cannot download files with wifi but can with cable.

[EFindley]

Hi.. this is a weird one..

I just did a complete fresh win7 ultimate install for a friend. I used a hardwire ethernet connection to the router. downloading patches, fixes, etc.. etc..
I installed a D-Link wireless N pci card.
drivers installed, application installed, connected to my AT&T U-Verse router no problem, got an IP Address, everything's kosher.
I can surf the web with no issues with Firefox 8 AND IE 9.

When I attempted to download the MS Office file converter program from microsoft.com the download stalled. In Firefox I got the download window and says Starting. Well it doesn't start.
after a minute it says can't start download.

I tried using IE9, same problem.

I disabled the d-link wifi connection and plugged in the ethernet hardwire, got the SAME IP address and was able to download the file as fast as it could.
Swapped the cable for the wifi and nothing.

I've been on Technet and found a post that resembles what I'm going through, and the solution was a router firmware update. Well I can't exactly do that, as the router is updated by U-Verse when they deem it necessary.
And no other wifi device I attach to this has an issue.

the laptop and my Android phone have no problems with the wireless at all.
I've been through the router settings for this particular IP address and nothing seems out of the ordinary.
I've been through event logs, services, and firewall settings. Nothing seems out of the ordinary.

However, windows update seems to download the patches just fine.

Any help and tips are greatly appreciated!

Thank You!

[Tinto Tech]

If you can browse the internet the basic infrastructure is present and working.

Can you browse to exactly the same page on the laptop and download the file? That would rule out a problem on the download page.

What antivirus package are you running on the new PC? Is it the same as the laptop, and if so are there any differences in the configuration? Some all-in-one suites can be rather heavy handed with their firewall configurations. Perhaps the wifi is set as public network connection which may prevent downloading of files that are not to be rendered by the browser?

As a side note, it's a bit odd for the PC to get the same IP address from the router for ethernet and wireless. I'm assuming for a moment that the router is running DHCP and allocating private addresses: normally there would be a lease time on the MAC address of the ethernet interface and the router would assign a different private IP to the wifi. Not sure that it has a specific bearing on the download issue, but it might point to the router having issues.

[curiousclive]

As Tinto above suggested I would check the WiFi is not set to 'public network' as this would indeed prevent your downloads except for MS updates.

Please let us know if you manage to resolve the issue so others can benefit.

[EFindley]

I am using Microsoft Security Essentials and Microsoft Firewall as my defense.

Well last night, I don't know what I did or didn't do, but I was able to download files, namely win7 SP1. it took 20minutes, all was fine. this morning I turned the desktop on and I am having the exact same problem.
the ONLY thing I did last nite was reset 2 folders from Hidden to unHidden. I have been trying to save files under a folder I created called: \Stuff
the other folder was downloads.

I checked the attributes on these folders and they are set to ReadOnly and when I turn the attribute off, it apparently doesn't stick and it's back to read only. I created another folder called files located at c:\Files and it set the attributes to -r for read only. I can't turn it off either.

I know it seems odd for the router to dish the same IP address, but my 2-Wire U-Verse router doesn't seem to stray from this.
I can browse to the exact same page on my laptop wirelessly and download the file. I can do the same on this dekstop if connected via cable.

I checked the network connection type, and I made double sure it was set to HOME Network.
Is there another option I should be looking for?

[Tinto Tech]

Weird...

OK on the AV/Firewall. That combination shouldn't cause any issues for download. I'm not sure about the folder permissions - it might have had an impact in Firefox where the downloaded file is written straight into the target directory, but in IE it goes via temporary internet files first, so it would have failed after download had completed when it is copied to the target directory. In any case they were common to ethernet and wifi. Just to check though, could you try download to that standard Downloads folder?

Next, please bear with me, I'm going to suggest some things that might be seen as fairly obvious or may have already been ruled out, but worth just verifying.

Can you confirm the router is issuing private addresses: like 192.168.x.x? Can you open the properties of both wifi and ethernet and verify the MAC addresses are different or are they the same? Is the wifi adapter set to use DHCP or static IP? This links back to the strange behaviour of the router issuing the same IP address. I'm still troubled by the same IP being allocated to the different adapters.

Connect the ethernet and wifi at the same time. Open a elevated command prompt window and run ipconfig /all. Is there anything unusual in the result? Assuming you are on DHCP on wifi, does running ipconfig /renew change anything in the result of the ipconfig /all? This is to check the correct behaviour of the wifi adapter in connecting to the router.

When connected on only the wifi adapter (with unplugged the ethernet cable) and the problem is present, can you open a command prompt and ping google.com. Does it get a ICMP response? Can you launch a web page that you haven't been to when connected via ethernet: go to wikipedia and click on the random article link to get a random page. The reason for doing these two are to check that you have an active internet connection on wifi and are not loading pages out of the browser cache; which would then fail when you try a download.

Once again, forgive what might seem some obvious thoughts, but I'm struggling to think of anything else programmatic that would cause the download to fail only on wifi when the browser is correctly downloading html files.

[EFindley]

Hi! thank you for the response! To answer your questions:
files download to the downloads folder via cable, but not with wi-fi. (same as all folder attempts)
the router is issuing private addresses with 192.168.1.80
MAC Addy's are different for wifi nic and mobo based NIC
the U-Verse router keeps IP's alive for 1day.
with wi-fi I can ping google, yahoo, microsoft, etc..
I'm able to browse via wifi to any site. I was using OpenDNS, but switched it to U-Verse's DNS servers instead, no change, not that that would do anything.

Tonite I'm removing the PCI wifi card and am going to use a USB wifi to see if that fixes anything. otherwise I'm going to pull the longest cat5 cable ever.

[Tinto Tech]

Interesting: the MAC addresses are different, but the router is assigning the same IP, even though the lease time is 24 hours.

This assignment of IP addresses is not the correct behaviour for a router. The MAC addresses are hardware addresses of the interfaces. Since they are different they should not have the same IP addresses assigned by the DHCP server in the router if the DHCP lease is still active. That suggests the router has a problem.

The difficulty is, I don't know how that links to your download problem. Could you post a link to the a Technet article that suggested the router firmware might be an issue?

My inclination would be to fix the problem that you do know about and see if it resolves the download problem - though that may be difficult if U-verse do not want to play ball. Is there any opportunity to swap the router rather than try update it? Could you retro fit a wifi access point to the ethernet port on the U-Verse router?