When I\'m using my secured wifi with LAN only in one location, sometimes windows

[notechie]

When I'm using my secured WIFI by way of LAN on my laptop, sometimes Windows XP repeatedly crashes and reboots. If I turn off the wireless router, the problem stops but I can't access the internet. This event occurs only occasionally and only in this specific location with this specific WIFI.

Could a third party be compromising my WIFI connection? If so, what's the fix? Would creating a new password help? I suspect that the compromise might be more extensive than someone having gotten access to the password to the secured WIFI, which would have been fairly easy to do. Again, the crashes occur sporadically and only when I'm using this WIFI on this laptop in this residence.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[Saga Lout]

Hello and welcome to Tom's Hardware Forums.

Have a look in Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Event Viewer at the System and Application logs to see what caused the last rash and post some details back here.

Changing the wireless security key and hiding the SSID or network name would be a good thing to do from a security point of view in case someone has control of the router but it's hard to see how they could make the system go down without causing a controlled shutdown.