vista and wireless: problematic

[farmboy]

so since getting my new computer and having vista forced on me, i've been trying to get myself used to the new OS.  i guess with a few tweaks, it's not too bad, right?
then i came home from college and tried to get internet set up.  in my dorm, i could do a straight up ethernet cable and wired setup, but now that I'm home, I actually have to use the wireless card, since we're not going to rip up every wall in the house to wire my room upstairs.
vista doesn't like wireless, apparently.  it trys valiantly to connect, but then after getting it's IP assigned, wanders randomly around the digital realm like a geriatric that forgot its meds, occasionally finding the router and giving me anywhere from 15 seconds to 5 minutes of spotty, dial-up speed internet before losing itself in its confusion again.
at first we figured it was due to the fact that it we had an older wireless router that wasn't vista compatible so yesterday we bought a fancy new linksys wireless-N (4x as powerful!) which was explicitly labeled as working with vista.  same s**t's still happening.  so now i'm pretty pissed off.
i know this issue has been floating around on the web; has anyone actually found a solution yet?
edit: interesting info, apparently in the six hours since I first connected (the computer hasn't realized that it got lost and found its way back several times in those six hours) 3,000,000 bytes have been sent (by me futilely trying to load pages) while more than 14,000,000 have been received.  shouldn't that ratio be a little closer to 1:1?

[Autoload]

Have you eliminated the environment?  It obviously wasn't the router as your experience has indicated and while I enjoy bashing M$ at every opportunity I get to there are other areas that can be at fault.  Up to an including things such as a faulty internal intenna (or crappy intenna), too much concrete between the PC and the router, static interference and a gaggle of other environmental sources of interference.

There is no one answer to solve your situation.  In my home I keep my cable modem, router, and home servers in the basement because it is much cooler there and more importantly there isn't any area cluttered with albeit small, network equipment.  Because of the way my home is built and laid out I had to put a bridge on the ground floor so my PC's on the second floor got good signal and stay connected.

Place the laptop smack dab next to the wireless router so there is a clear line of site (couple of feet) and report your connectivity experiences.   Then move through your house and denote at which point you start losing connection.  If you have crappy connections from the start, then blame Vista or the PC setup.

[farmboy]

i tested most of the environmental conditions with my dad's laptop (my new computer is actually a desktop, so moving it around is a bit of a hassle), and it worked like a jiffy.
anyway now internet is fine suddenly.  so, maybe it fixed itself, i dunno.  i'll post again if it decides to be stupid and stop working.

[farmboy]

and we've been fighting some more for the last week...
apparently, vista doesn't play nice with SLI, so i disabled it on my router.  here's to hoping it helps.
also, apparently my inability to connect seems to coincide with any other computer being connected to the network simultaneously.  in conclusion, i'm still not happy with this, but at least I know what to do to make it work now.

[DaSmerg]

Hey farmboy.  Running Vista Home Premium x64 and 2 8800GTS's in in SLI with no issues, other than a few known issues with some games (that have to do with Nvidia and game maker btw).

From the sounds of it, you have one of them fancy schmancy Ausus wi-fi mobo's?

[Ronin]

Your problem could stem from something that's plagued wireless from the beginning
and that's the inter-brand operability.

For some reason, different brands of hardware sometimes just don't seem to like
each other and either won't connect at all or won't give you a reliable connection.

I would try a LinkSys WiFi card to go that fancy LinkSys WiFi router.  We have a
LinkSys 300N here.  My wife's machine upstairs is connected to it with a LinkSys
Wireless N PCI interface card and it works great.  She has better connect speed
(134Mbits) than my work desktop sitting ten feet from the router on a wired 100
base T connection (100Mbits).

So, I'd try an interface card from the same manufacturer.  I'm not saying that
there is always a problem.  But quite often problems like that can be resolved by
using hardware from the same manufacturer on both ends.

At work, we have LinkSys, NetGear, Cisco, and D-Link hardware and it all seems
to work just fine together.  All of the salemen's laptops (HP, Compaq, Mac, and
Dell) work fine with both wireless access points (NetGear and LinkSys).  So
multi-manufacturer systems can work just fine.  But one of our programmers has
a Dell laptop that just will NOT work right on our system in wireless mode.  He
has to connect with a wire to get a reliable connection.

Still, I'd try an interface card from the same manufacturer if you haven't already.
If it doesn't help, you can always just return it.

Cheers!
Bruce