Bloody wireless....

Got a call to install a wireless network for a customer - they had a Compaq V6000 laptop, Netgear DG834N router and HP C6180 All-in-one printer.
Router was up and running really quickly - connected the printer to it wirelessly, but then tried connecting the laptop to the wireless network. It would connect at 54 Mbps then after a few minutes drop to 1 Mbps - it said it was connected but it wasn't really.

Upgraded the firmware on the laptop (Broadcom onboard wireless) and the router, but still the same issue - random connects and disconnects.

Tried dropping the speed from 270 Mbps to 54 Mbps with no joy. Then dropped the encryption from WPA2 (AES) + WPA (TKIP) and kept gradually raising the encryption until it stopped working.

Looks like the problem in the end was the speed was too high for the onboard wireless and the encryption was too high also (V6000 only has an expresscard slot, so not much chance of getting a wireless card for it in the near future).

Encryption settings were left at WPA2 (AES) and the wireless worked fine - got 54Mbps signal all around the house.

HP software that comes with the printer is so bloated though - 300 Mb download and installs to 800 Mb!!! Doesn't even work properly as you are supposed to be able to push a scan straight to a PC over the network - managed to get it to work once; just bombed out all the other times, but the customer was happy to leave it, as long as the laptop could print to the printer that was fine.