Weird iTunes/Network problem

[21Jumper]

Hey you guys. So here's the situation:

I recently moved my desktop back to our office/guest room. I've had it downstairs in our living room connected to a 42" TV since I put it together so it was wired to the router and modem. Since I didn't want to bring the modem and router up with me to the room because I plan to eventually connect a blu-ray player to it, I just bought a wireless USB dongle. I'm on my 2nd one already because for some reason, I thought the 1st one was being defective.

When I first connected it, it installed the drivers just fine and just worked. I could go online and everything. Then I opened up iTunes to update my iPad/iPhone and suddenly I lost the wireless connection. It just says "no connection available". At first I thought it was the router that hiccupped so I reset it, but still nothing, and my iPad and iPhone are still connected to it wirelessly. So I pulled out the dongle and put it back in, and now I was getting the "this USB device has malfunctioned error" and I had to restart a couple of times, do a complete shutdown/power cycle before I got it to work.
Then I'd start iTunes again and it did the same thing.

So I got a 2nd one and now I'm going thru the same thing all over again. For now I just brought the modem/router up with me just so I can get the iOS update.

Has anybody else encountered this problem before and know how to resolve it?

Thanks!

Running Windows 7 64-bit with 4GB of RAM.

 

[Kaido]

First, USB wireless adapters are notorious for overheating and failing.

Second, are you plugging the USB receiver into the front port of your computer? If so, it is probably malfunctioning due to lack of power - you'll need to plug it in the back port of your computer (front ports are usually low-power, rear ports are full-power). You can also use a USB extension cable from the back of the computer if you need to get a better signal further away.

 

[21Jumper]

Ok, I can try that but I guess my question is why does it only start failing once I fire up iTunes? The first one was on it from Sunday night to the whole of Monday evening, upto the point where I decided to update my iDevices. I even tried having both the ethernet and it on at the same time and it took precedence over the wired connection but as soon as I fired up iTunes, it switched to the ethernet and dongle just disappeared from the Devices in the control panel.