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Connectivity issues, Windows 8 & In Home Agent

pmm1966

I recently purchased 3 new laptops with Windows 8 OS 4 months ago. I have recently notices connectivity issues with these new laptops. The WiFi signals have dropped significantly from excellent to low with intermittent or limited connectivity. I've run all the system maintenances (virus scans, spyware scans, etc). I've run the optimizer tool on the My Verizon site. Nothing seems to have improved. I've tried downloading & installing the In Home Agent and was unable to. I received 2 errors. The first was an AutoIt Error (Line - 1 Error: Array variable has incorrect number of subscripts or subscript dimension range exceeded.) The second error was a Vz In Home Agent Installer Information error (Error 1722. There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A program run as part of the setup did not finish as expected. Contact your support personnel or package vendor. Action Run_iHAStarter, location: ...\iHAStarter.exe, command: RunFromInstall). I installed the In Home Agent on a Windows 7 laptop without any problems. Is the In Home Agent not compatible with Windows 8? What do these errors mean? Does anyone have any suggestions for me to resolve these issues?

Comments

smith6612

Don't bother with the optimizer or In-Home Agent on Windows 8. As you've noticed, it's likely not going to work too well, and it genuinely isn't needed in almost all cases. For the Optimizer, any operating system as of a fully patched Windows Vista and newer is fully capable of adjusting itself over time for use with your connection. XP and older, yes you need tuning on FiOS.

For the Wireless Drop-out issues, you may want to consider disabling Auto channel scan on your Router, and also chnage the Wireless channel to something different. It's best to try Channels 1, 6, and 11 if available but you can use the other overlapping channels if they prove to give better results.

Anyways, to change your Wireless Channel, go to your Web Browser and visit http://192.168.1.1/ . Log into the router using the username of admin, the password being the router's printed Serial Number, and then visit the Wireless Settings. Under the Advanced Wireless Settings you should find the options I'm talking about.

*I recommend using a computer wired to the router to change settings. Changing the Wi-Fi channel will disconnect you for a few moments.

dsgrey

Same issue here though Verizon states it runs on Win8. They should really remove Win8 from a support o/s if their software will not run on it.

thetick1234

I think their software will run on Windows 8. It is just not needed as stated above post XP OSs were designed for higher speed broadband. I never ran their bloated software even with XP and back. It was just easier to set the network setting manually and save the memory the Verizon tools would use.

harrietvane

I had problems that were very similar to the above posters, but I was ultimately able to solve them with a lot of pain, trial and error. My household previously had a trouble-free wireless network running over a D-Link DIR-655 router, including multiple computers and devices running different operating systems (Windows 7, Vista, and XP, plus Blackberries, iPads and a Kindle). Last week we switched to Fios, so Verizon replaced our router with their Actiontec MI424WR. First problem: all the existing computers and devices connected to wifi except my husband's Lenovo XP laptop. At first he couldn't get a wifi connection at all, although he could use the internet when hard-wired to the router. After a couple of days of frantically employing all the usual strategies (updating device drivers, tweaking modem settings, clearing TCP/IP stack, etc. etc.), I could get a connection to the router, but couldn't reach any websites. While this was going on, my husband got fed up and ordered a new Toshiba Windows 8 laptop, thinking this would work better with Fios. Meanwhile, I managed to fix the wifi on the Lenovo, but I still don't know how. (I had updated the wifi driver, which didn't work and even knocked out the Ethernet service, even though I hadn't touched that driver. When I "rolled back" the wifi driver in Device Manager, the wifi magically started to work!)

When the new Windows 8 laptop arrived, we had the wifi problem all over again, and I mean the EXACT SAME SCENARIO: first no wifi connection at all, then after a couple of days of nonstop updating and reconfiguring, we got a router connection but couldn't reach any websites. I knew from my internet searching (over other computers, of course) that many people have wifi problems with Windows 8, but so do many people on Windows 7, Vista and XP (as my own experience showed), so that made me more inclined to suspect a firewall or router problem. I had already eliminated the firewall (Norton) as a cause for the Lenovo problem, because I had turned it off and the problem was still there. I did that on the Windows 8 laptop as well, and again it made no difference. That made me wonder if the router could be the cause. I had already spent hours staring at the router settings, and had changed a couple of them without solving the problem. Finally, I decided to create a new outbound rule that allowed my husband's computer (known to the router from his previous logins via Ethernet) to access ANY websites and services via the wireless router. This solved the problem, and his is now able to access websites via wifi.

I'm glad I was finally able to fix both these problems, but I am extremely worn out and frustrated that a simple modem change could wreak such havoc. My husband and I have had wireless networks at home since 2006, and we have NEVER ran into this kind of problem before. Obviously Windows may have been partly to blame, but given that at least one of these computers previously connected to internet over wifi with no issues when using 2 other brands of router, I am very suspicious that the Actiontec is the biggest culprit. Verizon needs to get rid of this model and replace it with one that actually works out of the box for most people--which definitely does NOT seem to be the case right now.

tns2

@dsgrey wrote:
Same issue here though Verizon states it runs on Win8. They should really remove Win8 from a support o/s if their software will not run on it.

In home agent runs just as well on windows 8 as it does on other version of windows. Which is to say badly. Lots of us recommend never installing IHA. You can get most of its functionality from the web based version, and most of the rest is worthless.

buddyl316

I would say that it does not work as windows 7 on windows 8. I receive the same problems as everyone else has with running in-home agent on windows 8. As far as don't need the app. The verizon people only know how to do support if you have the in-home agaent.

hd1652

Same problems here and same error messages. Both Windows and Verizon claim problems are on the other end.

tns2

@buddyl316 wrote:
I would say that it does not work as windows 7 on windows 8. I receive the same problems as everyone else has with running in-home agent on windows 8. As far as don't need the app. The verizon people only know how to do support if you have the in-home agaent.

The verizon support people have never used IHA when I called. They do want to launch another support tool which allows them to view and take over your PC. I usually refuse to install it, and when things go really bad I let it install, and than wipe it afterwards. PUT THIS IS NOT IHA.

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