Wireless adapter does not see router

I recently got my parents a wireless broadband connection for their house that is in the boonies. The installer came out and got the equipment set up including a Netgear router, but my parents didn't have the wireless adapters yet for their PC's so the installer didn't get this part set up and I'm now trying to walk them remotely through connecting to the router and the internet.

I sent them a D-Link DWL-122 USB adapter and walked my step-mom through setting it up on her desktop with XP Home on it. The install seems to have gone fine, but Windows can not see the wireless network. They called the company who said that a D-Link adapter will not work with a Netgear router (which I know is not true since I'd been using this adapter with a Netgear router for the last two years). They want us to go out and buy a PCI card adapter for $80 for the desktop. Is this necessary? I there something else I can try before giving up on this adapter?

Also, the ISP has been nice enough to give me the IP address and port for the route and told me that remote management has been turned on, but I can't seem to ping it or connect to it. I've been typing the IP and port into the address bar like xx.xxx.xxx.x:xxxx. Is this the right way to connect to the router remotely?

Thanks for any help.

 

For one, if the company is telling you the adapter is not supported, that should be the first indicator. Although you've used it in the past, perhaps their router is running different firmware, or the device drivers are newer/older than the ones you had been using.

Secondly, are you sure your mother has taken all the correct steps? I can only speak through my own experience, but even with a step by step guide over the phone, i could not trust that my mother would do the job correctly. Somehow, family and friends who you try to offer online/phone support to always manage to skip a step, or overlook an obvious issue that you just can't imagine remotely.

My experience with phone tech support to family has always been bad, i would start with pebcak

 

The ISP tells me that the adapter is not supported, which could be the case, but I'm always suspicious when someone tells you you need an $80 part for something that you can usually get for $15. Maybe I've just been lucky, but I've never come across a problem of a B or G adapter working with any B or G router. Although I've had plenty of problems with an adapter not working with a non-Windows OS.

You're probably right about the install. Neither of my parents is very computer literate, so getting the install done at all was painful. But based on what she is reading to me on the screen it seems that at least Windows recognizes the adapter.

Any idea on how to login remotely to the router? I'd like to poke around to make sure this was set-up correctly. I've spoken with the owner of the ISP a couple of times and he seems knowledgeable and helpful, but my parents have reported that the installers were not great (arguing among themselves and not particularly helpful).

 

You should beable to log into the router by typing the default gateways ip address 192.168.x.x or something like that(if you have a password setup you'll have to type that in before able to login.)Look to see if the router has a firmware update, BTW are they using Vista? If so could be a driver issue.I would also think about the $80 bucks that they want you to shell out, do somemore checking before going there. Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for the help, but isn't this how I would login to the router if I was on their network? I'm trying to access their router from NY and they are on the other side of the country.

The folks are using XP Home on the desktop and Windows 98 on a laptop.

 

You should still beable to login from there, I know that on my router I can login from anywhere as long as this is allowed in my setup.Are you able to remotely log into your parents computer? If so start their browser and type in the ip make sure remote access is setup on your parents computer.

 

If you using the http://ipaddress:8080 you should be prompted for login. If not use a port scanner and see what ports are open. I use port scanner by http://www.networkactiv.com/ for the problem. This way I can see if ports are opened that should not be. This program is good for internal scans too.

If port 8080 is not open (def remote admin) the scanner will detect it. If not scan to see what ports are open, incase the ISP changed it to something else.

 

I've been told by the ISP what port is open, but using http://ipaddress:port does not give me the login prompt. Additionally I can not even ping the router using just the ip address (I should be able to do this right?).

Reezin14, I can't login to any of the computers directly. 1, because the XP machine is just XP Home (which I think doesn't come with Remote Desktop functionality) and 2, even if it does they currently only have dial-up at about 28.8kbps so if I could access their system I don't think it would be usable.