Odd networking problem

[Lightingbird]

This one has me completely stumped.

I have a customer that has a unique networking problem. He has five(5) networked computers in his home setup. All of the computers have wireless cards. Now the one with the problem is using a connection. He has Windows 7 on it. All of his computers can get online with no problem. The computer with the USB connection has the problem.

When transferring files from the USB based machine after a few minutes the connection drops completely. When the other computers network in and copy files from the USB machine it will work for a little while. Then after a few minutes, the USB crashes again. Now any other transfers with the other computers works fine.

So far I checked the access rights and all of those are fine with the shared folders.
Disabled the firewall completely with no luck.
All of the files are visable and able to be shared it just crashes during the transfer.

Funny thing is that when I tried to hook up a hard connection. The computer hangs and sits on identifying forever. So the ethernet connection does not work either but that's not the main problem right now. I'm thinking this is a power problem with the USB connection but I'm not sure.

Any idea why this keeps happening or how to resolve it?

 

[brady]

what's the win7 wireless adapter he's using?

 

[Lightingbird]

Crazy I don't know how I missed adding that. He is using a Linksys Dual-Band Wireless-N

 

[brady]

Is that the only "N" card being used?

 

[Lightingbird]

Yes it is the only one in his network.

 

[brady]

You can try bridging the connection to help, but I'm honestly not sure if it will "fix" the issue. Was this machine ever plugged into and active on another network? Can you give me the router make/model as well?

 

[Lightingbird]

He has informed me that it was never on another network. He is using ASUS RT-N13U for his router.

 

[brady]

change from wep to alternate encryption... wep is vulnerable anyway.

 

[Lightingbird]

change from wep to alternate encryption... wep is vulnerable anyway.

Nope, I'm just focusing on the networking problem. Thats a whole other job. Unless you think this would resolve it.

 

[brady]

at first i thought it might resolve the issue, but now i'm unsure. I've seen a few issues resolved by changing encryption but i can't say that I'm sure it will fix this one.

 

[aem]

All the 5 machines are using wireless, but one is using USB? What is the USB one connected to?

 

[Lightingbird]

Huh? Its a USB wireless adapter as stated in my first post.

 

[computersplus]

you could try disabling the N radio in the router run just the G radio also in the USB adapter properties set the adapter to G only

 

[aem]

change from wep to alternate encryption... wep is vulnerable anyway.

Nope, I'm just focusing on the networking problem. Thats a whole other job. Unless you think this would resolve it.

My bad about not knowing it's USB wireless adapter. Can i take a couple of steps back as it seems this problem machine, isn't able to connect to the network, either hard or soft connection. Assuming no problems with drivers, and seeing the other machines are fine. It could be the router inability to know that the machine is trying to connect to it, or the machine hasn't been configured with the correct wireless network settings (as broadcasted by the router) to be able to get access.

If it's the router, check if there is an option in it's control panel that tells you about MAC address cloing.

If it;s the machine, how can you verify that the settings are what it should. We can compare ipconfig details between it and a working machie.