Subject:  Intermittent Wireless Disconnections
From:     Pamela Fong
Date:     Sat Jul 24 04:57:04 PDT 2004


The vicinity of our Kerckhoff wireless access point (SSID:  HAL-LAB) is
bathed with RF signals emanating from a variety of competing wireless
network equipped devices, such as cellphones, PDAs, and other wireless
access points.
  
By default, Windows XP is configured to use the Wireless Zero
configuration service to help users to create wireless networks.

Unfortunately, some wireless network adapters may be incompatible with
this service, causing the adapter to try to connect to every detectable
wireless device.  Symptoms of this behavior may be evidenced as
intermittent wireless disconnections despite strong HAL-LAB signal
strength reading.  Or the wireless adapter may show continuous cycling
through connections to all the other devices in the area.

Microsoft makes the following suggestions to resolve this issue: 

  1)  Install the latest wireless drivers; and/or
  2)  Disable the Wireless Zero Configuration service.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;821400&Product=winxp

Note that you can stop/start the Wireless Zero configuration
service, without setting the service to "Disabled".  You can also
manually stop/start the service from an MSDOS command prompt.

  1)  Start|Run
        Open:  cmd.exe

  2)  In the MSDOS command window, type

        NET STOP WZCSVC

  3)  To restart the service, reboot, or in an MSDOS command
      window, run the command,

        NET START WZCSVC

Presumably, you would first establish a connection to our
access point, and then stop the service to prevent the adapter
from binding to another connecton.

---Pam