Wireless Connection Status reported incorrectly

[shaferbus]

This is weird, and I haven't found any mention of a similar problem online.
We have a Toshiba Satellite notebook running WinXP SP2 with internal Atheros wireless adapter. When attempting to connect to a wireless network using the View Available Wireless Connections window, we select the connection desired and click the Connect button, as one normally would.

The connection IS established, but you would never know it by looking at the desktop! The View Available Wireless Connections window shows the status of the selected network as "Not Connected", the System Tray icon for the wireless adapter shows a red X, and the Network Connections window shows the Network Bridge and the wireless card as "Not Connected". The ONLY visible change when the connection is established is the button in the View Available... window - it DOES change from "Connect" to "Disconnect".

Contrary to all of the evidence above, the connection DOES exist, and can be used as normal - it's just reported wrong. I was tearing my hair out trying to diagnose a wireless connection problem until I discovered that it WAS connected LOL.

Now, here's another weirdness - if the Network Connections view is Refreshed, suddenly the status is displayed correctly everywhere! View Available, Network Connections, System Tray - all now show "Connected!"

This isn't a critical problem, except that the user of the notebook is none too savvy, and gets confused enough without Windows lying about connection status ;-) Does anyone have any insight?

 

[bygeek]

Try going into the Wireless tab under the Connection Properties and uncheck the box that says something like "Allow windows to manage my wireless connections". You may just have a conflict with the built-in connection manager software.

 

[shaferbus]

Thanks for the suggestion bygeek, but I'm afraid it may be more complicated than than.
When I first started setting up this Toshiba, that checkbox was unchecked and the Atheros connection manager software was managing the connection. However, it didn't seem to find any active connections when I knew they were there! I thought the XP SP2 native system was more intuitive anyway (and isn't THAT something! Could one of MS's "improvements" actually have been just that?)

It does give me food for thought though... perhaps you're right about a conflict even though the Windows management box is checked...

I'll try it again with both connection manager systems, and if I don't find any answers maybe I'll try uninstalling the Atheros software and see where that gets me.

 

[linney]

How to troubleshoot wireless network connections in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313242/EN-US/?FR=1

xp drops wireless then reconnects
thread779-941706

How to troubleshoot TCP/IP connectivity with Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=314067

How to troubleshoot network connectivity problems

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;325487&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

 

[shaferbus]

Thanks Linney. Actually I had found a couple of those documents already, when I thought that connectivity was the problem - that's how I found out that I really WAS connected...
However, connectivity isn't the problem. I AM connecting, it's just that the "connection status" isn't reflecting that fact until I select "View / Refresh" in the Network Connections window. Once I do that, connection status is reported correctly for the rest of the wireless session.

I think bygeek is on the right track, since this seems to be something related to this particular configuration, and not XP itself. As soon as I can get hold of the machine again, I'm going to experiment further. I also want to try it with the Network Bridge disabled to see if that's part of the issue.