My sister has wireless in her house at uni, since her landlord wont allow wires.

Unfortunately it refuses to work. I have been beating my head against it all day and am out of ideas.

They have an Orange Livebox (never heared of one before, but thats what its called). My sister is the closest to the box, and according to the signal meter on the control pannel aplet the signal strength is fluctuating between 95% and no signal on a time scale of about 3-5 seconds.

The machine originally had a Linksys card, which I replaced today with a generic from a local shop in the hope that it was just a dud card. This made no difference (in fact if anything the Linksys worked better, appearing to fluctuate more evenly)

I have tried both the aerial which came with the new card and the (slightly larger) one which came with the Linksys, this made no difference.

I have tried setting the machine up in place of a housemates machine (which can connect) guess what? no difference.

I have also tried getting my Dads lappy to connect to the wireless networdk from my sisters room, this doesnt work.

I am beginning to suspect that there is something wrong with the wireless "router" box. Its a very funny looking box, no external aerials
and what appears to be a PCMCIA slot. Nothing like any ADSL router Ive ever seen (not that Ive seen many wireless routers).

Anyone got any ideas?

Can you get into the router config from the housemates box? Might be a security or dhcp thing.

Also, sometimes its better to uncheck the "use windows to configure wireless network settings" box and use the cards software.

Obvious question - does the other computers work with it?

If so try one of theirs in her compy.

cheers for the suggestions guys

I have circumnavigated the problem by wireing a Linksys wireless router to the wired port on the Orange box and using it as a hub.

Signal strength is now clear and strong throughout the house

Moral of this story?

Orange livebox wireless Sucks

youre not far wrong there. The whole pairing thing is a pita.

My youngest brother got burdened with one - I managed to unlock it when it was back at the correct fw version - not sure if you can still do it - look for the guides...

I have to sort out Liveboxes on a daily basis.

They come in 2 flavours Sagem and Inventel, largely the biggest problem with them is that (in France anyway) they come coupled in a pack with a wifi USB stick, and that the MAC address filtering is on by default and is naturally coupled with the mac..

Try checking in the wifi security and see if thats the problem.

Cheers
Tongy