Laptop won't connect wirelessly.Help please.

josha007

Hi all. This one is for the more techie people out there I feel.I'm trying to help a friend who's laptop is not connecting wirelessly all of a sudden. So was wondering if a few people could give me a few pointers.I'm quite knowledgable about laptops but even this one has got me stumped.

He has quite an old Fujitsu Amilo laptop with Windows XP. They have got a new router in their house and at first they thought it was that.But I went round and connected my iPhone to the router no problem. THe laptop just doesn't seem to pick up any wireless signal from anywhere in the street. The wireless button is on and I've updated the wireless driver.I've also tried the laptop at my flat and that isn't picking up any signal either, whereas my own laptop is.

What could be wrong?I'm really puzzled and frustrated.Is it something in the settings somewhere or is there a program I can download to diagnose the problem?Many thanks.Josh

aliEnRIK

Its quite possible the wireless is fried

jjscotman

I had a roughly similar problem with connecting a friend's old Toshiba laptop wirelessly until after several hours of frustration I eventually noticed a very tiny and easy-to-miss switch on the front edge of the machine.

Maybe all older machines have this so take a look.

Hope this helps !!

josha007

I think the switch would be the same as the Fn + F2 button I press to turn on the wireless. When my friend had the old router the connection would go in and out, that maybe could be the wireless card starting to give up. Could it be anything else though?

aliEnRIK

josha007 wrote: »

I think the switch would be the same as the Fn + F2 button I press to turn on the wireless.

Theres definitely no 'wireless' switch on the laptop itself? (usually at the front)

blondevilla

Try following the info on this page :http://www.home-network-help.com/wireless-card-driver.html
It will help you discover weather or not the wireless card is there or if the drivers need updated

josha007

Thanks for the link blondevilla. I've gone through that already and it all seems ok. I went through the troubleshoot as well and I couldn't find an issue. There is definitely no wireless button at the front of the laptop. The Fn+F2 button turns the wireless on and off. Could the wireless card just have given up?It's 5 years old now so may have given up the ghost. If I was to uninstall the wireless card, is it easy to reinstall?

exup

make sure that windows xp is updated as before SP2 it wouldn't support wpa encryption.
Also check the channel that the router is trasmitting on - it may be that the laptop cannot see all the channels that the router can transmit on

josha007

Ah. I'm not quite sure how to check what channel the router is transmitting on exup. If the laptop cannot see all the channels, how do I change that as well?

I'm pretty sure that the laptop is updated with windows xp

exup

you can't do much about what the laptop can see apart from updating software. it will probably be the limits of the hardware which stops it. maybe a new network card would help. but can it see any other networks?
The channel the router transmits on is changed in the router settings - usually in the wireless settings menu. If you or anyone else doesn't have access to the router settings then I would hold fire on buying anything to help sort the laptopout as it could be something simple in the settings