I’m looking for tips for making my wireless home network more stable. Here’s my setup: I use a wireless-g LinkSys router to connect two Vista machines (one desktop, one laptop), an HP ethernet printer, and a netword attached storage drive. The printer and the NAS drive connect to the router via ethernet cables. I added the NAS drive just a couple of weeks ago. In fact, I added that drive soon after my desktop machine crashed and I had to reinstall the OS and re-build everything from backup.
Sometimes everything works well. For example, last night I moved a few thousand JPG files from the desktop hard drive to the NAS drive to make the photos available to both machines. Then I launched my freshly-installed Adobe Photoshop Elements and imported those photos into the catalog. Next I moved to the laptop, launched Adobe Photoshop Elements Album Starter Edition (the free download) and imported the same photos into that application. All went according to plan. Then this morning, I returned to find I had no connection to the NAS drive on either machine. I also had no Internet connection on either machine! The router appeared to be up and running. The little green lights were all aflutter with activity, but both computers had only local access.
I then used the reset button on the router and right away got Internet access on the desktop. Still, the NAS drive was not visible. As for the laptop, it still showed “local access only.” The printer showed as “disconnected” on both machines. Well, then I had to leave for work, and I’ve no way to know whether any of these issues self-corrected. I may get home this evening and find everything back to normal. Even so, this behavior is highly annoying. That goes double for my wife, who of course just wants the system to work! Any suggestions?
I’ve never used a WD device. Does it come with any configuration software? How do you connect to the NAS (Name or IP)?
