Help with wireless router

[sherpahigh]

Here's my situation:

I got a new desktop the other day and I want to connect it, my laptop and my wifes laptop together on a network. Mostly I want to be able to transfer all of my files and information to the desktop from the laptop and have internet access on all computers.

I got a D-Link DI-514 wireless router and a D-Link Air card for my laptop for next to nothing. I know that I'll only have 11 Mbps through this but I don't much care about speed for the wireless connection at the moment since the whole house is wired with cat5.

So my problem is that I know next to nothing about hooking up networks and I'm having trouble with getting the computers hooked up over a network. I had it so that I had internet access on my desktop and laptop which were both working great but it seems to only work intermitintly now, and fairly slow. Especially the wireless connection.

I've run the network setup wizard on both computers a few different times with no luck.

I know this is all fairly vauge but if anyone can offer any tips I'd be thankful. My Brother in Law works with networks for his day job but he won't be home for a few days and I kinda need this sorted out this weekend.

Thanks to anyone who's even read all this.

[sherpahigh]

So now I've got things working pretty good. My desktop's online with no problems and my laptop runs wierlessly at a decent speed, though I can't seem to hook it up through ethernet anymore. The laptop doesn't seem to reckognize that there's a PCMCIA card in there. Anyway, I can live with it wirelessly.

I've used Mr Mephisto's guide in this thread here: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...reless+network
and I've got steps 1,2,3 and 6 implemented. That should give me decent security shouldn't it?

My problem now is that I can't hook the two computers up over a network. I run the network wizard on both computers and nothing. I've turned off the windows firewall on both and still nothing.

Any suggestions?

[Mephisto2]

Your current setup is not clear to me.

Do you have a seperate DSL modem? If so, your D-link wireless router should be connected directly to this via an ethernet cable. Then, your desktop should be connected to the D-link box, as I'm assuming it provides at least one ethernet port. This will leave your two laptops to be connected "wirelessly".

Do all three sucessfully get internet access? I'm assuming the problems you are experiencing are in getting the three computers to access each other, and not the internet. Is that correct?

You also mention that one of the laptops doesn't recognize the PCMCIA network card. Why do you need it? If it's working wirelessly, there's no reason why you should try to connect it via Cat5 also.

Maybe I'm missing something here...


Mr Mephisto

[sherpahigh]

Sorry for the confusion, I wasn't really that clear.

You've pretty much got it though. I have a seperate cabel modem which is connected directly to the wireless router. My desktop is connectd to one of the four ports on the wireless router with an ethernet cable. I've only bothered trying to hook up the one laptop so far as it is the one I'd like to transfer all of my files from to the desktop. It's connected to the internet wirelessly through the router.

My problem is that I cannot get the computers to access each other, they can both access the internet without problems. The reason I was trying to get the laptop hooked up via the PCMIA card was because I would have faster transfer speeds if they were both on Ethernet.

Hopefully that clears it up. I'll probably be able to get my brother in laws help with it all tomorrow but I still wouldn't mind any suggestions. Thanks for the reply.

[Mephisto2]

You're running [/i]File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks[/i] on all the computers, right?

Also, what OS are you running (Win98, Windows 2000, Windows XP etc)?

Do you know how to check an IP address? If so, let me know what IP addresses each of your computers, and the access point, have.


Mr Mephisto

[sherpahigh]

I do have file sharing turned on and I'm running XP home on the computers.

I'll be out of town for the rest of the week now so I can't work on getting this thing fixed until Sunday.

Thanks for the help so far though.

[Mephisto2]

Heh...

I haven't really helped at all so far... it's difficult to troubleshoot problems, especially problems at "higher layers" in the operating systems, remotely over the internet.

I'll try my best though, once you return.


Mr Mephisto