patndoris TechnoGeek

I’m sure this has to be one of those stories that seems funnier in hindsight than it did at the time. First, for those of you who don’t know, I may be a computer geek, but I’m not a hardware geek. I cringe at the mere thought of hardware, and I flat out refuse to learn any more than absolutely necessary in this mysterious realm. I have no clue, and don’t want to how to even open a computer case. It’s easier to buy a new computer. With that said, I need to backtrack a couple weeks, to where this story starts…

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My HP laptop has an internal wireless adapter. One gloomy day (well I don’t really remember what it was like, but given the outcome, I’m sure it must have been gloomy) after a routine reboot, my wireless did not come on. Instead of the comforting blue light, there was an angry amber glow. Off…on…off…on. I slid the switch back and forth in an effort to elicit some breath of life from it. I reboot, and reboot again. Nothing. I beg the male offspring to bestow upon me the privilege of touching the desktop in an effort to research the problem. To my horror, I find it’s a fairly commonplace event with HP laptops of my particular model. The suggested solution is a BIOS update (which I already had) and if that fails - the ultimate solution is a return of the laptop for motherboard replacement. Now I don’t know about you, but sending my laptop full of personal information into the unknown hands of some techie at HP, while I wait for weeks and weeks upon end for its return, is not my idea of a good time. I’d sooner buy a new laptop. But even I admit, it would be a bit drastic for a mere wireless adapter problem. I peruse the forums. I try the snake oil salesman solutions offered up as miracle cures. Yes, I try each and every one. I boot in safe mode with networking (no easy feat since my Acronis does some recovery manager thing at startup which seems to inhibit normal safe boot), I reset BIOS to defaults (even though BIOS scares me more than hardware and I’m pretty sure I’ve never messed with it), I search for hardware changes on the wireless adapter that doesn’t even show up in the device manager, I update drivers from the HP site - all to no avail. Seeing red, I do the unthinkable and power off the laptop.

I sit for hours at the desktop (with the male offspring happily engaged in some shoot ‘em up game on Xbox 360) and research USB wireless adapters. While I’m at it, I look into new routers just for fun. I don’t need a new router, but it is fun to shop anyway. Several online stores later, and after a bit of Googling, I’m satisfied I’ve absorbed enough on the subject and have tentatively determined the make and model of both a satisfactory router and USB wireless adapter (both of the N band persuasion.) After an hour or so, I calm down enough to consider there are at least a few tasks I can do offline. I power my baby back up and miracle of miracles it works! The little blue light is beaming happily at me as if to say "Hah! I was here all along!" The next day after a Windows update, and a definitely dreaded reboot - it’s gone again. I manage to bring it back to life without much fuss (one of the snake oil tricks of no merit, but it coincided with the little blue light so it must have been the solution) but vow I’m going to find a better way. This random working and not working is unacceptable. I absolutely must have consistent internet access, or life as I know it will come to a complete halt!

Before hoofing it down to Best Buy to make my purchase, I ask IT guy for a bit of advice. I wish he’d dummied it down a little more for me. If I’d known a gigabit router (as compared to the significantly cheaper standard router) would produce no significant speed improvements from an internet standpoint, I could have saved a few dollars. (The savings would have come in awfully handy as things turned out.) But, not knowing this, and knowing the desktop has a gigabit card - I believed the gigabit router would be a divine purchase. Not only would it speed me up on the laptop with wireless N boasting up to 300Mbps, but I was certain it would speed up the male offspring’s desktop as well. As any parental unit knows, a happy offspring makes for a happy parental unit. The N routers tout not only their incredible speed, MIMO technology for seamless video/voice/gaming etc, but better coverage, less dropouts, and a whole host of other promises of an internet experience beyond belief. Lesson: If it sounds too good to be true - it probably is. In my infinite wisdom, I selected a dual band G/N USB wireless adapter for the laptop. I had read only one hysterically funny (but poor review) about it - where someone stupidly bent theirs just after install - rendering it useless. How stupid is that? I’ve had a Bluetooth USB sticking out of my laptop for darn near 2 years now with zero problems! Most of the reviews were great. So I buy. When the little credit card machine thingy asked if the amount rung up was what I’d like to put on my credit card I sneered. No - it’s not what I’d like to put on the card, but I really don’t have a choice at the moment. Still I was a happy consumer and I took it all home.

First, I installed the router. Easy as pie right? Just pop in the CD, follow the directions, hook up the cables in the order specified. It all went so smoothly…until it searched for a little chatter from my cable modem. Huh? Doesn’t detect an internet connection? You gotta be kidding! So I power it all down, pull the battery from the modem, reboot it all - and it works. Seems you really should reboot the modem when you disconnect the old router and start hooking up Ethernet cables again. Might be nice it they told you that. (Or perhaps included a few instructions on common sense.) The USB wireless adapter installed beautifully without flaw. I was indeed registering better speed than with the previously limiting internal adapter. But the male offspring was less than enthused at the minimal impact it made on the desktop. I just couldn’t understand. He’d been throttled at 100Mbps with the old router and his connection with the gigabit router now showed he should be zipping along. But that would require more research. My laptop was working, selfishly, that was all I cared about. It was utopia…until I tried voice on Yahoo. I experienced sound drops both in and out ranging up 5 seconds, and it was almost constant. It was intolerable. I couldn’t…it any….would have…..it. You get the picture. I tried all kinds of hair brained ideas (leave it to me - I can come up with loads of them!) but nothing helped.

So for my very merry Christmas day I start investigating. I Google, I scan the Comcast and Linksys forums in search of a solution. I tried a few basic router tweaks, but admittedly I don’t know enough to go messing around too much. At one point I managed to render the Xbox unable to connect to the network, so I quickly reset back to happy offspring mode (factory defaults) and forged off in another direction. I was reminded of a Spanish phrase I learned as a wee bairn - "Solo se que no se nada" or "I only know that I don’t know anything." I knew I was in over my head and I wanted a little expert advice. No response on the Linksys forum. Comcast however was another story. Hmmm, Comcast…maybe the root of my problems? Never mind the hardware change coincided with the voice problems. Perhaps packet loss or latency problems were to blame? (I truly have idea what those are, even now, but they sound impressive enough that they could cause just such horrendous problems don’t you thinks?) I start a 24-hour Smokeping test. I have no bleeping idea how to interpret the results of one of those, but it would surely yield something. On the Comcast site there was a handy list of about a zillion things I should do before posting in the forums. Being a helper forums as I am, I felt duty bound by all that is sacred to provide them each and every morsel of requested information in the hopes they’d tell me what I wanted to hear - it was a Comcast problem and not something with the router or adapter. I learned how to do tracerts and continuous pings from the command line (now there’s something useful that everyone ought to know - NOT!) After a few DOS flashbacks, 3 tracerts to different sites (one of which was Yahoo) and 3 continuous ping tests (one of which was also Yahoo), and fumbling to get my router noise to signal or signal to noise ratios and decibels or something like that - I post my lengthy (and most assuredly impressive) results along with a link to my 24-hour Smokeping test. Then I wait. Surely some technical geeks were more interested in reading my forlorn tale than celebrating a holiday.

Rather quickly, a back and forth discussion with &quotrinkingbird" ensued. Now, the nickname alone does not necessarily inspire confidence, is it a Drinkingbird or a Drunkbird, but this forum volunteer really knew his/her stuff. The initial response was although not ideal, everything with regard to my modem and internet signal was within spec. I profusely thanked Drinkingbird for taking the time to look at my result and said I’d pursue it in the Linksys forum since it was obviously not a Comcast problem. But another response comes back from the Drinkingbird. After repeated attempts to convince the Drinkingbird I was totally inept when it comes to routers and Comcast - which I do believe I finally managed to do after about 5 thank you for your time’s and I really don’t speak router at all so you’ll need to dummy it way way way farther down if you want to have any semblance of a real conversation about this with me - the problem was narrowed down to my wireless adapter. I did find out (in a brilliantly simplistic response) my super duper gigabit router was not going to provide me anywhere near the speeds I was anticipating, as I apparently failed to consider that while the router may be capable of amazing transfer rates, my cable modem is only going to get so much steam piped to it by Comcast. And oh yes, that gigabit router and gigabit card thing? Well, in the most amazingly dummied down statement one could hope for - it was explained to me (in painstakingly small easy to understand works) it is absolutely useless in terms of my actual Comcast internet speed. It would only be useful and speed enhancing when sharing files over my local area network (LAN)…uh that means my home network (even I understood that!) And since the male offspring and I were born in different millenniums - I when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and he in the mighty age that is now, there is virtually no reason we’d ever share files - so my gigabit router is basically useless to me. Although Drinkingbird did point out that as internet speeds move up, a gigabit router will likely (hopefully) have a better processor in it, and perhaps at that time may start to prove it’s worth. But that will be at some future time. For now, my speed are a little faster than in the past so I’ll stop moaning about them (for now at least) and get back to the whole USB fiasco.

Fast forward (not to fast or you’ll miss it and have to rewind) to the next day. I pack up the wireless adapter, rummage for my receipt and head off to Best Buy - again. I leave everything in the car, march in, and demand to see the best router and wireless geek they’ve got working there. (I can be pretty intimidating for such a vertically challenged person I tell you!) The nice man informs me any of the geeks there can help me, and he’ll be glad to try. Rather than argue about his credentials, I proceed to spout how I had a Linksys WRT54G router and internal wireless, that I just replaced them with the Linksys WRT310N Wireless N gigabit router, and the Linksys WUSB600N dual band adapter, and now I’m experiencing voice dropout issues. I ask if perhaps the dual band might be causing a conflict of some sort, and am advised it probably is. The best solution is to drop back to a straight Wireless N USB adapter. Hmmmm, seems dual band wireless may not play so well with a single band router - go figure! But hey, I must have sounded like I actually knew what I was talking about because the nice man told me I was very tech savvy. Me! Tech savvy! Hmm…maybe in some ways, but at least I’d managed to mask my ignorance of hardware this time around. So I trudge out to the car, get the box, wait in very long day after Christmas (known as Boxing day in most civilized countries) line, return the Linksys wireless adapter and purchase a Netgear one instead. No sneering at the credit card machine thingy as I already spent the money once and got a full refund. The cost was the same. It only hurts the first time you pay for something.

The new adapter installs easily, and in no time I’m up and running. Voice works perfectly! Bet you think that’s the end of the story don’t you? Noooooo. With me that couldn’t possibly be the end of the story! Other than dual band doesn’t seem to play nice with single band all the time, I’ve not even given you any other reasons NOT to buy a USB wireless adapter yet. There just has to be more to this story. So after a four day weekend and a less grueling than I’d like you to believe day back at work, I come home yesterday, throw on my jammies and settle in for a little tidying up on the laptop before I’m off to win a game of canasta. I sit the laptop where it belongs - on my lap of course, and notice my AVG shows an update error. Meh, no big surprise, I find that a lot lately. So I right click to do a manual update. WHAT? No network detected? Huh? And then it happens. I’m sure you’ll know this feeling. A quick glance down at my brilliant new adapter and my heart sinks and a sick feeling rolls in my stomach. In this case, a picture really is worth a thousand words. (I could easily write another thousand, since I’m up to over 3000 of them in this post already but since there is more to the story and it will likely top 5000 by the time I’m done - I’ll just insert a photo for you.

Reason #2 NOT to get a USB wireless adapter: since it’s larger than most standard USB items, if you happen to have a psychotic 50 pound dog who’s easily scared and tries to hide under the bed when he’s far to large to do so, or perhaps a curious toddler with less than sure footing, or if you just happen to be a klutz - it can be damaged easily. (Now what was I saying about that hysterically funny review I read about how they can bend easily?!) Seems my rather spastic dog must have bashed into it while he was running about - virtually demolishing it. So, I do the frugal thing (would you expect any less of me? After all I did fix my broken paper towel holder with a hot glue gun and a bread tab) and amidst a stream of words I dare not repeat here, I get the electrical tape and popsicle sticks out. I manage to splint it to a functional state, but not well enough to last. I decide while playing canasta (and holding the adapter in place) it’s still early enough to pop on down to Best Buy. So, after losing at canasta (well you didn’t expect I’d win after all that did you?) I get dressed and drive the 10 minutes to the store (yet again) in search of a PCI slot adapter.

Even I, the hardware fearing geek I am, know there are different PCI card slots . I did look before I left. I carefully noted with less than any kind of precision that the little door on it was around 2" or so in width. So, all I need is a card that fits in there. No problem. I look at all my options, weigh one against the other, and decide the Belkin (while not even close to my favorite brand) is the best choice for the $20 smaller price tag. I don’t even remotely plan on streaming anything in HD so the higher priced models really offer no benefit (sort of like that gigabit thing). What a great choice! Now it won’t stick out and the dog can’t kill it again. Not to mention I’ll reclaim one of my three precious USB ports. (That’s reason #3 NOT to buy a wireless USB adapter, it eats up a USB port.) Man! I should have done this in the first place! (Yes, I should have, as it would have saved me a bundle…Grrrrr!!) I look at the the size of the one on display, roughly 2" wide. Just for good measure I find a laptop on display and without fear of showing my ignorance, confirm with the geek on duty that is indeed a PCI slot - that little spot about 2" wide. Confirmed. Good. I sneer again at the credit card machine thingy asking me if the amount I want placed on my rising credit card balance is correct. No! Really it’s not. But if I don’t tell you yes you won’t let me take home my adapter…so yes…YES already! It’s fine. Sold. I drive home, happy as a clam - more or less.

I get home, toss on my jammies again and pop in the CD. Drivers install fine and I’m requested to insert my wireless card. I open the slot as instructed and gently slide the card in (wouldn’t want to damage it). Umm….try to slide the card in…I give it a little more oomph without going overboard but it just won’t go in!! Oh I bet I was real cute peering in the side of my laptop with my handy dandy flashlight trying to see just what in the world the problem was. Oh…Wow! Um…guess what!? When you actually look at the little thingy that comes out of the slot…it’s 2" wide for the top half but the bottom is only 1" or so wide. And imagine! Inside, where the little pin thingys plug in….that’s only about an 1" wide too! Seems I have myself a real life PCI Express slot. Translation: the new card ain’t gonna fit no matter what I do unless I take a hacksaw to it (which I’m pretty sure is not an approved method for getting it to fit). Now, 7:30 after canasta was a lot more forgiving as far as time goes than 8:40 and a store that closes at 9pm. I have 20 minutes to get dressed yet again, zip back to Best Buy and exchange it before they close.

I’m sure you’re well aware at this point there is no way I can live without internet for even one night!! NO WAY! For me it’s a situation incompatible with life. So I get dressed again, skip a few steps on the way down the stairs, plop in the car and manage to make the 10 minute drive (by ever so slightly exceeding the speed limit) back to Best Buy in under 6 minutes. Like the smart and tech savvy cookie I am - I take the insert from the card slot with me and actually show it to the router geek to confirm it is indeed indicative of a PCI Express slot. Confirmed. I run breathlessly (well not really, just walked briskly, but breathlessly sounds so much more dramatic) to the return line. Could it go any slower? Then the cashier asks the dumbest question I’ve ever heard. &quoto you want to exchange this for a different one?" "Well I was certainly hoping to!" With said cashier’s approval I jog (ok no, I don’t jog - that implies something remotely like exercise which I detest - I walked briskly again) back to grab the adapter I need (which blessedly was the same price so I didn’t have to think of sneering at the credit card machine again) and head back home - again.

Yes, as your insightful powers of deduction have concluded, it is installed now. So far so good. I have yet to test voice on it, but will be doing so tomorrow. I can only pray it goes well - for I fear I’m out of options at this point. For tonight at least, I’m just going to be thankful I have internet access with a strong signal, one freed up USB port, and am only slightly poorer than when I was forced into this whole horribly amusing mis-adventure. Only I could have this much fun replacing a wireless adapter! (Oh look! I’m finishing this whole story up at exactly 3700 words - amazing!)