INTERMITTENT WIRELESS: Netgear router or Dell D620 problem??

Hey, and thanks if you take the time to read this and try to help me out!

So I own a refurbished Dell Latitude D620 laptop that was sent to me by Dell last year. Currently, I am unable to connect my D620 to my family's wireless internet network (I am home from college). But I AM able to connect to my NEIGHBOR'S wireless network AND my Dad's Dell Inspiron 6000 works fine on OUR wireless network.

I first received this D620 last summer when I was also at home from college. During that time, my computer was able to connect via LAN cable. When I went back to school, I ONLY used wireless. When I came back home for winter break, I was strangely unable to re-connect to my house's LAN cable and my ethernet ports did not light up. Furthermore, I was unable to make a LAN cable connection to OTHER routers and modems as well.

I want to connect to my house's wireless network, but I can only get an INTERMITTENT connection. Meaning, I can load gmail.com but not log into my account, or I can do a google search but not connect to the links produced in the results. EVEN AFTER reinstalling Windows XP. Again, my D620 works fully on my neighbor's wireless network BUT intermittently on my OWN network, but my Dad's Inspiron works fully on OUR wireless network and router.

I thought I would need to replace my motherboard since my ethernet ports seemed broken. HOWEVER, now they are working again! BUT I'm not sure exactly why! 2 possibilities:

1) there is a power conservation mechanism on my Dell D620 that deactivates the network card when you unplug the power. I have read that this mechanism can actually really interfere with LAN line connections (and not wireless). So I deactivated that power conservation mechanism.

2) i installed a new hard drive and reinstalled Windows XP. perhaps this cleared out residual software that was interfering with my LAN line connection?

My family uses a ~3 year old Netgear MR814v2 router. I am told it is 802.11v and only capable of 11 mbps, whereas newer 802.11b models are capable of 54 mbps. I have talked to netgear about proper configuration settings -- e.g. setting it to the right channel (11).

Do I need a newer router? But why does my Inspiron work fine but the D620 alone has intermittent wireless connection. Or are there possible problems with my D620 I have not considered? I have tried disabling all my software, reinstalling the OS, turning off firewall, deactivating the power conservation mechanism, configuring the router settings, safe mode, etc. etc. and still have these problems!

Thanks!

Ash

See whether your network card is Static or Dynamic pulling up the properties dialog on each of your wired and wireless NICs in Control Panel>Networking. Then compare with your father's computer.

Of all of the things that you have mentioned that you did, checking the security on the router was conspicuously missing. Pull up the config page on your router and ensure that your laptop settings are the same as on the working PCs. And lastly, compare your home's security settings with your college's BUT DO NOT CHANGE YOUR HOME TO MATCH YOUR SCHOOL. Some colleges use obscure and unconventional security measures that may incidentally introduce incompatibilities that are easily worked around once you know what to address. Knowing is half the battle, ya?

Google anything in my message that does not make immediate sense to you.

For dell wireless networks that arent connecting properly that are windows xp or even vista for that matter go to this website from microsoft and look on the internet explorer tab use the fixit program It solved all my problems with the laptop even dell were useless in helping me figure it out and after about 4 hrs of phone calls to isp, router manufacturer, dell... i found the fix myself and it was super fast to do!!
http:support.microsoft.com/fixit and the look for or search for: microsoftfixit50235

Hope this saves some of you hours of agony!!!