Need help with wireless network problem

Hi everyone!

I'm having great difficulties getting my new Compaq V2575CA to connect to my wireless router. I have a Linksys WRT54G router and my notebook cannot consistently connect to my router. It'll work on minute and then 5 minutes later, it will not connect at all. Even when it works, it's disconnect every 3 to 5 minutes. I tried playing around with different settings on the router and on the notebook, but it still refuses to connect. I have not been able to connect since a 2 days or so ago. My desktop computer (which is not wireless), has no problem with this router. What settings should I play around with? Can someone please provide me with steps on how to get this notebook to work with my router? I read on some forums that people suggest disabling "Use Windows to configure my wireless network settings", but when I do that, then I don't even see my router.

Help! Please!

 

Try the usual: flash in the current firmware for your router, hunt down any 2.4GHz phones in the vicinity and terminate them with extreme prejudice... oh, also try moving the router to a different channel, either 1, 6 or 11. Odds are one of the latter two things is the problem.

 

Hi thanks for the reply.

Unfortunately I've tried all of those suggestions you gave. Even when the notebook is a mere 2 feet from the router it can't connect. It finds the router, but it keeps failing when trying to renew the IP address.

Any other suggestions?

 

Have you tried shutting off your firewall?

 

I haven't tried that, I'll do so as soon as I get home. However, let's assume the problem is the firewall, why is it that it works sometimes, but not other times?

 

Hi Fatbob,
I have the same problem with a Linksys wireless card I have on my desktop machine. It appears that the card does not always resend the WEP code when it is trying to connect. When it does that I cannot connect to anything in my network. I just pull up the profile and reconnect and it always seems to pick up the second time.

 

Yes, I noticed that sometimes for some strange reason the WEP code is empty. How and why it gets wiped I have no clue.

 

I have the same router (WRT54G v2.0) and a V2000Z with the Broadcom/bluetooth adapter. I have no problems at all... in fact the combo works great. I get 60%+ signal strength in my ground-floor garage and my router is on the 3rd floor of my building.

It could always be a hardware problem. Try finding a coffee shop in the neighborhod that has free wifi and try to connect to it. If you still have problems, you might have a faulty adapter in the laptop. If it works fine, then you might have a faulty router.

Oops... just saw your reply above. Can you connect to the router when security is turned off? And as a side note I would recommend using WPA2 instead of WEP... it is much more secure and my WRT54G supports it, as does the laptop.

 

Well my sister has D-Link router at her place so, I can bring my laptop there and try it out.

I'll also try disabling security on my Linksys and see if I still have problems connecting to it. I'm hoping it's not a hardware issue, but it's been on the back of my mind for a few days now.

BTW, thanks for the tips everyone!

 

Ok, so I disabled security on the router and my notebook connects fine (thanks for the tip davin). So I think it's safe to assume that there is no hardware issues with either the router or the notebook.

I now tried setting the security level to WPA2 Personal, and as an example/test I set the WPA Shared Key to 'ferrariisred'. I refresh the network list on the notebook, select my router, and I'm quickly prompted for a network key, so I enter 'ferrariisred', and then I get the following error message...

"The network password needs to be 40bits or 104 bits depending on your network configuration. This can be entered as 5 or 13 ascii characters or 10 or 26 hexadecimal characters."

What does this error message mean? The Linksys documentation states that the WPA Shared Key must be between 8 and 63 characters in length.

Any other suggestions?

 

I would skip the WPA security and just lock down your router to your laptop's MAC address. Unless you think you have uber-hackers lurking next door, I feel locking down to the MAC is secure enough.

 

I use MAC locking and WPA2. MAC locking will help prevent people from connecting to the router, but if you don't use encryption, people can still snoop and monitor your packets to see what you're doing (I think... someone correct me if I'm wrong.)

Bob, the router my take a variable key length, but maybe your version of windows needs a 40 or 104 bit key. Try entering a 5- or 13- character key and see if that works. If it does, you might want to use an online key generator (try http://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/PA_key/generator.php or just google wpa2 key generator) to generate a more random key. That site lets you enter the number of characters (use 13 instead of 5).

 

That's what I was worried about. I don't think I live next door to any hackers, but I'd still want some encryption since I do quite a bit of banking online.

I'll try using the key generator and report back my findings.

BTW, my laptop is running Windows XP Home, with SP2.

Thanks!

 

Ok, so I generated a WPA2 key using the link that davin provide (BTW, thanks for the link!), and that got rid of the following error that I was getting...

"The network password needs to be 40bits or 104 bits depending on your network configuration. This can be entered as 5 or 13 ascii characters or 10 or 26 hexadecimal characters."

But, it still doesn't work. I get no error messages. It simply does not connect?