Cannot display web page though wireless states excellent connectivity

Hi all, may I 1st thank you all in advance for your time and effort put in to help us?

Operating System: xp home sp2 plus all other updates.
Laptop: HP Pavilion zd8000, P4 3.6, 1gb ram, 100gb HDD.
wireless card: 3com OfficeConnect Wireless 54Mbps 11g.
Also Built in wireless which is lame (weak signal pickup).
Built in Bluetooth.
web browser: ie7

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My problem is the internet connection, it works intermittantly. Even though the wireless connectvity is excellent when tying to get to a web page it cannot be displayed. When the connection is working on ie7, when trying to use programs such as - Napster, iTunes store or sky by broadband they all state that i have no connection even though it's working in the browser and the signal strengh is sound!

I have run spybot, ad-aware also deleted all cookies etc, also I have check the wireless settings and they seem to be ok. I have also tried using TCPoptimiser and still same problem.

Please could you suggest anything else?

Thankyou

Tim

 

p.s. I am trying to connect to a Netgear rangemax wireless router.

 

Check your firewall. The programs you mention will probably be using different "ports" to connect, the firewall may be treating them as internet/external connections rather than internal connections.

Are you using Window's firewall? Check that there is not more than one firewall running (apart from Window's firewall, security suites add a firewall, you can get individual fiewalls like Zonealarm and with some of the recent models of computers a firewall is being included in their drivers software).

If you are only running, say Window's firewall, try disabling it and running Zonealarm. Zonealarm will notify you when a program attemps to access the internet. You can then "allow" or "deny" it (if you choose deny, the program might keep repeatedly attempting to connect and the computer's performance will suffer). At least this will allow you to see what programs are accessing the internet. You can set the "acceptable" level for each program in the Control Panel. Even if you don't like Zonealarm, it will let you see what is actually happening, you may be able work out the problem and go back to Window's firewall.

Due to the intermittent connections, I have a feeling that you have more than one firewall active.

Matt
Edit: I just realised that the router may well be running a firewall. That should be the only one you need if it is running the internet connection. You still need to watch what background programs are accessing the internet (eg, spyware).

 

Change the channel to 1 or 11 as a first step.
Make sure the route is clear and open
Make sure that you have the right encryption key if the encryption is turned on