Either connect or slow connection

[Liz81]

Ok my ISP is Cox. I have a D-Link -520 PCI Adapter. There's two computers in my house. One of them has the antenna by the computer. That computer isn't mine. My computer does have a special card to help connect to the internet. I use IE 6.0. Hesitant to use IE 7.0 since I don't know the risks of the upgrade and I hardly can found out since I have problems with the computer.

So here's what I tried so far:
Disk defrag
Disk clean up
Deleted temp files, cookies and history
Rebooted and shut down computer completely
Unplugged then replugged the modem
Moving the antenna around in different positions
Reinstalling my D-Link with the CD-Rom I have and the drives found on the D-Link website. The latest was in 2003 which is pretty old but that's all I had.
Deleted everything with my D-Link and reinstalled.
Made sure antenna was plugged in tightly and nothing was loose.

Nothing!

So I don't know what to do. Any ideas?

[4tec84]

So, you can't connect or havin slow connection speed?

[Liz81]

Either I cannot connect or it is slow. That means sometimes I cannot connect at all. But if I do connect, it's a slow connection.

[4tec84]

Are you usin DSL or Cable? ..
And are you usin wireless adapters for both computers or just one?
Also, you might want to try unplug/re-plugin the main router or modem.

[Liz81]

I have DSL. The wireless adapter card is for this one computer but other computer connects to the internet just fine (not slow connection). The router is connected to the other computer which works just fine so I have a card inside this computer to help connect to the router in the other room. As I stated before, I've already tried unplugging then replugging the modem or router.

Now late last night, it connected just fine until this afternoon. I got a low signal most of time then. Now I'm not getting much of a "low" signal but it is hard to get a faster connection on the internet. I tried system restore for just two weeks ago, beginning of each month going back to August (October, September and August) and none of the restore points helped. I cannot go further than August.

Only way for me to connect is to keep waiting til it connects til after about 5 mins or so or just keep trying again in a few minutes by opening the window again. Just now, it opened up fast (the homepage) so that's how I finally got to this forum! However, I don't think that means everything's fine. I just got lucky. So I wonder if it is a system problem but I have done restore for all months going back to August. For September and August, the connection was a lot worst, meaning I got no connection at all. So I had to restore again back to the 2nd of October and though it's not fast connection, I'm still on as long as I wait at least five minutes or keep on trying for like couple of hours. Could this be a problem with the system?

Oh, and Realplayer and PowerDVD won't play which I feel may be related to a system problem which seems to be happening right now.

So I was thinking about doing a system repair install next. Is there anything I can do before I do that or should I go forward to that step? I'd like to save any "worst-case scenerios resolutions" for the last things I do like repair install and clean install after I try everything else.

EDIT: Ok this is just a couple mins later after trying to open another window. Now my homepage is loading fast! What the heck is going on here?? Is this gonna last or do I still have a problem? Maybe things are fine right now, but if not, then what can be done?

[4tec84]

Try movin the computer with the wireless adapter in the room with the host computer. And see if you get a better connection, if not it might be the adapter. Make sure your LAN is enable.