Network ... not work

[Col]

/\ Great title, no?

Anyway, down to business. I have a Netgear DG834G v4. It's a wireless access point, router and modem. Bought it because my brother smashed up the BT HomeHub which we had because it was slow, even though we're on 8Mb. I know that you never actually get 8Mb when you're on an 8Mb plan, but anyway...

So I got the Netgear wireless router/modem as a replacement. It seemed fine for ages. Then I had a graphics card problem in my PC, which mean tthat I couldn't use my PC for quite a few weeks. According to my brother, in all the time that I've been off the network, it's been running great. Now I'm back on, and apparently it's my fault that it's now very slow.

In all the time that my PC has been running since replacing my graphics card, I have had a lot of trouble using the Internet. Vista's network map often shows that I am connected to the router but not the Internet, and also sometimes shows that I am not connected to a network.

When I am connected to the network, the Internet is painfully slow, not even comparable to dialup, and file transfers between computers usually fail. My mum often uses my printer through the network, and can't at the moment. A message appears saying that the resource is unavailable.

My brother blames he fact that I used to use BitTorrent several months ago and says that there is a virus on the router, but he will say anything to make it seem like it's my fault.

He plays WoW, and whenever he gets lag, it's because I'm downloading on BitTorrent, until I remind him that it has not been installed for a few months, then he'll say it's because of a virus on the router which apparently I put there, then it's because it's not set up properly because I set it up, then it's just the router in general, "this s--- you constantly buy". It's never the fact that his computer has not been switched off for a few weeks, with WoW running constantly.

But there really shouldn't be any problem at all. The router should be perfectly capable of running his game and any of mine at the same time, while still allowing mum to use my printer and transfer files.

Any ideas please? Why is it that I am having so much trouble even connecting, despite the fact that "it's always [my] computer slowing the network down", as my brother puts it?

I updated the router's firmware to version 5.01.09 yesterday to see what that would do. It didn't make a blind bit of difference.

I'm not sure of my brother's specs, but my system specs are as follows:
Windows Vista Home Premium x64
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ 2.8GHz
4GB OCZ Vista Platinum RAM 5-4-4-15
D-Link DWL-G510 wireless network adaptor

As I said, I'm not sure what my brother's specs are, but I do know that he uses a US Robotics 5416 Wireless Turbo PCI Adaptor on Windows XP Home Edition.

Personally, I don't think the problem is related to the router, because we have replaced loads, but any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. It's been going on for ages.

Thanks.

Edit: My mum is connected to the router by Ethernet at 100Mbps.

Edit edit: I originally posted this on another forum and was told to make sure BBC iPlayer, BitTorrent and other programs like that weren't running on any computers. They aren't and the problem continues.

[chatters]

http://www.chicagotech.net/vista/vistaslow.htm

Step one fixed mine, make sure you run the command prompt in admin mode level, its in the options somewhere if you right click it

[Monkey]

That should work, and if you do still find it low, change the wireless channels to 1,6 or 11 :P

And try it without security and/or with different security

[Col]

Well I've tried all the ones on that page which I'm comfortable with and also reduced my WEP key to 64-bit. I don't really want to completely remove security. There are other wireless networks nearby.

I have the latest driver for my NIC, but can't get any more anyway. According to D-Link, my card is now discontinued. Someone pointed me to a driver from Ralink which comes with its own connection manager. That resulted in the computer not even knowing I had a wireless card, so I removed it and went back to the Windows Zero Config utility.

Problem remains.

Oh, also, I read on Netgear's site about how the orientation of the aerial on the NIC and the router can help boost signal strength. Apparently if the aerial is vertical, it has better coverage horizontally. So I tilted the two aerials and shifted the router a little bit to effectively make the aerials parallel to each other, but it made no difference.

Channel 11 is worse than channel 6. I think someone might be using it, but the problem remains on both channels. Any more ideas?

[Monkey]

Beleive me, no-one else is using that channel, no matter what channel you use they dont interefere with anyone else

[Col]

The router goes up to channel 12, but I know that the 802.11g standard only supports 11 channels, even though some hardware spports more. Not sure if my card goes up to channel 12, nor am I sure if my brother's one does. I'll have to try that next I think.

Bearing in mind that the router is 802.11g compliant, am I likely to notice a difference if I was to change my network card for a RangeMax one?