Blinkin' Windows XP wireless networking!

uglymusic

I use a Dell PC, running WinXP and dBpoweramp to do my CD ripping. It has an Edimax wi-fi card. To cut a long story short, the blinkin' thing keeps dropping the network, so I keep getting up to find my rip copies have failed and I have to restart the copy.

Wired Ethernet is not an option, and I think I have the latest drivers for the wi-fi card, so can anyone recommend a reliable card/dongle/Star Trek transporter that will enable me to copy my damned files uninterrupted by Redmond-based cussedness?

Rosewind

How about an external hard drive for storing the first copy before you save it to your network share/NAS?

Alternately you could store on the computer first. That would save you a lot of trouble.

But you will need to find the culprit anyway, so there is no way round a fault check of your wifi card or your router to determine why the connection is dropped. In the past I had to buy a new router for our home because the old Netgear router dropped the wifi connection to my wife's computer several times every evening when she was working. A new router did the trick. I use a Netgear gigabit + wifi router, but I am sure that there are many other reliable brands available.

Good luck!

Best wishes,
Peter

uglymusic

My workflow is:

• Rip AIFF and FLAC copies to Dell's internal HD
• Use Chronosync running on my iMac to copy the AIFFs on to the NAS and the FLACs on to the Drobo
• Delete AIFFs and FLACs from Dell

I adopted this apparoach when I discovered that ripping directly to the external/network storage was causing some files to disappear and I had to re-rip a load of CDs. Chronosync reports any problems, so I can rerun it to make sure all files have been transferred, unlike writing directly from dBpoweramp.

My router is an Apple AirPort Extreme, which I have no plans to swap ;-)

I should also make clear, perhaps, that the Dell drops the network and then reconnects itself automatically, nearly all the time. Once every few months it drops the network and doesn't recover, and I have to go in and have serious words with it.