WinXP to Wireless Network

Probably a stupid question but I'll ask anyways. I tried to add a new WinXP Home laptop to an existing Linksys Wireless network yesterday. I can get the XP machine to access the network just fine but It really slows down the existing network and almost makes it come to a complete halt. All of the other machines are WinME machines. I have just plugged in other machines in the past with the USB Wireless Adapters and it worked fine. This one just crashes the existing network.

Wireless Access Point Router with 4-Port Switch (BEFW11S4)
Instant Wireless USB Network Adapter - Version 2 (WUSB11)

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

 

A very reasonable question. Wish I could offer ideas but I'm not at all familiar with wireless via USB. Avoid it, in fact.

You might want to check the XP event logs to see if any errors/ warnings look network related. If so, post em here and we'll dig in.

Easiest to click the icon below the up/down arrows when you have a detail window open for an event. That puts a text-only copy of the event in your clipboard so you can just paste it here.

 

Well, adding another computer to a wireless network will reduce available bandwidth to other systems on the network, they will all slow down i.e. 11mbs wireless access point is 11mbs total, not for each computer, more computers = less bandwidth per computer.

If it appears that it is slowing down a lot, try turning off network features in windows xp like QoS packet scheduling, task scheduling, anything that will waste precious wireless bandwidth.