had a similar problem, was due to other wireless access points nearby
sharing same channel, fixed by changing the channel via the admin setup
page, e.g. at 192.168.1.1 or 2.1 etc

apparently there is some kind of bug related to the protocol grabbing
one of the undesired access points instead of your preferred access
point

there seem to be numerous network bugs in XP connectivity software in
general as well