Tech advice, part II

[brwrsfan]

Anyone happen to have any recommendations for a place to take it in? I honestly have no idea and google wasn't overly helpful.

[LouisEly]

Not familiar with your phone but I think this is still applicable with most android phones:

 

From any Home screen, tap Apps.

Tap Settings.

Scroll to ‘APPLICATIONS,’ then tap Application manager.

Swipe right to the ALL screen.

Scroll to and tap WiFi Calling.

Tap Clear cache.

Now, reboot your phone.

Thanks, but nothing in the cache. Called xfinity and they reset the internet connection, and now it is back to sporadically working. Problem seems to be when I lose signal it doesn't want to reconnect (or it takes a long time to).

 

My place is long and skinny with a concrete stairwell in the middle which does a great job of preventing the WiFi from getting from the living room to the master bedroom. I got a WiFi extender, and it works, but it technically doesn't extend the signal, it creates a new signal and adds "_ext" to the end of my WiFi signal name. When I go to the master bedroom or up to the roof deck it disconnects from the living room signal and picks up the "_ext" signal, which disconnects the WiFi calling. Sometimes it reconnects, some times it takes a long time to reconnect, sometimes it doesn't reconnect at all.

[burnzy24]

So I have an external hard drive that now for some reason when I plug it in it is saying it must be formatted. Is there any way to format it with out losing everything on the drive?

[Patrick425]

I have an android phone and I keep getting a notification and emails in my Gmail account that my OneDrive is full and then it gives me options to purchase more space. However, when I go to MyDrive in google apps on my computer and says I have used 3.8 of 15 GBs. What is the difference between OneDrive and MyDrive? They both appear to be Google products and MyDrive is saving every picture, music, etc and other items that I care to save and has plenty of space left.

 

Edit: Nevermind, I now realize that OneDrive is Microsoft and MyDrive is Google.

[TURBO]

This may be a stupid question, and if so, I apologize.

 

I downloaded the google photo app on my iPhone. I transferred all the pics on my phone to the app and it works great, and freed up a ton of space on my phone.

 

My question is this: Can photos be printed off at Wal-mart, Shoko, etc from the google photos app? I was able tp print from my phone, but is it as easy from google photos?

 

Thanks in advance.

[Baldkin]

This may be a stupid question, and if so, I apologize.

 

I downloaded the google photo app on my iPhone. I transferred all the pics on my phone to the app and it works great, and freed up a ton of space on my phone.

 

My question is this: Can photos be printed off at Wal-mart, Shoko, etc from the google photos app? I was able tp print from my phone, but is it as easy from google photos?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

I honestly can't say, because I haven't tried to do that specifically -- and it would depend on how Wal-Mart, Shopko etc handle things on their end. At the very least, you could download the photos you want to print from google photos to your phone directly and do things that way.

[xisxisxis]

Thanks, but nothing in the cache. Called xfinity and they reset the internet connection, and now it is back to sporadically working. Problem seems to be when I lose signal it doesn't want to reconnect (or it takes a long time to).

 

Ain't technology wonderful! It sounds like you may have had a phone software upgrade that is causing some issues with the wifi connectivity. I've had similar issues with updates that cause connectivity issues. Routers hate devices that have issues connecting to them (anything that moves a lot in relation to the router/extender are notorious - phones, ipads, laptops, etc.).

 

What I am going to suggest takes some advanced knowledge of working with routers. Not sure you have it. I have had issues in the past with devices having issues with reconnecting to my router that either causes an IP conflict or prevents complete connection. Often the issue can be fixed by assigning a fixed IP to the device so that when it attempts to connect it will be assigned that IP by the router. With an extender, you would need to also fix the IP when connected through the extender (extenders have a different hardware address for the device so that there isn't a conflict with the router). here are the general steps as I don't know your router:

 

1) check the current DHCP client list to identify your phone hardware address (also referred to as MAC address (6 pairs of number/text in the format AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA or with dashes.)

 

2) there will be a option somewhere in your router settings to either add a reservation or assign an IP to a specific client. At that point, Add your phone hardware and assign it an IP (by default routers use 192.168.1.### for the IPs where ### is within an IP address range/pool. I typically pick a number near the high end (if the upper end of the pool is 200 I will use 190.).

 

3)I usually also assign a fixed IP for traffic through the extender. For the extender it usually passes the hardware address to the router as XX:XX:XX:AA:AA:AA where the X are unique to the extender and the AA will match the last 3 pairs of alphanumeric from #1 above. If you specifically join the extender WIFI with your phone then look at the router DHCP client list you should see a new hardware address that has the same ending half as before with a new first half of the mac/hardware address. Assign an IP for that which is different from #2 (I usually go 5 digits away so if I use 190 for #2 I use 195 for #3).

 

When that is complete, your phone should connect to the router or extender and be assigned a fixed IP depending on which device the phone connects to. Even when it loses signal to the router/extender when it comes back it will still assign the IP address again. If that doesn't help or hurts, just delete the reservation that you setup for the Mac addresses and it will go back to functioning as before.

 

Good Luck

[zurch1818]

I got a quick question on the Netgear wifi extender I just set up. My goal is to get coverage on my back porch/part of the back yard and the router is in the front of the house. I did research and wanted to make sure I got one that had Fastlane on it and also had AC capabilities that matched my router.

 

I want to connect to the extension to the router with 5ghz and broadcast from the extension in 2.4ghz because I believe that signal will travel the furthest. I have it set up right now and everything seems to work great.

 

I have the extension SSID matching the name of my original 2.4ghz SSID, which I have been told is not a good idea. Although they have the same SSID, they are broadcasting on different channels. I live far enough from neighbors, so interference is not an issue.

 

My idea is once it loses connection to one is will eventually flip over to the other. I would prefer to not have to enter a password for all my devices again. I also want to make sure I don't confuse my wife with adding another SSID. This way she won't even notice I did anything. Can anyone tell me why they think this could be a bad idea?

[nate82]

If you don't have neighbors near you then I wouldn't worry about it.

 

This is the setup I have minus the extender.

[OldHeidelberg]

I got a quick question on the Netgear wifi extender I just set up. My goal is to get coverage on my back porch/part of the back yard and the router is in the front of the house. I did research and wanted to make sure I got one that had Fastlane on it and also had AC capabilities that matched my router.

 

I want to connect to the extension to the router with 5ghz and broadcast from the extension in 2.4ghz because I believe that signal will travel the furthest. I have it set up right now and everything seems to work great.

 

I have the extension SSID matching the name of my original 2.4ghz SSID, which I have been told is not a good idea. Although they have the same SSID, they are broadcasting on different channels. I live far enough from neighbors, so interference is not an issue.

 

My idea is once it loses connection to one is will eventually flip over to the other. I would prefer to not have to enter a password for all my devices again. I also want to make sure I don't confuse my wife with adding another SSID. This way she won't even notice I did anything. Can anyone tell me why they think this could be a bad idea?

 

I think any issues caused by using the same SSID is due to some clients devices(probably older stuff) having issues roaming between the 2, if everything is working great you should be fine. My opinion is setting them the same is always the way to go unless you have issues with it or have an administrative need to keep them separate.

[zurch1818]

Sounds good. I will see how it goes and if I have to buy a more expensive router/extender combination, I will worry about that in the future. I went relatively cheap on both the router and extender. The whole setup cost roughly $100. We typically don't use that much bandwidth, so being connected is the most important part.

 

I've done speed tests on my phone, but our internet is sometimes shoddy, so I would like to check the performance of just the LAN. Is there an easy way to check local performance of the network without having to use an app like speedtest.net that connects to an outside server? I could use my laptop to check connection if it wasn't an android app.

[LouisEly]

I got a quick question on the Netgear wifi extender I just set up. My goal is to get coverage on my back porch/part of the back yard and the router is in the front of the house. I did research and wanted to make sure I got one that had Fastlane on it and also had AC capabilities that matched my router.

 

I want to connect to the extension to the router with 5ghz and broadcast from the extension in 2.4ghz because I believe that signal will travel the furthest. I have it set up right now and everything seems to work great.

 

I have the extension SSID matching the name of my original 2.4ghz SSID, which I have been told is not a good idea. Although they have the same SSID, they are broadcasting on different channels. I live far enough from neighbors, so interference is not an issue.

 

My idea is once it loses connection to one is will eventually flip over to the other. I would prefer to not have to enter a password for all my devices again. I also want to make sure I don't confuse my wife with adding another SSID. This way she won't even notice I did anything. Can anyone tell me why they think this could be a bad idea?

I have a Linksys WiFi extender. It adds _ext to the router signal. When you switch between signals you do not have to re-enter any passwords on your devices. You just connect to a different WiFi signal. A bit of a hassle, but it takes three seconds to do it. The wireless mesh systems where you seamlessly move between signals, last I checked, cost $300 or so but that was about a year ago.

 

For best results, make sure your router and WiFi extender have antennas. The more antennas, the more the signal will carry.