Cant a computer to connect to router

chris8105

Solid State Member
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6
Cant get a computer to connect to router

I am about to pull my hair out so I am hoping someone can enlighten me with some knowledge. I had to change the passkey on my linksys wireless router. Its a wrt54gs. I had no problem reconnecting my Dell laptop back up to the wireless router but my wifes computer is a whole different story.

She has a Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop. Its running Windows XP and I downloaded the latest driver for the network card. I can get it to connect to the router if I dont encrypt it but I cant get it to connect encrypted. I checked the settings on both of the computers and they are the same. And her laptop was working fine until I changed the passkey. I turned on the wireless zero config in the control panel and checked the box so windows would control the wireless connections. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance.

That was wierd, went back and tried it one more time before I went to bed and it worked. Computers love messing with me.

That was a false alarm, I restarted both computers to see if the internet connection was still going to be there and it wasnt. On mine I had to retype the network key back, and on hers after it rebooted it connected to the unprotected internet somewhere here in the subdivision. I tried reconnecting on hers and half the time it will say it connected when it didnt connect to anything and the other half it says that it connected but it connected to someone elses wireless internet. So I m back to square one. Any ideas?
 
Take off the password on the router. Make sure both computers connect. Then start out with something easy (WEP w/an easy password). See if both will connect. It's possible that the level of security you are trying to use is incompatible with her wireless card. I've seen this happen before.
 
It's possible that the level of security you are trying to use is incompatible with her wireless card. I've seen this happen before.
This - XP should be compatible with most things out the box, but unpatched it isn't compatible with WPA2 (if this is what you're using then it's almost certainly the issue.)

If this is the issue, grab this update.
 
Thanks for the advice, I got it connected now I just have one small other problem. Whenever the computer is restarted I get a message saying that I have limited or no connectivity. If I goto control panel and turn on wireless zero config and click the box that says use windows to configure my wireless network settings it will start right up. Is there anything I can do so I dont have to do all that after the computer has been restarted?
Thanks
 
Is there some other type of wireless software that is running and trying to connect instead of Windows software? You can uninstall this software and that will force windows to use it's software instead.
 
I dont think so, nothing has been installed on the computer lately. All this started when I changed the network key. It worked flawlessly before that. How would I find out if some other software is running instead of windows software for my for my wireless?
 
It would start at startup as well. Usually it has it's own icon down by the clock. The other thing you can do is when you go in and start Wireless Zero, make sure it's set to Automatic at startup so that it will start when Windows does. Then the other thing I would do is delete your old profile in the windows software and create a new one - since you chaged the network key.
 
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