I brought home a new laptop last night - Toshiba Satellite M45, with an internal Atheros AR5005G wireless network adapter. I had significant trouble getting the new laptop to connect to my home's wireless B network. My work laptop (Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG internal adapter) and my home desktop (DLink USB Wireless G adapter) as well as miscellaneous B adapters (TiVo, print server) are connected to the network with little or no problems.

Interstingly, the new machine saw and briefly connected (verified by surfing) to my neighbor's open Linksys network, but only saw mine for brief instances and never connected. I have never seen my neighbor's network on any other machine.

I had a Linksys WPC11 card from an old machine that I installed in the new machine - immediate connectivity. This implies to me that there's nothing inherently wrong with the WinXP settings.

Finally I changed the router setting from channel 11 to Channel 1 and suddenly the new machine connected. Working on Ch 1 now.

Why would I be seeing this problem on one computer only? I did download a driver update from Toshiba last night in the middle of troubleshooting but it didn't seem to make any difference. If this sounds like it could be a hardware problem I'd like to make that determination during the 14-day return period. I won't be able to troubleshoot for a week beginning this weekend. I've verified that I still have DNS slots available in the router.

Suggestions? Options?

Do you know how to set the channel on the new machines adapter? When you changed the channel did your other computers still connect?

I don't think you have to worry about it being a hardware issue. Most likely it was due to interference and you did the correct thing in changing the router channel.

If you really want to test and evaluate the airwaves around you, you can use a program called Netstumbler which can show you which channels give you the best connections and their signal strength.

No, now I'm pretty convinced that the problem is the wireless network card in the new laptop. My wife was ready to throw the laptop against the wall (or at me) last night for all the frustration she had during the day with slow/dropped connections (on any channel). I have a house full of WiFi gear and everything is connecting, even as I change router channels, except this one unit.

I've patched it for the time being by running the WPC11 adapter in the new laptop, but the computer is going back to Staples tomorrow. If they have another of the same model for me to try I'll bring it home; otherwise I'll get my money back and try again when we get home from Italy.