Help! Wireless not working sz280p/c

Hey, I've been trying to set up my wireless connection to my sony vaio for the last couple of days with no luck. I have a 2wire router, and my laptop picks up the signal from the wireless connection just fine, but when i go to connect to it, it prompts me for a WEP key, which is a 10-digit number located on the bottom of my router in brackets. When i put the 10-digit number in and attempt to connect, i get an error message that reads, "The network password needs to be 40bits or 104bits depending on your network configuration. This can be entered as 5 or 13 ascii characters or 10 or 26 hexadecimal characters." I read online that for macbooks you needed to put a $ before the 10 digit number so it would process the 10 following numbers as hexadecimal...is there something similar to this needed for sony vaios? Thanks!
-Rob

 

I'm not familiar with your router but a wep key is usually assigned via software. Check your router's setup via browswer interface. There usually is a screen for wireless security. You'll find the wep key there or you and assign a new one there. I have never heard of a wep key printed on the bottom of a router.

Hope that helps.

 

If you don't have another computer connected to the router, use a network cable to connect your laptop to the router directly, get into the router setup page from your browser and check the WEP key as 3pod says. The printed number is probably the MAC address of the router.

 

Check to see if the key is pre-shared or something and make sure that option is selected. That happended to me.