Small office network constantly disconnecting

[Guest]

Apologies in advance for the convoluted explanation but I'm not sure which
details are important to help with my problem!!

We have a LAN connection between 2 computers (one laptop and one desktop),
both of which have cables directly attached to a wireless router before
reaching the ADSL modem. We have a secured wireless network up and running
but it often disconnects. We set up a small office network to share a folder
on the desktop, but the problem is this connection fails on a regular basis.
The laptop is unable to open the desktop's SharedDocs even though sometimes
the desktop can still open the laptop's SharedDocs. Despite the fact there
doesn't seem to be any correlation between the network disconnecting and the
wireless going down (as even recreating the network when everything is
connected doesn't seem to solve the problem), it seems that there must be
some kind of hidden factor here.

I don't know if this is important but when recreating the internal network I
use the residential gateway setting, even though it seems logical to choose
the access through a hub option. However selecting this option triggers a
warning that this specific configuration will allow anyone on the internet to
see our files and use our printer. This seems pretty crazy but we can't run
the risk of this happening!! I have to restart the computer every time I
recreate this network (as sometimes this works) but it's driving me nuts!

If anyone could save me from insanity I'd be immensely grateful

Thanks

 

[Bill Sanderson MVP]

This group is specfically Windows Defender related, but we might be able to
field this one anyway.

Let me be sure I understand the setup:

You have a wireless router. To this router are cabled a laptop and a
desktop. The DSL modem is connected to the WAN port of the router (?)

If this is correct (doesn't matter if the pc's are wired or wireless)--then
using the residential gateway choice is absolutely correct. The other
choice is for a simple hub or switch with a dsl modem connected to it--not a
router.

I'm not clear on a couple of details: There's a secured wireless network,
but you seem to be saying that both the laptop and the desktop are connected
via wires?

What is it that disconnects? How do you know that it disconnects? Windows
Networking is perfectly capable of disconnecting when idle and re-connecting
on the fly when necessary.

 

[Guest]

Hi Bill,

Not sure how I ended up posting in this group but thanks for taking the time
to reply!

The setup you mentioned is correct. And yes, both computers are connected
via wires, but we need the wireless network in order to access the desktop's
files when it is taken away from its wired connection point to use in other
parts of the office.

What disconnects is the internal small office network used to share folders.
We can tell it disconnects because either the SharedDocs icon does not
appear, or if it does, when trying to open it an error message appears.

I hope this clarifies things a little. Thank you again for your help and I
look forward to hearing from you!