Cannot Roam/Extend with WAP54G and WRT54G

Question

I purchased a WRT54G wireless router originally and found that the signal was quite weak on the other side of my 4000sf home on adjoining floors. So I purchased a WAP54G to *extend* my network. I have never gotten this to extend the range as claimed by Linksys. This is entirely frustrating. The manual is fairly useless as a troubleshooting guide.
Further, the manual differs from advice on this forum! The manuals says to make sure the SSID, channel and security settings are identical. When I tried this configuration, my laptop did not associate with the better signal of the WAP54G, but still connected to the worse signal of the main WRT54G. So then I saw a post on this forum that said the channels should be different. I tried setting the WRT54G to channel 6 and WAP54G to channel 1. Same results. The laptop is associating with the main router. I have disabled security through the process. I only use MAC addresses to restrict access to cients.
Then I wondered if my laptop's wireless adaptor firmware could be the problem. I found a post somewhere that said one should try changing the "roaming aggressiveness" parameter in the driver. I played with this an it had no effect either. It still associates with the main WRT54G router.
I am totally confused and disappointed. I am getting the feeling that Linksys doesn't really have a viable solution here. I would appreciate someone from Linksys/Cisco providing a thorough post on how to make this work properly.
Thanks.

Answer 1

HI , the one point that interested me was that even though your laptop was able to see the signal of the AP , it was still connecting to the SSID of the router.
One suggestion here....try and remove all networks from under the preferred network list on your PC..(from the wireless connection properties). then add the preferred networks and define the preference list.
Let me know if this works for you.