Wifi reception down all of the sudden

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For some reason, my WiFi reception went to hell all of the sudden. I noticed it went way down the other day when I was at my friend's apartment (surfing on their neighbor's connection).

I used to get 5 bars in my room (20 feet from router in the next room) and now I am getting 1 bar. To make sure it wasn't the router, I tried another laptop and it got 5 bars in the same spot. Anybody know how to fix this? I have it on performance mode in the Intel menu.

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Well I thought that the antenna wire may have slipped out but I opened up my T42p and the wires seem to connected OK. I don't think it is SW or driver related since I put in the original HDD that it came with (I got 5 bars of signal strength last time I used this drive) and still got only 1-2 bars. Any other guesses before I send it to IBM? This happened soon after I connected to some anonymous unsecured network at my friends place. Could someone have maliciously altered the firmware just by me connecting to their router?

[keku]

I had this kind of problem with Intel a/b/g card. with anthros which is IBM a/b/g card problem went away.

If you don't have latest driver try it, that might fix the problem.

[tfflivemb2]

I would definately uninstall and then reinstall the drivers.

I had a problem similar to this. I was in a store next to WalMart, when I tried to connect via wireless. I accidentally attempted to connect with their secure connection, instead of my friends'. Next thing I knew, I was getting the typical XP blue screens. Even after I got home!! I couldn't even boot the computer with the wireless card attached to the laptop (600E) without getting the blue screens.

I decided to see if it was a one time thing....it happened again later with the same laptop, as well as another 600E and my M300!!! Lesson learned.

I know that the blue screen isn't your problem, but it does show that things can happen from connecting to someone else service.

[christopher_wolf]

IBM Access Connections is a Perfect Example of how to manage something like Wireless; there are *TONS* of settings...I know as I have setup and connected to many Routers (Linksys, Motorola, DLink) and have had to do various things on different computers and laptops to get connections working well. from my experience, the computer changes alot of subtle Wireless settings each time it connects to a different router. These aren't always evident from the beginning, but they can cause problems later.