I have a friend who would like to have wireless in his house. I go over to setup a wireless network to give it a test run. I use my computer, a dell Inspiron 4000 P-III 850, and I have no problems. I can go anywhere in the house I want.

Here's where the problem lies. I hook up his laptop, a Compaq 2100 AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (they have two of these exactly the same), and I can't move more than 15 feet away from the WAP.

All three systems are running Windows XP Home.

Anyone have any ideas?

Crappy antennas on the nics in the Compaqs?

--Nathan

I'm guessing the dell doesn't have wifi built in if it doesn't you could try your card in his compaq.

I guess I forgot to mention that. I used the same card in all 3 laptop's. I downloaded the driver for the card on both of their laptops and it worked great when I was in the same room but if I went more than about 15 feet away it lost the connection. Could it be the hardware with the compaq?

I wonder if Tom could step in and answer that question.

That is really strange .

I wonder if Tom could step in and answer that question.

The only wireless experience I have with Compaq laptops has been good. I had an Armada M700 for a while that I used a Compaq WL100 PCMCIA card in with no issues to multiple access points. The standard here now is the Evo systems with the WLAN card on the back of the screen, again no issues.

Is there a setting like "Use Interference Robustness"? This is a setting the Apple laptops have to help in situations, but it shortens the distance quite a bit. Maybe this is on somehow. I don't have an XP laptop to look at to compare anymore though.

And I can't talk to any resources here, we haven't had a laptop team at this site for a while now.

Sorry, wish I could be of more help.

Have you tried changing channels? Some oscillator (clock) in the Compaq may be stomping on the wireless signal.

I've seen all sorts of weirdness during my wireless installs,
you could try a few things...
Simplest is to try another card on the Compaq's, I've had specific issues with different vendors cards not working right with certain brands of notebook.
What brand/chipset access point are you using?
What brand/chipset wireless card is it?

Most proxim/agere/ lucent based cards are 5V I've had issues where the notebooks PC Card slot is only supplying 3.3V or cannot supply 5V properly.
You could switch the pc card slot on the notebook from, "Auto / 16bit compatible / Cardbus....

You could set the "Preamble" from short to long or vice versa on the access point to see if it makes a difference.
Interference Robustness or similar setting.
Change Channels.
Turn off WEP or any security if it's on to test.
Turn off any vendor specific settings on the access point, i.e. Speed Boost etc..

You can try AdHoc mode between both the cards in the Compaq's and see how far you get by emliminating the access point.