The 220 Volt trick with the dryer didn't work for me either. I'd suggest two things. Your problems sound similar to mine. I added a Coupler repeater which amplified the signal from the base 0.5w to 5.0w. I also added filters behind my home computer and home theater, which drastically improved the system. You see the power strips I had plugged in, as well as the components themselves, treat X10 signals as noice, and try and filter them out. Plugging them into a couple of $40 filters solved the trick.