Wireless pci card not working?

[adalgisa]

Why would a wireless card suddenly stop working? I have a network of 8 computers; 7 are wired, P2P style, and 1 has a wireless connection. The wireless & 6 of the wired are running win98se (& one has XPPro). With help from some fine folks here, I got the wireless up and running (cheers!) about 3 weeks ago. But one morning the PCI card monitor software couldn't find the network. Device Manager says the card is working. The WAP seems to be functioning.
I know this isn't much info; I'm hoping you will offer suggestions to go about diagnosing this. All I've tried so far is uninstalling & reinstalling the card.
--adalgisa

[Tophinator]

did you try wigling the attena?

[Redfallon]

What type of card is it? If it's a linksys, try going into the options and disabling the bluetooth capability. My linksys pci wouldn't work with win98, and disabling the bluetooth fixed it.

[Guardian]

I had the same thing. One day it just quit. I went and bought a new one. Wasn't worth a lot of extra trouble shooting. My was a Linksys. Had been working about two months.

[Karnevil9]

This happens to me all the time with XP pro. It's as if the computer just decides not to use the card for the internet anymore, even though it is there and working. In XP you have to disable the wireless zero configuration, and disable the option to let windows control your network connection. I don't know if there is anything similar in w98. When the computer stops using the wireless card, I open the Wireless program and hit the rescan button until it finds it again. At times when it is at it's worse I had to make a new connection.

[adalgisa]

This is a linksys wmp11 802.11b card; when I wiggled the antenna the link light flickered briefly but wouldn't stay on. I don't see any reference to a bluetooth option (wouldn't that be something other than 802.11b?). This is on a win98se system, not XP--- I think the "let windows handle the network connection" is an XP functionality-- 98 involves more manual network configuration.
I'm thinking hardware failure, but don't want to give up on it yet.
--adalgisa

[Karnevil9]

I'm thinking, try and go to the Linksys Program and make sure the conection is good, and if it is and still not letting you connect to the internet you may have to try reinstalling the network connection. I would try that before a would say hardware failure. You can also try removing the card from the PC and see if you get a missing hardware message.

[adalgisa]

I uninstalled and reinstalled the pci card, and still couldn't connect. Next I checked the configuration for the WAP, and the setup software said there was no WAP detected on the system. So that was the source of the problem. I reset the WAP, and reinstalled it, and the wireless connection is working again. I just wonder what happened? Are wireless connections that shaky? We're going to be discussing upgrading our network & I was thinking wireless might be easier than recabling the whole office, but stuff like this makes me wonder.
Thanks for your good suggestions!
adalgisa

[Karnevil9]

My experience, though only home use, is that wireless is that shaky. For myself, in the future whenever possible, I will use a wired system, especially if I had a business. Others may have different experiences though.