Re-establishing a Wireless connection

[Hysteresis]

I am using a Medion Laptop with Windows VISTA OS. I have a wireless connection via a D-Link router with Talktalk as my ISP.
I have established a wireless connection successfully and all works satisfactorily. However, I occasionally (not always) lose my wireless connection following an automatic Sleep or Hibernation condition.
Re-establishing my wireless connection can only be achieved by a Restart operation of my laptop.
I have tried all of the standard ways of re-establishing a connection such as Connect to function, using this returns a message that my laptop cannot detect a wireless signal and suggests various reasons none of which are true. My router is still on line so I have tried the function of switching off my Wireless card and switching it back on again without success. So the only way I can re-establish a wireless connection is to restart my laptop and then all is returned to a successful wireless connection.
As you can imagine this is just a pain in the bum and I am sure there is some way of either re-establishing a successful wireless connection or stop the wireless connection failing (sometimes) when my laptop goes to sleep. I have asked Talktalk for help and they say it is my computer which is at fault, I have talked to Medion who are worse than useless at giving any advice. I have talked to a guy in PC World who purports to be a Network expert and he suggested some VISTA settings, none of which I can find,
Can Anyone offer any advice for overcoming this annoying inconvenience of requiring a Restart.

 

[kevindgas]

we have an ADSL wired connection that occasionally fails to reset it we just pull the plug on it for 20 secs and plug back in after it self tests it resets.
don't know if this helps?

 

[Hysteresis]

I don't think it is anything to do with the wireless router because I don't touch it, but only restart my laptop to re-establish the wireless connection.

 

[MrHumbug]

It sounds like Vista isn't resuming the Wifi from sleep properly. Make sure you are up to at least Service Pack 1 and have the latest drivers for your wireless adapter.

 

[Hysteresis]

Hi Mr Humbug,
Excuse my ignorance here but is there a difference between SP1 and the normal Windows Updates. I have my laptop set for Automatic updates, and thought that was all that was required. I notices there is an SP2 available, so would I only download SP2 or would I need to download both SP 1 & 2.
When I looked at the SP1 download it was suggesting 17 hours to download - this seems an incedibly long time. or have I read it wrong.

 

[MrHumbug]

Have a look in Control Panel and double-click the System icon (in the default view you'll need to click "Performance and Maintenance" then "Seel basic information about your computer")

You should see it saying something like

Windows XP Home Version 2002 Service Pack 1

If it doesn't say Service Pack 1 then you don't have it installed. You should, however, really be on Service Pack 2 as MS doesn't support SP1 any more (SP3 is the latest available). You don't need to install SP1 before SP2, but I think you do need to install SP2 before SP3.

SP2 is a few hundred MB. it shouldn't take 17 hours unless you are on a dial-up connection.

 

[Hysteresis]

Hi Mr Humbug,
I am running Windows VISTA service pack 1. I cant find any reference to SP2 or 3 for VISTA in the windows upgrade pages.
Are we at cross references here as I can find WIndows XP SP2 ?
I have downloaded all available upgrades ansd I now await to see if I can establish a wireless connection when my next failure occurs.
One encouraging sign is that if I switch off my WiFi then the internet icon shows the disconnection and then when I switch back the WiFi to on then the connection is re-established after about a minute. This did not happened before I downloaded all of the available upgrades so with a bit of luck you may have solved my problem.
Thanks so much

 

[MrHumbug]

Oops! I should have read back in the thread.

Vista SP1 or SP2 is what you want. Make sure you have the latest driver for your Wifi adapter. You should be able to get that from teh Medion web site. If there's still no joy from that the manufacturer of the card may have a newer one, but you'll need to know exactly which Wifi adapter you have before trying that.