Signal is excellent and speed is 1 mbps to 8 mbps?

[tringler79]

I'm fairly ignorant to how computers work. My computer is about 10 years old, it's a Dell, was $1,100 at that time, it's a desktop. I use "Broadstripe" cable/internet company (Not my choice, live with my mom) Not sure of the internet speed she purchased. (Probably the cheapest knowing her). I did purchase a somewhat expensive router. It's a "N600 wireless dual band router" (Model WNDR3400v2). I'm using a USB wireless netgear connector. The signal strength is very good to excellent. But the speed is very slow. Between 1 mbps to 54 mbps (during a good minute). And the internet connection goes out frequently. About 5 times since I Started this question. Does anybody know whats wrong or if there is any thing I can do to help speed up the computer? Changing cable/internet company is out of the question as it is not my house. Would a different type of wireless connector help? What about a Ad Hoc connection? My son has a wireless ready laptop that runs just fine on the internet as well as all the other wireless ready laptops in the house. My desktop is about about 30 feet from the router. Any help is appreciated.

[Geek-9pm]

From a quick look at you post, I think you are not using the right driver for the USB adapter. Also, XP has to be up to date to work with wireless.
Does the computer have an Ethernet card?
Can you possibly get an Ethernet cable and run it directly from the tourer to you old XP computer? If you can do that, you will have to do the Internet Wizard again so that it includes the Ethernet card in the network.

Older versions of XP that are not up to date only work with Ethernet. Unless you disable wireless security. Which is a bad idea. Windows XP has a hard time with wireless security.

However, I am not sure that would fix lour problem. Sometimes you have to do the XP Network wizard three times before it comes out right.