Wireless & HD problems

I have two wireless AP's. One is a 802.11b AP, standalone and simply sits and does its job. Most of the time. The second is the WL-HDD.

The AP is my parents and the WL-HDD is mine. I'm disturbed to find that the AP is totally open and that they've bought new laptop with 54g in it, so it's not utilising its full potential on the 802.11b.

My laptop has its own issues and has a hard time connecting to the AP, but is fine on the WL-HDD. That's going back to HP tomorrow, once I've copied the HD to the WL-HDD.

So, kill three birds with one stone, I'm going to install WAP on my network. Five minutes later, I get called stupid by a friend (he's right btw) and I change to WPA. Unfortunately both my laptop and my parents are both having problems.

First, when I turn on either laptop, sometimes it'll see the WL-HDD and sometimes not. Sometimes it'll happily accept the stored username and password, sometimes it'll just say "limited connectivity". If I fiddle for about five minutes, I can get them both to connect. Randomly, it'll disconnect both laptops (not sure if it's the same time).

Oh, and if I send an email on the parents shiny new ACER, it blue screens on me. I've sorted that out, it is a 54g problem that can be solved by the latest intel drivers update.

We run both AP's. The WL-HDD has the same problem whether in secure or not. The AP is still fine, but the signal is weak, and WL-HDD is strong but intermittent.

Any ideas? I'm using normal latest firmware from ASUS.

The HD problem is that in the status window I get "File system inconsistence" constantly even after scans. Any way to get more info or fix it?

errr... *kuch* Acer.. the brand says enough..

anyway what kind of cards are you using.. we don't know anything

thus make a clear scheme (in visio) of your network, your users bla bla bla and your problems..

lol - put it this way, the acer feels like a really good quality product. Not had any probs with them.

My HP & compaq laptops - well, they've only been back 32 times. I've had four new ones and the fourth of these is going back tomorrow :- )

The cards are just intel centrino technology *spits* one b one g. That's all I know. The other AP is unbranded, and the same problems occur whether it's on or off. The ADSL router is also unbranded but I don't think it's likely to be causing a problem.

Also the wl-hdd keeps crashing when transferring files. I can't take it back because unfortunately, it's from Hong Kong. That might just be the HD, but that doesn't explain why I have so many problems with the wireless.

if the wl-hdd is really defective you can take them in for a repair, you only need an authorized reseller/distributor to do it for you

and be very glad that you did not have any problem with your acer yet, here in holland you may wait a few weeks or months(2-3..) before they are finally returned to you.. and maybe if you are lucky they are fixed then..
or at last.. they lost the acer in their own building.. and then they return a new one to you, which ofcourse is defective.. anyway enough about my nightmares..

anyway please update to newest firmware or something (1.2.3.0)
also restore defaults of the device and restart from scratch with configuring the device (do not load back configuration files..) and try again

Still not sure whether it's the WL-Hdd or the hard disk drive. I'm having loads of difficulties getting any data off it and the official firmware tells me there are inconsitancies with the drive.

Without knowing what this inconsitancies are, it's a little diffiult to fix!

Meanwhile, I'm desperately trying to get the content off (about 30gigs) so I can do a format of the drive.

Are there any better tools with the off the shelf firmware upgrades from Oleg etc?