i just got a laptop vista, and i get internet with a wireless router in the other room.
when i download things they always stop half way through, and i have to retry to download them 8 times before they actually download all the way and not stop.
is this common? it says i have an excellent signal strength, and my bandwidth is about 3 megs according to a bandwidth test.
Not normal, no. Vista is known however to be a bit buggy to put it mildly. And, as Vista is still very new to most folks, it could just be setup improperly. It could be something with Vista or with another device(s) causing intermittent interference with the wireless signal. Also, some ISP's like to shut down on your bandwidth when it appears to them that you are not really using all of it. If this is the problem and happens at inappropriate times, it might be a good idea to run a page like this:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>
<body>
<img src="some_local.gif" onload="setTimeout('window.location.reload(true)',10500);">
<script type="text/javascript">
document.images[0].src='http://www.somedomain.com/images/some_live.jpg?c=' + new Date().getTime();
</script>
</body>
</html>
in the background to keep the bandwidth up. Replace the two image locations with ones of your own. The live one must exist and be on a server that allows this type of request. Most do, but - for instance, Google does not. Use one from your own site if you don't have a transfer limit. It can and should be a relatively small image.
by some_local.gif you mean a pic thats on my comp harddrive?
im using freeimagehosting.net for the second image
Yes. That's just something to use for the first load of the page, after that, it will (or should) show the hosted image, reloading it every 10.5 seconds. This is generally good to keep the bandwidth at or close to optimal from those ISP's that are trying to save money by reducing your bandwidth when you are not 'actively surfing'. I mention again that this will only help if the problem is a 'frugal' ISP as I have outlined, and if the remote host allows (as I said, some don't) the image to be reloaded 'fresh' each 10.5 second interval.
but my main computer never does this, just my laptop.
laptop is connected wirelessly to internet through my desktop cmputer in the other room, and that computer downloads things and never stops the download randomly. even when i go to webpages, sometimes i have to click go 5 times before the page will actually load.
for example, i go to download something and it will get to 32, or 50 or some other percent complete, then the download will just stop and not continue.
it downloads super fast too, like almost 500k a second, and then it just stops. but, after 42 times or so times of trying to download it, it will actually download all the way.
my computer in the other room is directly connected to the cable modem and does not have this problem, im thinking it has something to do with the wireless router?