Wireless internet disconnects and reconnects constantly

Hello,

For the past 3 months or so I've had trouble with my internet and have tried recently to fix it since it annoys me insanely.


Here's my setup:
- Sony Vaio FE890 laptop with Vista Home Premium 32-bit, service pack 2.
- Router is a Verizon FiOS MI424WR
- A desktop is connected through wire and doesn't experience the problems.

Here's the problem:
My wireless internet constantly disconnects and then reconnects right away for seemingly no reason. I can't find a pattern, sometimes I have no dropouts for 6 hours, sometimes it happens every 20-30 seconds for a few minutes.

I have tried the following:
- Updating drivers for both the router (there was none) and my wireless network card.
- Changing router channels to 1, 6, 11.
- Changing to static IP and back.
- Scanning my computer for viruses with Security Essentials and Spybot, removing any bad stuff it found.
- Doing diagnostics through the router, doing a ping test to my computer, but it just says "test failed" and doesn't help me any further.

None of that helped and the situation remained the same.


From the tons of stuff I've read online, I know a few things that could be wrong, but I'm not sure.

- There's the wireless phones, but the dropouts are completely independent from whenever a phone call is being made or received, there's no pattern. I don't know if that means anything or if it doesn't matter.

- I am about 100 feet away from the router, the signal has to travel from an office, through a living room and into another room where my laptop is. However, the signal strength is described as "excellent", full bars.

- It could also be a problem with my internal network card. For the longest time I've had a problem with my WiFi switch (it has become loose) and I have to fiddle with it to keep it on since it sometimes moves to the off position. But the dropout happens even when I'm not touching the computer (which could shake it to the off position) and when the switch is on. I thought about buying an external USB network adapter thing to bypass a possibly broken internal card, but I don't know if that would work and if it would end up being a waste of money.

- Finally, my laptop's power connection is semi-broken on the laptop itself. It fell about a foot down onto where the power is plugged in, which is on the side, and whatever holds the cord into the computer became loose, resulting in the computer going to battery for a second before coming back to AC power pretty often. It usually happens when typing and there's vibration on the computer from it, maybe once or twice an hour. I read that using the laptop when it's disconnected from power could result in internet fallouts, but the power plug has been broken for over a year, while the internet problems didn't show up until about 3 months ago.



So there's my situation. Sorry for the long post and thank you if you read it.

 

when your internet drops out, does the router still have an internet connection, i.e. is the router still getting an IP address from your ISP? since you said that the desktop is hard-wired into the router and doesn't experience this same problem, i'm assuming this is the case. it seems as though the problem lies more in the wireless connection and not the router or your ISP.

you may need to get a wireless expander because that distance seems fairly long.

a new network card or a wireless USB may help matters, but it still seems like a long distance.

 

Could be just weak, i get that here. it drops out but when i move the notebook it gets it back