Router woes. Need shotgun/high explosives expert. Inquire within.

[_Z_Ryuken]

My head is going to explode I swear.

I have a Linksys wrt54G broadband wireless router with 4 port switch.

Recently it has been giving me connection problems, dropping my wireless speed from 54mb/s to like, 11, but last night was the end.

Started off the day in CS:S, awesome latency, kicking ass, then around 7PM the router decides it's not going to renew DHCP anymore, so it takes a huge crap and I spent pretty much the last 4 hours trying to fix it.

I get to a point where all my info is reentered after a few resets, then I get a message telling me "Hey settings are A-OK, but you need to renew your IP address.
This is referring to my internal 192.168.1.x IPs not the ISP assigned one.

So anway I went back and forth over that a few times, and I think I found part of the problem. I go into the router's setup, and atempt to adjust DHCP, but it just won't have it. I can change the values to whatever I want, but as the screen refreshes I see it is defaulted with no save apparent. I want 4 IPs min/max, but it keeps going to one. Not an entirely huge deal, but it won't allow me to change my starting IP address to anything but 192.168.1.1, which is the router's address.

Muy no bueno or something.

I would like to upgrade the firmware from something other than 1.00.00, but I can't connect through the router via WAN or LAN due to it not being able to assign IPS.

Need help if you have experienced something similar.

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Right now the DSL modem is plugged directly into the PC, if you were wondering.

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/LinksysWrt54g#head-54ed53a2e05c227f96165daaa2891a542ab08167

"Version 5 WARNING
Linksys has reduced the flash memory to 2 MB and the RAM to 4 MB in Version 5 of the WRT54G and WRT54GS routers. These routers run VxWorks instead of Linux, and they are NOT HACKABLE. There are many reports that the VxWorks-based firmware is unstable, as well. Version 5 WRT54G units have serial numbers beginning with CDFB, and V5 WRT54GS units have serial numbers starting with CGN7. Avoid them like the plague!

The "classic" WRT54G is still available as model WRT54GL. This is basically the Version 4 unit, with a new model number. It is unlikely that you will find them in brick-and-mortar stores, but it can be mail-ordered."

I fixed DHCP but still run into numerous connection problems. I would like everyone in the market for a router to heed this warning and avoid Linksys WRT54G Version 5.
Do not under any circumstance buy this router.

I searched and searched and searched, and it seems this problem is very common with this model, and there is no fix available.