WRT54G Wireless not working - Wired is fine

Question

You may have seen my last post, where I asked how to set up static IPs within my little network and do a couple other things - thanks for the advice, everything seemed to work great.
BUT I'm not getting wireless to work.  I don't think this is a product of my changes, as 1) I haven't been using wireless in the past and 2) I tried changing things back and trying (as a control) and still had the same problem.
Running a WRT54G router, hardwired to three computers (each which also has wireless capabilities).  For freedom from wires, tried switching over to wireless.  I disabled the "wired" adapters to prevent any interference, and turned on the wireless ones (linksys notebook G adapters and a G pci adapter).
I had the "wired" adapters set up for static IPs within the 10-20 range (192.168.1.10[to 20]).  This worked fine.  I switched my routers IP to something else, still works.  Turn on MAC filtering, and added all six MAC addresses, still good.  Then I tried to configure the wireless adapters for static IP like I did the "wired", and used them and got nothing.  Tried pinging the router from the comps, and the comps from the router - 1005 packet loss.  Went back and set up the adatpers to DHCP (which is still enabled on the router) and still not getting a connection.  Tried no encryption, WEP and WPA2 PSK - not working. 
My only thought is, I detect like literally 20-25 networks in my area (I live in NYC in a apartment).  I can detect my network's SSID, and signal strength is perfect (it should be, all comptuers are within 30 feet of each other ) but when I try to connect, I get the waiting/status bar for like five minutes and then nothing.  Are there settings I can use to help optimize my network to deal with all the interference?  Are there other troubleshooting things I should try?  My last trip here for advice turned out really well - appreciate your help.

Answer 1

hi , You can try a few things here...specially since you have so many wireless networks around you.
bring up network connections, right click on the wireless network connecting and bring up properties...select the wireless networks tab and remove all networks from under "preferred networks".....once done , add your network.You can specify the encryption keys under the association/authentication tab. One more thing,under the preferred networks , you have an advanced button....hit that and select the 2nd option...
on the router you can try and change the beacon to 50 and reduce the RTS and fragmentation threshold by 40 each...these are found under the advanced wireless settings.