed and said, "Grammy, less than 1%." He lives in my garage--I was ready to kick him out! Basically, I do not know what most of you are talking about. My son set me up w/AOL years ago & Norton (&AOL virus protector, I think). I still have Norton, so far so good, and, AOL was free but they stopped it--I think. Anyway, the internet goes bonkers routinely, especially it seems in early morning and early evening. Maybe it's everyone getting to work and then getting home--maybe it's just my imagination. But if I turn off everything and have that cup of coffee, or maybe a gallon of it, it does seem to work better. I can get so annoyed at this stuff & then think of how it used to be, how I had to shag to the library to do research, losing contact w/those I care about but now keep in touch w/email, all the good things--and I marvel at how well it does work, it simply boggles the mind.
I rent room to college men and all the rooms are wired for high-speed internet. They all go thru a router under my desk, it's blinking at me right now. Sometimes it balks, and sometimes I get messages that service is being turned off because I downloaded some kids programs--Star Trek, etc. No, not here, and then I have to jump thru hoops to get it restarted. I consider all of this stuff pretty primitive still--but as I said, it's a marvel, even when it's a pain.
Don't know how I got off onto this but I just checked on some of the houses I'd lived in over my lifetime, in Google Maps. if they are not too rural, look them up in google - and turn on the satellite and also if you have it the street view. Amazing! What's fascinating is that in one particular place not too far from downtown in Houston, there sits the tiny little house I lived in until I was 12 - it and two others are surrounded by big apartments or office-type buildings. But it's still there!!
briegull, I have at&t U Verse with a modem conn. to my office desktop, and a wireless device conn. to my laptop (in a port) in the den. The wireless communicates with the modem (so yes, both can be on the internet at the same time) so is the wireless thingy a router? I have Norton on both, but always have trouble downloading certain updates to the desktop. It says it failed, and to try again later...?? I didn't follow a lot of what your last post said, but I understand about half of all internet stuff is porn. Pretty sad.
vickie - Thanks for the Avira Antivir Personal tip. I'll check it out.
Joan - Thanks for the anti-virus tips also. Is the modem the router?
Charlotte - Same q. as above to Joan - What is my router...do I have one?
Thanks to all from your technically-challenged dinosaur.
Isn't that fun, Briegull? Another thing you can do is go to HCAD, Harris County Appraisal District, go to property search, enter the address and you'll see how much more valuable that house is than when your parents sold it. The land in your former area has increased in value like you won't believe!.. All Realtors use those sites to get data on homes they list,.. size, property size, tax rate, etc. It's public information.
If you go to HAR.com, (Houston Assn. of Realtors) look for specific property by listing your former street NAME, it will bring up any property for sale there now.
Bettyhere, I still use AOL which aggravates my children no end, because it's slower than some of the others. But...so am I!!!!
Texas Joe, I also have UVerse (thorough AT&T) I've been pleased with it since it works!! If anything stops working, I'm dead in the water. I don't have a single technical skill! I have UVerse TV as well...and it's just as good as all the others and much less expensive than Comcast and the others I checked. Anyway to save a dime, huh?
Nancy, Yeah, high-speed internet for $25 is a lot better than dial-up for @10. I would really have been driven nuts by now if I had to do this with dial-up. In this case, I'm not saving money, but rather my sanity. DSL used to be $50 when it first came out, I believe.
Nancy - Kids have other than AOL, it was about the only thing available when I got my puter, times change, but I don't want to chg my addy & besides, they all have problems w/their servers, too. Frankly, I have nothing but time, so it's slow--life is too often too fast anyway. Slow down!
I don't know about half of the internet being PORN, but certainly most of the email in the world is SPAM, of many different varieties. But in general one can avoid it as easily as one can avoid driving through certain parts of town. It sounds like you've really got screwed up with Norton. Do you have Staples stores near you? Here, they're offering free PC checkups right now. Check it out and have them look at your machine (s). Even if you have to pay a bit, it's worth it to just get cleaned up.
a very valuable tool is the free AVG.com software. It's better than Norton, etc, but you should get RID of Norton before you start doing other things, or at least disable its auto-running. Which is safe IF you have something like AVG that DOES run.
Oh Bettyhere, I sooooooo agree. Everything is so fast these days. I cannot believe how fast the kids talk. I frequently have to ask them to speak more slowly..that I cannot HEAR as fast as they TALK!
I don't know why I don't get much Spam..thank heaven! (are ads spam?) I do get some ADS, but they are usually from places where I order on line, such as William Sonoma etc. If I get anything else, I just click on the bottom to "unsubscribe". Maybe the others got the message.
NancyB my computer savvy son says when you "unsubscribe" you are validating a random attempt to reach anybody. Best to just delete if this is on your e-mail
Is that right??? Because they quit sending the emails. I just re-read your post. I don't even understand that sentence that says, "validating a random attempt to reach anybody". Gad! I'm so inept with computers. I have no idea what they are all about. The emails would say, "If you do not wish to receive anymore emails from us, click "Unsubscribe" and that word was highlighted. I clicked on Unsubscribe, a message pops up and says they acknowledge my request. It worked for me. I wonder what else I did????????
Way to cut down on spam, set up an email account to just use when visiting websites. I have a yahoo account that I use with sites I don't want to hear from. I check it every so often and averages 5,000 spam a month. I also have a netzero email that I use for places I want to receive info from but not in my main email. This would be when registering for TV, radio, newspapers, employment, newsletters, etc. I rarely get spam there, only those i sign up for. Then I have my main one through our domain name where I receive email from banks, when I order online like paypal/ebay/amazon, etc. and personal.
Texas Joe - your router is the box that you connect your cable to. It has two antennas that send the wi-fi signal out. It is the one that often will need unplugged for at least 1 minute then plugged back in. This will reboot it like we do computers.
Charlotte, O.k., let's see...first, I don't have cable service like Verizon, or is U Verse cable (it is the fiber-optic phone line, isn't it?). Second, my little wireless thingy only has one antenna, not two ( it is 2" X 3" X 1/2" thick). Are you an IT tech or mgr.?? I got out of the computer business 30 yrs ago when I switched to accounting, so as Schultz used to say "I know nothing" (remember Hogan's Heros?). Thanks for your help.
No, just years of learning. The router can have just one antenna - just ours has two. Cable, dsl, or any other line that your receive the signal through is hooked up to the router. Call your provider and tell them what is happening. Often their tech man will come do service/troubleshoot for free.
Good news - I paid up my son's internet bill through this month which will give me the month to decide where to go from here. Choices are to keep paying his internet until he gets a job or get a card for Verizon Wireless Broadband.
Interesting Joe, my first computer job (which led to me buying one) was in the mid 90s doing bookkeeping for a small book publisher. I had to learn QuickBooks and their DOS inventory program.
Re unsubscribing: A lot of places that are perfectly legitimate ask for your email address either when you visit them, or something at a home show, say, or if you order something online. They'll add you to their email list (it doesn't cost them much and it may bring you back to them for another order). But some establishments can pester you with almost daily emails about their products. It's perfectly safe to follow their directions at the bottom of the email to unsubscribe. And it works.
The ones you DON'T want to unsubscribe to are the ones that are spam, offering, er, ahem, "equipment" enhancement or hot babes from Russia or whatever. THose you should pitch without reading or responding to at all. If your mail program has a way to mark spam (they're all different), then mark them as spam and eventually they'll stop. I get my mail all set through gmail, and it has a very good spam filter, so I seldom see them unless I'm looking in my spam folder for something I should have gotten and haven't.
I do have an email address that I give out to every place I order something from, only.
Happy days are here again! I unplugged the modem, waited 10 min., plugged it in again, waiting for it to boot up, plugged in the wireless thingy to my laptop, and voila! It didn't work. However, when I went through the windows 'fix' process, it fixed it! It has been up now for about an hour non-stop, so thanks to y'all, I'm back in business in the den. Now to get the desktop virus protection done. Thanks again!
Oh, and in 3 hours, 10 minutes I have a Mariner's game due on. I do live in the Pac NW, and they are doing better this year, so I owe them a bit of fan loyalty, even though they did greatly let me down in 2002. Now that Junior is back (Ken Griffey, Jr.) I have regained more faith in them.
Diana - I know the frustration. I keep arguing with DISH. When we had it in the 90s, we had no problem - never lost the signal. We lived in Donald, OR at the time. Even during the ice storm around 2003 and the ice build up we never lost the signal. We got the current DISH when we were in Nevada. Never lost the signal there even during the thunderstorms. Since coming back to Vancouver, we loose it often. They keep telling me there are storms down south. We have not lost it today though. They have replaced the cable and LnB with no improvement. Channel 6 still has problems but they say that is the station causing that, not the satellite. Makes sense cause my sister's cable has similar.
I have come to the conclusion it is the airplanes taking off at Pdx causing much of the problems. I believe at times they cross the signal just right to cause an interruption.
Question: how long has the dish been where it is? One of the reasons is a tree could have gotten just tall enough to break up the signal. When we couldn't get the reception in a different park while still in Nevada, we had to call DISH. The guy said a tree was in the way. We couldn't see a tree except a little one a couple rows over. He said it was the once causing the problem. You never know.
We had them for a year a couple of yrs ago, and it seems it is the 'thickness' of the rain somewhere between your dish and the direction of the satellite. This may or may not be near your house, but somewhere along that line between the sat. and dish. It is very annoying, but nothing you can do about it as far as I know except going cable.
Well, the Dish came back on, don't know why actually. It is still rainy and windy. There has actually been alot of tree cutting on neighboring properties, so I don't think its a tree. Anyway, the game I was waiting for is postponed due to rain. DAMN YANKEES got a new stadium with all the bells and whistles, but didn't think about putting on a roof. Oh well! I wasn't looking for NYY cuz I'm a SOX fan!
About spam. I just click on "block sender". It takes care of it and I never hear from that email address again. I don't know if all computers are set up this way.
Charlotte, Up until today, it worked fine by unplugging the modem then plugging it back in (after about 5 min.) and waiting until it booted-up (then plugging in the wireless thingy to the laptop). But today, that procedure didn't work so well. After being up for about 10 min. it went down again, so I am currently on the desktop.
TexasJoe: I agree, your router may be shot. I've had good luck with combination dsl modem and wireless routers, and prices have come way down. I buy a lot of hardware from newegg.com. Even if you don't buy from them, go to their website and read reviews by other purchasers. At the newegg.com site, search for "dsl modem router".
I like newegg too. but Joe, where did you get the one you have? From your cable company or phone company? Or did you go buy it? It's possible that if it's malfunctioning they will replace it and set it up... and NOT set up one you buy elsewhere.
It came with the install of ATandT's U Verse broadband service. So yes, I can deal with them to just replace it (or upgrade it) if it continues to give me trouble. So far today, its been up all day.