Wireless help for a laptop needed
 

I have recently gone to ADSL and bought one of these routers. My PC is downstairs and plugs straight into the router. I have another PC upstairs and have a Minion PCI card, and another Dell Inspiron laptop (only about two months old) which has a NetComm PCMCIA card (specs here).

Now, I want to run the other two off my router, and called in a tech today to hook them up, and to check my security. We got the security thing down OK (so he tells me) but cannot get the laptop to talk to the router. He spent 7 hours here doing what he could (I only paid for 3 of those hours tho, lol). He created the new connection, and laptop could recognise a wireless connection in the area (the laptop was about 2 feet away from the router) but we could not get a connection. All firewalls were off. And he managed to get the PC upstairs connected - the signal was good but the pages took a while to load.

Could there be an incompatibility issue with the card and the router? I really a bit of a novice with all this, but cannot see why the laptop can see there is a local area network, yet not be able to connect. The tech thought someone may already be connected to the router before we did the security thing, so changed the password and did what ever else needed to be done there, so that should have locked anyone else out.

Any input would be appreciated - thanks! :thumbsup:

These are just some wild guesses:

1) First I would check to see that Zero Configuration is turned off.
2) Make sure all the settings are correct.
3) Check manufacturer's for PCMCIA card website for newer drivers.
2) Make sure that cordless/ cell phones are put away so that it doesn't interfere with the signal.
3) Check the router configuration: If your using dhcp, make sure that enough ip addresses are leased.
4) In the Router Configuration, turn on broadcast temporarily, then try connecting to the internet, if it works, turn off broadcast, and test again or leave it on.. whatever works.
5) If none of the above work, move your router upstairs to the upstair computer, and check again to see if it works.

Hi Ella,

Remind me where in Oz you are again? If in Perth, I can drop by and set this up for you...


Mr Mephisto

Also, check the frequency of your wireless router (mine is 2.8 ghz, for example) and make sure none of your home wireless phones have the same frequency. If you didn't check this before you bought your router, this could definitly be an issue; unless you got lucky with the numbers. I made the same mistake, and had to go out and buy a new telephone (easier than buying a whole new wirless set) before I could get a good connection.

Check your wireless card settings and make sure it is set to opperate at 802.11g. IIRC some of these cards opperate in dule mode (802.11b/802.11g at the same time) and have been known to cause some trouble with certain routers.