I'm gonna give in and shell out £30

sassybird

Linksys wireless adapter on laptop trying to connect to virginmedia router. Won't entertain it until I tick the box for "Use windows to configure my wireless network setting". Then the connection is flipping on and off every 10 seconds or so.

Totally stumped - will prob order a new adapter from Virgin for £30. The only think that worries me is that I find the operators very hard to understand and trying to ensure I am ordering the correct thing that will actually work with my pc is a nightmare. I don't want to spend £30 and end up with something that doesn't work.

Should I go down to pc world and ask their advice?

debitcardmayhem

hello again, for those who join in this thread Sassy has Win XP on the lappy and a Linksys adapter trying to connect to Virgin Netear router ...... Not getting a reliable connection .
Two other threads
here and here

Sassy it would be easier to keep to the one thread others wont be able to keep up with what you have tried .

No don't go down the PC world route yet, there should be folks here to help somehow. Does the XP Lappy give you a message when you connect to the wireless router when you connect or when it disconnects again, or does it ask you to type in the password again ?

sassybird

Hi. Thanks for thread advice.

The little wireless icon on my bottom rhs toolbar flashes up the message - "Wireless network connection is now connected. Connected to virginmedia******* (unsecured). Signal strength: Excellent".

Then about 5-10 seconds the message disappears and a red cross appears over the wireless icon.

I have opened the Network Connections window and the Wireless Network Connection is just flicking between connected/unconnected (5-10 secs).

I have put a tick in the 'Use Windows to configure my wireless network settings (in the Wireless Network Connection Properties window.

If I take the tick off this box - then the wireless connection is disconnected and does not try to connect at all.

Obviously it is windows doing all the work - but it seems to be a lost cause to be honest.

I'm pulled now between:
1) paying to a techie to come to the house (and the Linksys adapter may not work anyway, so a waste of money).
2) trying PC world for a newer netgear adapter.
3) ringing the customer service at virginmedia and asking for one of their adapters (£30). But to be honest their technical people are hopeless and I'm worried about getting a dud item. They told me yesterday that the IP address is the same as the WEP key !!!!!

OMG.

Thanks for bearing with it tho.

debitcardmayhem

Also on your 1st thread when you used ipconfig it said this

suffix - blank
IP address - 192.168.0.3
subnet mask - 255.255.255.0
default gateway - 192.168.1.1

Which looks totally wrong ie the ip address looks OK for Netgear and the Gateway looks ok for your old Linksys router.
I would suggest
remove the dongle/usb adapter from the lappy
go to start/settings/control panel/system click on the hardware tab
then click on device manager select the network adapters line
right click on the Linksys adapter and uninstall it
then put it back in and it should re-install and then try and connect to your router with the password you found earlier.

closed

post an ipconfig /all

when it's connected wirelessly, can you ping -t www.google.com

debitcardmayhem

Oh Dear dear you said "The little wireless icon on my bottom rhs toolbar flashes up the message - "Wireless network connection is now connected. Connected to virginmedia******* (unsecured). Signal strength: Excellent".
that means your wireless is not secured and others can use it, we will get that sorted shortly .

sassybird

The problem is that the password on the back of the virgin netgear router is a paraphrase - the Linksys adapter is asking for a WEP key (which is why I rang virgin technical support).

If I uninstall and reinstall and it asks for the WEP key I will be back to square one and my son spent a lot of time checking IP address, subnet mask, default gateway etc.

Will I lose all the work he's done if I uninstall the Linksys?

debitcardmayhem

closed wrote: »

post an ipconfig /all

when it's connected wirelessly, can you ping -t www.google.com

Hi closed, I believe you know more about the netgear than me but I can bungle along with setting up WPA (or if necessary WEP) but look at my last post before yours and Sassy's before that it says unsecured

closed

That's going to complicate things further at this stage, easier to get it working, then encrypt.

sassybird

So shall I uninstall the Linksys then?

Mista_C

Could it be possible someone nearby has an open acess point/router? and you're hopping onto that? If you go into the properties of your Network Card, check the Wireless tab, remove any connection that is not yours (or set those that aren't yours to manually connect) and see if you can hold down a connection then.

Looking at the ipconfig details and the information you've provided I think you're wifi hopping between networks.