Home networking

[novahifi]

I have already posted this in another forum. Please moderators delete the original if I am not allowed two of them.

I want to connect my Dell 2002 laptop with windows XP to our home internet connection which is tiscali broadband in the UK (in London).

I am aware that a router is needed to achieve this. I already have an old router, but it has no documentation or disks or anything with it and I don't know whether or not it should.

I also don't know whether or my laptop has an inbuilt wireless capability or whether I will have to buy one of those wireless connection cards to install.

Do I need to buy a new router and a laptop wireless card? Are there any particularly good makes routers and laptop cards for my purposes.

Thank you very much.

 

[freestyler105]

We need to know the specific model number of your laptop to be able to tell if you have wireless capabilities.

Two other things you can do are
A) Go to Control Panel then click Network Connections (make sure it's classic view). That will show you all the networking adapters you have.

B) Right click My Computer and click Properties. Go to Hardware, and hit Device Manager, and look under Network adapters.

 

[novahifi]

So is it the case that I only need the extra part for the laptop if there are NO inbuilt wireless capabilities that came as part of the computer's insides when it was first sold?

How do I find out the model number?

Thankyou.

 

[freestyler105]

Yes. The model number should be written on the case somewhere. It will say Dell Inspirion XXXX where XXXX is the number we need.

 

[Raffaz]

So is it the case that I only need the extra part for the laptop if there are NO inbuilt wireless capabilities that came as part of the computer's insides when it was first sold?

How do I find out the model number?

Thankyou.

You will need a wireless router aswell to receive the wireless signal from the laptop and vice versa

 

[root]

So is it the case that I only need the extra part for the laptop if there are NO inbuilt wireless capabilities that came as part of the computer's insides when it was first sold?

exactly... if there are wireless capabilities buitl in then you won't need to get a wireless card for the laptop.

when you find the model number it should be fairly easy to look on the dell website about whether wireless was included...

you should be able to fins a service tag on the laptop somewhere, if you put that into the dell website it'll tell you everyhitng that you need to know about the machine.

 

[novahifi]

The Dell laptop is an inspiron 2650. I'm not sure if it has any inbuilt wireless capabilities and I have not yet been able to find it on Dell's website. Among its hardware devices I did find a USB root hub listed if that signifies anything?

Someone once attempted to install an 802.11g wireless LAN card on this computer but it is competely ineffectual. I'm not sure why that is nor exactly what the card was. It had an empty SSID box, whatever that is :S

I was wondering, on XP's network configuration wizard, what it expects you to do about networking up computers that also have XP? When it says to use the XP disk on the other computers, does it mean you to do that if they also have XP and is it asking for its own XP startup cd to be inserted into its own drive as well?