Problems with home networking (AOL/Netgear)

owenfe

Okay guys and gals, I am blonde, I am however intelligent, but i cannot for the life of me get to the bottom of my problem. So, without using loads of technical terms (coz frankly i dont know any) here is the story so far.
Daughter wants to access internet, I dont want her using this PC so suggested i upgraded to platinum aol and get the free Netgear wireless adsl modem router and we do a home networking thing.
We then went and purchased the netgear wireless receiver for her pc and got all excited as we installed to the letter as prompted by the discs that came with the said apparatus.
right......have got daughters pc connected to this network, using the wep code etc etc.........but STILL daughters pc cannot access the internet....we have tried just using Internet explorer, just in case but this still shows page unavailable, do we want to continue working offline? double checked that work offline was not ticked in the file menu, it wasnt so that was okay.
BUT, and here may be the clue, if we ask daughters pc for its NETWORK PLACES nothing shows up.
If we then click on VIEW NETWORK CONNECTIONS it says "wireless network connection connected, Firewalled, netgear wg111T, 108Mbps........
If we then do exactly the same to this pc we have again a blank page but then if we click onto VIEW NETWORK CONNECTIONS it says
" Broadband M Isp Disconnected, firewalled Wan miniport (PPPOB)...."
and
"Lan or high Speed Internet 1394 Connection Connected, Firewalled 1394 Net Adapter...."
and
"Local Area Connection, Connected, firewalled Intel (R) Pro/100 VE Network..."
Soooo, not being a computer techie in the slightest, my common sense tells me that surely daughters pc should be showing this one and vice versa.....can anyone now take my hand and slowly lead me through this quagmire? Yours on my knees (grin)
Karen

espresso

So presumably you can surf the net on your PC but not on your daughters, is that correct?

owenfe

yes espessor, absolutely, as you can see this one is working perfectly, daughters has all the green lights in the right place but no access to internet.
x karen

espresso

owenfe wrote:

Soooo, not being a computer techie in the slightest, my common sense tells me that surely daughters pc should be showing this one and vice versa.....

Well they should not look exactly the same, as you are connecting via an Ethernet cable and your daughter should be connecting using the Netgear USB adaptor. Have you tried switching off encryption at the router temporarily to see if that is causing your problem? Are you sure that you are actually connecting to your wireless network and not another nearby one? i.e did you set a specific SSID?

owenfe

espresso wrote:

Well they should not look exactly the same, as you are connecting via an Ethernet cable and your daughter should be connecting using the Netgear USB adaptor. Have you tried switching off encryption at the router temporarily to see if that is causing your problem? Not sure what you mean by this, remember I am blonde (grin) Are you sure that you are actually connecting to your wireless network and not another nearby one? i.e did you set a specific SSID?

Oh yes definately know I did that, because when we set this one up we had to give it a name, then when we put the search in to find network locations, some of my neighbours ones appeared (with security passwords required) plus one with a Belkin adapter which didnt need a password, but the signal was very very week and we still couldnt get onto the internet even when we tried this one!

espresso

OK try this on your daughters PC. Start, Settings, Network Connections. Highlight your wireless connection.
Click on Change settings of this connection.
Highlight Internet connection TCP/IP and then click on Properties

Are both Obtain an IP address automatically & Obtain DNS server address automatically Checked?

owenfe

Give me a few minutes, as daughter is playing SIMS...(one of the reasons she has her own pc!!) back in a mo.

owenfe

OH MY GOODNESS!! you have done it........this has taken two weeks!! nobody on aol could help, you are an absolute star...if you lived nearer then a case of wine would wing its way over.
Basically, for your info.... we had tried the ip address automatically before but we hadnt done the dns server address automatically. So changing them both to obtain automatically seems to have done the trick.
Thankyou thankyou thankyou, from one weary mum and a really chuffed 15 year old, who incidentally is still playing sims!!!
x karen

espresso

Glad it's now working! I agree with Albert, now that you have got it working, you would be better to change the encryption to WPA-PSK, with a long key, which is more secure.

:beer:

owenfe

Well its been working for a while now expresso, so grateful thanks to you again. On a slightly different tangent, but linked in a way....
Can you use a laptop wirelessly, without having a main pc plugged into a modem router? Because i visited a mate who said that her brother just had the router plugged in in the kitchen, and he used the laptop wherever through the house. i doubted this because i thought that you needed at least one pc to be "ethernetted" to the router and all the others networked off this.
And.......second question....... how do we now get daughters documents to print? does she just press print?
x thanks again x karen