Dear God, has anyone ever set up a Livebox and never had a problem?

I've had dealings with two and first of all I have to say that setting up the wireless is a cast iron barsteward. I had nothing but trouble setting up my dad's wireless to be used by his old system and I'm having a load of fun with my two laptops getting them to stay connected after turning them off. FFS, this is supposed to be [LIFTED] EASY!!!!!!

Lord help the poor buggers who don't know what they are doing with wireless.

And another thing. There are two RJ45 connections on the back. There is nothing to suggest that they can't be used as ordinary connections, but as instructed, I used no. 1 for the setup. None of my PCs connected to number 2 (including my laptop connected as an isolated computer) would connect to anything- not even obtain an IP address.

So, I Googled and I checked my settings, then I Googled some more and some more and checked my settings before finally Googling a solution. The second connection can be set up for a TV over ADSL decoder and if you use one, you can't use the second connection for computers.

FFS, it was enabled by default!! I mean how many people are going to use TV over ADSL compared to the number of people who are going to attach another wired computer? And if you know anything about TV over broadband, then you are going to know that you need to enable it whereas the reverse is not necessarily true and I am supposed to be able to understand these things, unlike the n00b who got their first computer last week

None of this b*ll*cks came up in Orange Help/FAQs

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!!

That's better.

If anyone has any tips for the Orange Livebox- bear in mind I can't burn it or blow it up as it is rented - please reply.

If you feel the need to call them, don't call the normal help line they don't seem to know anything and follow scripts, call the Mac help line, they don't appear to use scripts and seem to have a much better knowledge of the product, the only thing is the charge almost 5p a minute...

Contact page

We had one last year and it caused no end of problems to set up, then was fine for eight months and started to suddenly play up, not allowing Vista/XP machines to connect over wireless, however Linux/Macs/Win2k machines were fine connecting over the wireless

The livebox apparently has the same innards as the original BT Homehub. I have one of these (as a spare thankfully, still using the trusty and reliable Voyager) on the original firmware and in my experience it can't hold a wireless connection for any length of time without the firmware update. It can't handle ethernet connections very well either, both drop out randomly. If there is a firmware update for the livebox like there is for the homehub it is worth a shot.

Thanks for that, gavomatic. Well worth knowing.

Have my PC connected to a livebox via cable and have connected 3 lappy's & a PC wirelessly with no problems apart from my anti virus software (AVG) not letting the drivers load properly on the wireless PC.

Had a few issues with Xfire and the orange firmware a while back but found it easy to sort out when i eventually realised what the problem was

yours wecrookie

I believe 0800 9801492 and 01642 732784 will connect you to the same number. The former will be free on your landline and the latter will be included in your bundled minutes, if applicable, on a mobile.

Peter.

Well, true to form, I have tried to connect with MY laptop (as opposed to the family lappy) and it won't work. It connected yesterday, but not this evening

But, some good news for a change. Some of you from the CPC forums may recall that I have been having ADSL connection problems- at busy times connection speed has dropped to zero and then disconnected. I have tried all sorts of things to ID the problem, but the only thing that has been 100% consistent is that it has always worked connected directly to the main BT socket.

But not tonight. The intermittent connection problem had been going on all evening. I eventually plugged it into the BT front plate- no joy, so I took the front plate off and plugged it directly into the main line. For more than five minutes, the connection was intermittent and the box declared that it couldn't find a broadband signal. It's OK now, but it's time for another call to Orange to get the damn thing sorted. It's been going on for at least six months.