Cannot connect to the wireless network - please help

debitcardmayhem

dewmiester wrote: »

The router is emitting 802.11g and is backward compatible with existing 802.11b and 802.11g wireless equipment. Also, her laptop is equipped with 802.11g Wireless LAN. Any ideas what else could have gone wrong? Many thanks

You don't state which router nor her laptop details, however some routers and network cards exhibit similar symptoms when the router is set for mixed (b/g)
try the router to only G .It used to be that some Belkin routers and certain cards get confused if b/g are combined. I see it's a Realtek RTL8185 54M

Enterprise_1701C

Are you absolutely sure you put the password in properly - everything has to be right, upper/lower case, spaces etc.

Fosterdog

Is the router one of the ones that you have to press a button to give you a two minute window to connect? A lot of them come with this these days as additional security.

debitcardmayhem

Fosterdog wrote: »

Is the router one of the ones that you have to press a button to give you a two minute window to connect? A lot of them come with this these days as additional security.

Oh dear, go google for wps and safety / hacking

Fosterdog

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

Oh dear, go google for wps and safety / hacking

Great advice but if OP has one of those routers it could be why it won't connect. I still believe they add additional security for most people, what are the chances of a hacker choosing to sit outside OPs house for 4+ hours just to hack the network? surely they would just find a network with no security instead. Of course you may have a dodgy neighbour who is too tight to pay for their own internet but again what are the chances in the real world?

GunJack

seeing as it's xp, try the following:-

1. using ethernet cable, go to the wifi card manufacturer's website to make sure you've got the latest drivers, using their system scanner if they have one.

2. back on wifi (even though it doesn't connect), open a command prompt and type "ipconfig/flushDNS" without the quotes and Enter, let it do it's thing, then "netsh winsock reset catalog/ " again without the quotes, making sure you put the space in after the /, and Enter. This one needs a reboot, so go reboot.

Usually works 90-odd % of the time on XP with wifi connection problems

Darren_G

XP sometimes creates the wrong security settings when you leave it to its own devices. I have several laptops/pcs running XP sp3 and all but one of them connect without problems. Below is what I do to connect the 'problem' laptop:

Go into the advanced options in the wireless networks admin area and check that the security type matches that of your router (eg, WEP, WPA etc..), if not, update it manually so it matches.

If the network you are trying to connect to does not show in the list of networks available for editing, set it up manually using the 'Add' button - get the SSID name, security key etc form your router settings portal

Hope that helps.

dewmiester

Thank you all so much for your help. It is sorted now. The problem is that Realtek RTL8185 54M only works fine with WPA security but the connection is automatically set to WPA2. When changing it back to WPA, the connection works perfectly.