I recently got a new laptop, and I'm having trouble getting it to connect to my house's wireless network. My question is this:

What addresses, keys, etc. will I need to know to get it to connect?

I don't know what you guys will need to know about my stuff so I'll just answer as questions come up.

Thanks in advance.

It depends on the setting of your router. You need to make sure the encyption types match (wep or wpa) and enter the right password when you connect. XP is pretty good about it usually. Check your router settings to see if you are using MAC address filtering. If so, make sure you enter the MAC of your laptop to get through.

OK, thanks. That's about the point I got to last night. Now my problem is that I don't know how to find out what my router uses. I guess I'll take Google for a spin. Any more suggestions would help.

what kind of router is it? My linksys is all web based. You just open up firefox, ie, etc and type in the IP of the router and a little webpage comes up with all the configurables.

Getting closer....now I just need to figure out my username and password. I could just kill my lack of knowledge right now. grrrr

for the router??

well try admin for user... then admin for pass... then admin for both.. sometimes there is no user or pass and you just press enter

Ya, admin, admin should be default. If it doesn't like that, then there is probably some button on your router that you can push with a papeclip to completely reset everything.

FYI if its linksys it is likely a blank username and admin for the password (all three linksys routers i've owned have been this way)

j/c can you access the internet from other computers connected to the same router (either wired or wireless)? Just making sure your internet connection is set up correctly to the router

the wired part works...kinda. both my laptop, and my desktop can connect to the internet at the same time through the wired ports, but I can't get file sharing going on between them...but one thing at a time

and it is a linksys

Just making sure the internet is connected to the router correctly. Is it linksys WRT54G?

WRT54GS

EDIT: Success! Wireless now works! Thanks for all the help. Now I just gotta get file sharing to work between the two machines. :/

I know btw our router and xp it dosent really like the network wizard, just do an ipconfig on all your devices and remember or write them down ive never had a problem that way

ok, the two machines are Rigaku and Jim. Rigaku can see Jim, but I can't add it as a Network Place. Here's a screen of the error I get when I try to explore Jim from Rigaku.

http://web.umr.edu/~gcrz77/Images/error.bmp


Any suggestions?

Does Jim have any files shared? If there is nothing shared I don't think it lets you connect. Also, if you have software firewall make sure you let file sharing through.

I would just get rid or turn off windows firewall completely and in the network connection wizard make sure you turned on file/printer sharing.

or to skip that just try to share a file or folder

or like I said earlier just type in Jims IP and see if that works