[mxbandit]

I recently purchased a new acer laptop with windows xp sp 2. I have tried connecting wirelessly using the built in wireless pci card but no luck. The card is fine it is enabled, drivers are good everything. It finds my router I hit connect in windows, it asks me for the wep key I insert it then it says connecting or waiting on wireless network with a picture of a pc connecting to a server, the status bar goes back and forth for about a minute then it stops closes the dialog box and never connects. The weird thing is under properties in internet connections I insert the wep key which is 26 keys long but it always seems to erase it and replace it with like 10 characters or so. I even connected the laptop to an ethernet cable, clicked internet explorer but it said I was offline. I looked under the connection windows and it said the connection was live and working. I just don't know what to do, I have read every article online with no solutions. Someone PLEASE help ME!

 

[mxbandit]

I even disabled wep on my router and tried connecting to the network using no wep encryption and it still didn't connect.

 

[TerryNet]

You may have a 3rd party firewall blocking access. If so, uninstall it or configure it for your LAN access. Sometimes, but only sometimes, disabling the firewall is sufficient.

If you are still having problems, please post an ipconfig /all here.

If you have encryption enabled, try w/o encryption until you get a successful session.

First determine if the problem PC is really communicating with the router when it claims to be connected.

To open a Command Window: Start - Run - cmd (command in 98SE) - OK

To determine a computer's IP address and router's IP address: open a Command Window and type
ipconfig /all

The "Gateway" is the router's IP address.

Now for some troubleshooting. Following is how to use ping to test for communication with your router, the internet, and the internet with symbolic name.

1. On the PC open a Command window and type
ping IProuter (where IProuter is the IP address of the router)

Do you get Replies, or do you get packets lost?

IF you got replies,
2. ping 66.94.234.13 (or any other internet address you know)

Do you get Replies, or do you get packets lost?

If you got replies,
3. ping www.yahoo.com (or any other internet name)

Do you get Replies, or do you get packets lost?

 

[mxbandit]

I disabled wep and security on my router but I still don't seem to connect. The laptop says connecting for a good while then it just stops without ever actually connecting

I did an ipconfig/all on my laptop and here are the results

Windows Ip Configuration
Host Name...................................: acer-c2899ibd48
Primary Dns Suffix........................:
Node Type.....................................:Broadcast
Ip Routing Enabled.........................:No
Wins Proxy Enabled........................:No

Ethernet adapter local Area Connection:
Media State......................................Media Disconnected
Description.......................................: Realtek RTL8139/810x Family fast
Physical adress.....................................:00-16-D4-55-36-89
ethernet adapter wireless Network Connection 2:
Media state......................................:Media Disconnected
Description........................................:Atheros AR505g Wireless network ad
Physical Address...............................:00-16-CF-96-B6-2B

 

[mxbandit]

well I finalllyyyyyyy got the laptop to connect and it works like a dream. I just wanted to know if there is any way to save the wep key so I wont have to input the 26 letters and numbers every time i want to connect to the wireless network? I went under properties in my wireless connection but every time i hit ok and exit i look under properties again and the key has changed again.


what can i do?

 

[TerryNet]

What utility are you using to manage the wireless?

 

[VirtualMe]

mxbandit,

If I manually disconnect from my wireless router as you are doing, (click the Disconnect button), it shows the same 10 ********** encryption instead of the 26 ************************** encryption the next time I go to connect.

However if I just click on the Connect button it will still connect.

Usually though I don't ever use the Disconnect button on my home network, I just shutdown my laptop and the next time I boot up it Automatically connects to my network.

 

[JohnWill]

Don't worry about the number of *** displayed for passcodes. They don't reflect the size of the saved key.