So anyway keeping myself busy in my retirement and decided to get the home network all nice and neat ect..my poor old Billion 5100 was dying badly and just not cutting it, the toggle switch for powere was getting very flakey and sometimes it took like 20 pressess to get it to fireup. So after much researching over on whirlpool I decided on a Dunalink RTA1025W adsl2+2 modem and 4 port router with wireless. Set it up and its been awesome, dropped a pci wireless card in the sons comp and fired it up..perfect. Did the wife's laptop
for her to do work in the loungeroom ect...perfect, good strong signal and great
speed. Very happy.

Then I order a wirelees adapter for the xbox360, figuring that well hey its in the loungeroom hooked up to all this great digital hardware/theatre stuff , might as well enjoy some online fun. Connect it all up, ect..follow the online
checklist and for the life of me she wont find the network, kept at this for a while, scoured some forums for some hints but alasno go.. anyway in frustration I rang the Microsoft tech support for xbox live ect.. Here's how it went.

Me: "Hi"

MS: "hello sir, first can I start with your first name followed by your surname?"

Me: "sure..blah...blah.."

MS: "Ok what seems to be the problem with your xbox360?'

Me: "Well, I have tried everything and I cant get it to recognise my wireless network, its really wierd because all the other items in the house are working fine."

MS:"Hmm...ok one minute please..........." (this is followed by a pause of about 5 minutes with much typing and paper shuffling going on in the background)

MS: "Are yes sir, no what type of modem/router are you using?"

ME:"Dynalink RTA1025W"

MS:'Ok, uuummm now have you tried putting you WEP and SSID details into the xbox manually?

ME:"Yep"

MS:"and nothing works?"

ME: "nope, nothing, all it can see is the new anenna and dongle I have put in its back"

MS: "Is there perhaps a wall between the xbox and the modem/router?"

ME: "Why yes, the router is beside my computer in the study and the xbox is in the loungeroom in the entertainment system, why?"

MS:" Are well, that's your problem, the console should really be in 'LINE OF SIGHT" of the router?"

ME: "Your kidding?"

MS: "No, you see it like a infared control it really does need to be in line of sight of the router, and having walls in the way will stop it from working correctly"

ME: "you have to be kidding, if that's the case then its not a wireless network then isnt it?, its a remote control network? I just paid $170 for this adapter and now you are telling me it has to be in line of sight?"

MS: "Is there anyway you can get the console and move it so it is in line of sight of the computer and router?"

ME: "Um no, it setup in a home theatre unit and to get to the plugs in the power line conditioner requires me to get to the back of the unit and thats a two person job. The thing weighs like 150kg. And besides, why would I want to move the xbox into the computer room or thereabout just to get line of sight to connect, sort of defeats the purpose dont you think."

MS: "One moment sir, one moment..I'll try to see if there is anything else I can do...(waiting..waiting..) after five more minutes...No sir, that is about it...actually I can't look up anything else at the moment my computer just crashed and I had to reboot it and its giving me this weird error messages"

ME: "Well lets hope you don't have to ring Microsoft for support then hey?"

MS:" (laughing ) heheh yeh that would be funny hey, I am sorry about this and I would like to give you a job referrence number but as I said my machine just fell over and welll....sorry"

ME:"Good bye"

So, anyway I decide to try hooking the xbox up with this long 30 metre network cable I have to see if it can see the network that way. I do this and immediately I have connectivity....so sitting there with it grinning at me I then re-connect the wireless adapter into the usb slot and the xbox throws up a screen on the tv telling me that the wired cable will be used and the wireless one wont be active until I remove the wired cable. I removed the wired cable and bingo the wireless adapter works like a dream and has been working all day since. Including shutdowns & reboots of both the xbox360, the main computer and the main modem/router ect..it fires up and finds the network perfectly? I dunno what I did, it was almost like I jumped started it in some way but for now its fine, its wireless and it not fuking 'line of sight'. FFS

haha, I hope you laughed in his ear when he said "line of sight"

Nice =)
Should ring em back up an charge them a consultancy fee for finding a fix

You know how smoke comes out when hardware fails?

Well you need magic smoke to make the electronics run. When you used the network cable, smoke flowed through it and entered the xbox allowing the wireless interface to work.

What's that from parabol?

A guy I used to go to school with like 10 years ago used to say the same thing.

Not sure if it's from anything in particular. Probably humour among electricians *shrug*

i actually had this problem as well when i first bought the wireless reciever (not the useless tech support - the not connecting one)

one of my troubleshooting ideas after all the network setting type ones was just to take it out and replug it in to see if that helped, and it did - worked perfectly pretty much as soon as a i plugged it in :/

so maybe they just suck the first time you plug the things in ><

edit - note, my 360 is also NOT in los, but yeah, not as far away as yours (just through a wall to my bros room)

and if you want to be streaming any xvids you may have, look up a program called transcode 360 - damn nifty program that converts to mpeg on the fly

last edited by NaK0r at 17:18:24 25/Aug/06

haha, I hope you laughed in his ear when he said "line of sight"

hehe yeh mate I did bigtime, if you could have heard the inflection of disbelief in my 'You're kidding" reply.

Honestly it got me to thinking what bulls*** they must get away with poor old average newbie mum and dad on the end of the phone sometimes and how much bling some local neighbourhood techies are making by getting all this work coutesy of MS.

:P

I get that s*** with AAPT all the time.

THEM : How long is the telephone cable going to the modem?

ME : About 20 metres

THEM : Well that's the problem then, it has to be under 2metres

ME : So why has it been working for the past 6 months?

THEM : No that's the problem.

/20 minutes of whinging, they realise it's not the problem and finally help me.

You made it harder for yourself by calling Microsoft for help. I feel for you.

You could not pay me to call them for help. No sir.

Microsft: HA! Dreaming
IBM: Good for hardware, absolute s*** for software, dont bother, the usual "We can't help you" ...@$%#^%#^...go look at boulder.... hang up.
Novell: f***ing awesome.

That is all.

I have been through a similar situation however where you plugged in a cable I had the luxery of another Wireless access point and it worked. Once that one was working I could use the other one. Weird.

I had a similar problem with net tech support. My net disconnected and i yelled at it cause i finally had some gaming time and it was doing this. Called em up, in about 5 minutes i was on to a tech. told him net wasn't working and that i rebooted, rebooted modem, rebooted router, nothing was working this time, no sync at all.

He said it maybe the phone cable from the modem to the wall. like yeah right mate, it was working before and now it isn't!!

i got really riled up. wtf! argh

anyway, you know they are just following a script, so to progress i changed the phone line over and it's worked like a dream ever since.

"ahhhhh.. thanks mate".
"no problem, that's why we are here".

I have been through a similar situation however where you plugged in a cable I had the luxery of another Wireless access point and it worked. Once that one was working I could use the other one. Weird.

compatibility is a bitch. I like those cheap Asus wireless access points for just this kind of thing eh.


Ironically, the MS wireless manager built into SP2 saves the day with most wireless jobs these days. Why people load the software aps that come with their wireless gear instead of just the basic driver for the wireless nic I'll never know.

you should've said

"IM A COP YOU IDIOT!"

i always have dramas with xps built in wireless software
my netgear stuff seems to be happier with its own drivers

i just could not connect at all using windows wireless

How much easier could they make it ? Sorry the XP Wireless client works perfectly.

Im suprised you found time to post Skitza, especially looking up all that time consuming "s***ting in mouth" porn

lollll ace

i always have dramas with xps built in wireless software
my netgear stuff seems to be happier with its own drivers

I think youll find thats your netgear adapter spook. Its the only brand of wireless card iv used so far that is a pain in the ass to use with the SP2 windows wireless client.

yer, im not suprised

not overly happy with my router, but its still getting the job done

soon as it dies, ill get a billion

Came across it, thought you could use it :)