Connecting a second laptop wirelessly

building_with_lego

I am going out of my mind with frustration!

We have Virgin BB and have successfully connected two laptops (one has built- in wireless, the other with a Belkin wireless card). I am now trying to connect DD's ancient laptop using an identical Belkin card. I have installed the drivers and software and the card looks as though it's connected but the connection screen shows as 'acquiring network address' or, if I'm lucky, 'limited or no connectivity'. I have tried a few things- disabled firewall, unchecked the 'automatically connect to this network' box, reinstalled the software, changed the thing from WPA-PSK to WPA (can you tell I'm not a computer expert ?). I have tried controlling it from the Belkin device and from Windows, to no avail.

I've been trying since Thursday to get the 8loody thing to work and could happily jump up and down on the keyboard. Please help!


EDIT: This computer has two user accounts set up- mine and DD's. The card connects on mine, usually, but just will not connect on hers. IP address shows as 0.0.0.0 :mad:

closed

which operating system?

which firewall

login to the router and find out which encryption type is being used.

encryption type will need to be psk or personal on laptop, but could be wpa/tkip or wpa2 or wep

building_with_lego

closed wrote: »

which operating system? Windows XP

which firewall Windows Firewall

login to the router and find out which encryption type is being used.

encryption type will need to be psk or personal on laptop, but could be wpa/tkip or wpa2 or wep
Authentication says WPA-PSK and data encryption AES. I've played around with the authentication but not encryption.Shall I change it to TKIP? That's the other option.

..........

closed

it needs to match whatever the router setting is, so wpa-psk/aes it is possible older wireless cards don't have aes ability, the password also has to match exactly



firewall is a red herring, turn it back on, and re-tick automatically connect to this network

let windows manage if you can

the first part of this gives some screenshots but for wpa2

http://www.wireless.bham.ac.uk/start/configuration/xp.shtml

ignore everything after "Select AES for Data encryption, then Click the Authentication tab"

building_with_lego

Brand new wireless card though , the same one that works perfectly in my personal laptop. I'll have a go through what you've linked, thank you.

building_with_lego

Wow, looks like we may be connected! :T:T
I had to input the SSID manually but it then connected on the admin account; I logged out and into DD's user account and have internet, albeit slow.
ATM I have the two wireless cards about 6inches apart and mine works fine at 24mbps and DD's is interminably slow at 108mbps. Is that just because her computer is ten years old?

Thanks again for that advice though- a step by step guide with screenshots is very welcome

closed

your broadband connection is presumably much slower than that, so the wireless speed won't affect download speeds. Having two machines too close together can interfere with the wireless connection

if the machine is slow post a hijackthis log, installed ram, and commit charge, instructions are here

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2436849