Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Wanadoo Part 2.....

From this site, I get the most emails about this post. Apparently, I'm not the only one who had problems with their liveboxes. So, instead of you having to contact me again, I'm preparing this which will explain exactly what I did.

First thing, the main cause of your livebox not working is due to an interruption during an update. Your livebox updates itself with new internal software by downloading it during quiet periods. However, instead of downloading the software and then installing it, it installs it on the fly. Wanadoo, in their infinite wisdom, don't let you know when updates are occurring. Even if they did, something like a power failure (which is what we had) is severe enough to crash the livebox.

If you ring Wanadoo, they will first send you a CD which resets the internal BIOS of the box. This very rarely works, as on two separate occasions we have tried to restore the internal BIOS (once to us, once to someone I know), the box refuses to work afterwards. I would also like to add that I do NOT have a copy of the CD lying around.

After that, they will send you a replacement Livebox. We got ours pretty quick (2-3 days), but some people I know have had problems with their delivery. You have to send back the broken one in a prepaid envelope, but it's not a necessity.

My advice? Change your ISP. Most have packages for wireless networks, which use off-the-shelf bought routers. Although we use Bulldog, I wouldn't advise it, as it is a bit slow and unreliable (their DNS server regularly crashes, long story short: you type in google.com and you get a porn site, and vice versa*). There are great ISP's designed for wireless networking. All are pretty easy to set up, and you generally don't get the hassle with Wanadoo Liveboxes.

Right, now you don't have to bother me again!

* Not like I go on porn sites....honest