Laptop Only Getting Wireless In View Of Router?

use my laptop just fine down a 40 foot hall way and through a kitchen and 2 more rooms wirelessly(admitedly with a mediocre connection).

About 2 days ago it was giving me sporatic messages after a restart claiming my network settings did not match the ones saved on my laptop. The only change that was made was adding all but one roomates devices to an access list on the router (since the jerk wouldnt shut off bit torrent while people were working). Some other people were noticing some screwy occurances too but dont recall the symtoms so I just set it back to factory default and removed the access list. Everyone else seemed to be fine

Yesterday I cannot see the router on my laptop, I cannot see my neighbors (sporaticly I usually would see 1 bar pop up but now I can't find it at all) I can pick up my router wirelessly only when I have direct line of sight to the router and only 4/5 bars 0,o , so that rules out a lot of choices in its self since it sees it, just not very well.

Laptop Compaq tc4200 Vista ultimate
Router Netgear N300 WNR2000 v3