I think i know what may be causing the disconnects.

Wireless encryption key's are cycled on the WAP, so if your router is using more then one key, it will use key#1 for a period of time, then rotate to key #2, etc.

64 bit encryption will use 2 keys, where 128 uses 4.

Now, the interesting thing with windows XP is that it's only got room for 1 encryption key to be used. so that's 32 bit encryption... not very good.

The disconnection comes when you have mismatching encryption. Your WAP rotates the key, your XP can only have one, it does not know the new key, so it looses it's connection. XP then re requests a connection using key #1 and the WAP obligates... till the key rotates again... You can see the patern here.

The solution is to use what ever software comes with the laptop/desktop and/or NIC to input ALL the encryption keys. On my IBM laptop, i need to use "Access Connections" software to input more then one key. There should be a similar manager for your laptop and/or NIC.

Of course, you could always go down to 1 key in the WAP, but that is not very secure.