Hi Mark,

haven't mentioned that both routers are 802.11G - for the one that works from upstairs the signal comes down through the floor and a wall (hollow structure) so it's not too bad.

Look around for reviews for a new G router, but I would buy it from a shop rather than online so you can return it if things are not looking better.

Dan

So, I actually had a Linksys WRT54G router still in shrinkwrap packaging, just hadn't installed it.  I installed and upgraded the router firmware to the latest available (a story for another day).  I'm seeing the R2H communicate only slightly better, and very bursty - it still seems to have really bad reception.  My guess is, if you have one chance every so often to send data, sending at 54Mbps is better than sending at 11Mbps.  It also seems like as the R2H heats up, the reception gets worse.  Something else interesting: the Asus wifi tools consistently show good signal and link state, and at the very same time, mouse over of the wifi interface icon in the system tray shows "very low" reception...this is at about 25ft from the AP, and I'm still not loading some web pages successfully.

 

Something else interesting: the Asus wifi tools consistently show good signal and link state, and at the very same time, mouse over of the wifi interface icon in the system tray shows "very low" reception...

You have both active? First thing I did was remove the ASUS WLAN tools (accept for the on/off manager part) and use WindowsXP's zero config wireless (also because of the encryption options available)

I've noticed a few odd things now and then in XP as well - if the CPU is 100% for a good while, it would disconnect and I have to manually reconnect it. Other times, although is shows as connected, it doesn't transmit anything and the webpages don't load - if I right click the network icon and choose Repair it will bring it back to life (I manually assigned IP to connect faster). But I've noticed as well that the transmit speed fluctuates up and down, probably due to power managed control which I believe is embeded into the driver but it's not exposed to the user to change.

It really seems that we all have the same problems and so far no tweak was really successful in the long run. I guess, we will have to wait for a new XP driver or a patch which disables the power save functionality of the wifi chipset. In my case, it's definitively not the access points because I tried both a different laptop (from ASUS :) ) and an external usb stick on my R2H with access points from a variety of brands. In all cases, there were absolutely no wifi problems.

For the time being, I will use my wifi usb stick. This solution really sucks with a box that has built-in wifi but I don't see any alternatives.

Hm, maybe someone misread the manual :)

http://blogs.msdn.com/peterwie/archive/2007/03/28/how-to-enable-usb-selective-suspend-and-system-wake-in-the-umdf-driver-for-a-usb-device.aspx

 

The troubleshooting section on this page says that in case of trouble we should check the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”. ???????
At first glance, this does not make too much sense to me but this can be due to the fact that I'm not too familiar with all these USB power management details. I will give it a try. Thanks for the hint.

Interesting article, but I think we want the exact opposite - the "selective suspend" functionality allows a driver to turn off a USB device when it becomes idle, even when the computer remains in full power mode.

From what I read in the article, you can add HKR,,"UserSetDeviceIdleEnabled",0x00010001,0 in the .inf file, but that's just going to hide the Power Management page for the particular device, and I presume untick the "Allow the computer to turn off the device...", you can do yourself anyways.

When I mentioned before that I believe there are issues with power management with the device, I meant logic in the driver to control the speed and power the devices uses to transmit data - and it kinda makes sense, less power more battery life and the speed fluctuation kinda confirms that. I didn't mean power management embeded in XP, that only controls whether a devices can be turned off when it becomes idle (which should not the case here, or at least unless the driver reports erroneously   the device is idle and Windows turns it off?!) and whether a USB device can wake-un a system from stand-by.

Anyway, thanks for the article, I'll give a try adjusting the things to see if it improves connection.

Thanks,
Dan

Yesterday my R2H got locked in this 100% cpu usage state again when a windows update started while I was playing around with the built-in wifi. Thus, I had the idea that the problem might be caused by the auto-update of XP. I switched it off in the control center and had no 100% cpu usage problems since then. I tried it at home and at work, and the built-in wifi worked without drop-outs so far. The signal strength is still lower than expected but there were no more system locks.
It seems that this XP check for new updates starting as soon as you get connected in combination with the weak wifi driver causes this 100% cpu usage problem.
I will keep the auto-update switched off for the next few days and I will keep you updated whether it works or not. Any other volunteers?

Of course, this will not solve the low signal strength problem. :(

Are you talking about "windows update" ou "Microsoft update"?

 

I know that "Microsoft update" have the 100% CPU syndrome, I had to remove it and rever to "Windows update", no problems since then.

 

Now it's getting tricky. :) I have a German XP and I'm not 100% sure about the right terms. What I switched off are the automated updates which you find in the windows security center.

It's easy to tell, just go to the Windows Update web page and look a the page title.

You will see right away Windows or Microsoft update...

If you have Microsoft update, I strongly recommend you go back to Windows update, your 100% CPU usage will be solved.

 

L0g1cmaster:

It's easy to tell, just go to the Windows Update web page and look a the page title.

You will see right away Windows or Microsoft update...

If you have Microsoft update, I strongly recommend you go back to Windows update, your 100% CPU usage will be solved.

 

Its not that easy: I use a WSUS server in my home setup, that is also using 100% CPU during detection on the clients. As this is applied via a GPO, 'going back' is not really an option.

Turns out its (currently) a problem with the Office 2003 detection or some such, there is a hotfix you can install that puts an older msi.dll onto the system is looks like, which results in much less CPU usage during the detection cycle.

Look at this KB: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916089/

I installed the 927891 hotfix on of my machines.

And yes I was suspecting the high CPU usage during resume or otherwise to trip the USB power settings for the WiFi into thinking it was not used (hence my posting of the link)

I'm currently running Vista on the R2H so its different for me.

YMMV!

Well, I dunno for Vista, what I know is that when I did install Microsoft Update the first time on my XpPro, the CPU went berzek at 100% for the autoupdate process.

Searching on the web reveled problems with the Microsoft update and I found a way to revert to Windows update, my problem went away first try, I didnt search any further on that matter since I dont really care updating Office manually and I wont reinstall it till they solve the problem at the source.

 

Hi,  joined the forum so I can relay how I fixed the dropout problem on my R2H.  I had the same issue where speed would start dropping right to 11mbps and below and then drop everything after just a minute or two.  If you go into the ASUS wifi utility and force the speed to 54mbps instead of auto you should not get drops anymore.  Signal can be low or even very low but I stay connected at 54mbps for hours at a time.  Hope this helps some who have this problem.

ck66