Wireless Internet won't authenticate

Kaleidoscope27

Last Sunday Mum decided she wanted the wireless Internet encrypted. Fine. I generated an encryption key using the D-Link admin site (http://192.168.0.1/) Which I used to connect to the wireless network on my laptop. Since then the wireless Internet has refused to stay connected. It'll connect for anything from a couple of minutes to 15 then will disconnect. I can either reconnect it myself or if I leave it, it'll do it itself after a couple of minutes.

Today I realised that whilst it is connected it is "Authenticating" the network, but never reaches "authenticated" status. So I'm pretty sure this is the problem!

Details:
Router: D-LINK DIR-615
Provider: Virgin Media
Wireless Channel: 1 (set to "auto channel")
Laptop Model: Dell Inspiron 6400
"Network Authentication": WPA-Personal (PSK) (Pulled this from my network connection settings utility, I don't know what it means.)

What I've tried:
- Restarting the router and modem and the PC they're connected to.
- Restarted DHCP and DNS Clients on my laptop
- Repaired the network connection on my laptop
- Logged back into the D-Link admin site and tried the Internet on channels 1, 6 and 11 (recommended channels from VM.)
- Connected laptop to the router with an ethernet cable and there were no connection problems that way.

Help? I can be quite computer/Internet savvy so hit me with suggestions. Anything to avoid ringing up VM :rotfl:

Browntoa

is Windows managing the wireless connection or the Laptops makers own

what version of Windows are you using ?

Kaleidoscope27

I'm using Dell's Wireless WLAN Card Utility (That's the name of the window that comes up when I click on the signal strength icon on the task bar.) - Edit: Just double checked and there's a ticked box in the utility letting it manage my wireless networks.

And Windows XP.

Browntoa

untick the box on the Dell utility and Windows one will kick in , a friends laptop refused to connect to a sky router using Dells own software

you will need to re-enter the wireless key for the Xp utility

Kaleidoscope27

Okay! Thank you Done that. Am now waiting to see if it stays connected.

Browntoa

only other thing I can think of is to access the routers admin panel again and look for the wireless channel bit , then swap it from auto to manual, then try a range on channels to see if you get a more stable connection

Kaleidoscope27

It's been an hour and had no problems at all! I'm gonna go as far as to say it's fixed *touch wood* Thank you very much for your help Browntoa! It's much appreciated

Browntoa

Dells wireless software is flakey in my experience , always use windows to manage mine instead of the wireless adapters own as it does a much better job

cybergibbons

Just in case this isn't resolved - I've often seen issues when people change from unencrypted/WEP up to WPA2, because the wireless card drivers are a bit flakey. Updating the drivers fixes the issue.