Wireless connection problem - using repeater

Hi everyone,

I have a problem with Vista that is driving me NUTS!!!!

I have a DSL wireless modem (it serves as a wireless accesspoint). When i
am in my bedroom in am generally able to connect as expected to the home
network through this accesspoint.

The signal of this device is not strong enough to reach through the whole
house - so I've got a D-link accesspoint setup as a repeater. This repeats
the signal and gives me a nice strong signal throughout the house and the
garden. All of my XP machines connects seamlessly everywhere.

Enter Vista. Vista sometimes (about 1 out of 8 tries) connects when i am in
the vacinity of the repeater. All other times, no matter what i try
(disable, re-enable, refresh IP, reset adapter, etc, etc) NOTHING works.

The only solution is to turn off the wireless, walk to the bedroom, connect
there and then walk with the laptop to the other end of the house (where my
study is). Now 2 out of 4 times the Vista machine will retain the settings
and will work at the other end of the house. 2 out of 4 times, it will
report an IP conflict and i need to start from scratch again.

Why, why larry, why....

My only speculation at this point is the following:

This is a long shot but i suspect that (somehow) Vista sees two devices (the
modem and the repeater) that the repeater tries to look like the modem to the
network but it is not the modem - what i mean is the repeater is acting like
a forwarding agent on the network and does not present a new "path" to
formally connect through. In other words, the repeater does not "say" hi
this is me, if you want to get to the modem (the gateway), go through me and
i will send your requests on to the gateway - i suspect the repeater merely
tries to repeat the signal. Yet, maybe Vista discovers that there is another
device in the mix and does not know what to do with it???

Hoping someone knows???