Mechling/Mechcom Support Group   

My Vista wireless connection doesn't work right?

We have had many customers ask this question. Usually they either have or had an XP system that worked just fine, but their Vista system doesn't work consistently or at all. Some routers are simply not supported by Vista and others have firmware updates that may help solve your problem. You can check with the router manufacturer to see if updates are available for your router.

We have also noticed that Vista is unable to connect to any wi-fi network that requires username/password authentication. This 'chipset' problem may be also be causing problems for those of you that do connect, then activate some security feature such as wep and your connections start to become intermittent. Again, check with the manufacturer of your wireless card and see if there is a driver/software update for Vista computers. If there isn't an update available you can run the router in unsecured mode or purchase a Vista compatible router.

Vista’s new TCP/IP stack offers plenty of improvements, but unfortunately doesn’t always play well with older hardware that isn’t aware of the newer features it uses. This can be a problem when trying to use wireless networking with a router that doesn’t understand the updated ‘Windows Tuning’ feature. We suggest this is more common with routers used for public internet connections, such as at a hotel. The fix is to disable autotuning.

To do this:

• Click on the Start menu and type cmd in the search box. Type CTR+SHIFT+ENTER to tell the command prompt to open with elevated privileges.
  
  
• In the command prompt window, type netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable and hit Enter
  
  
• After getting the OK returned in the command prompt window, restart to activate the change. 
  If the change doesn’t help, you can always revert by going though the same process, but instead, use the command: netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal
  
  Don’t forget to reboot!

One other suggestion we can offer is to disable the TCP/IPv6 feature and try using TCP/IPv4. This has worked in some cases for customers experiencing problems.