Wireless works without encryption but not with it

Lady_K

I have set up a wireless router a linksys wrt54gs, its connected to a windows xp pc and we want to use the laptop wirelessly.

Before the security settings were set up the laptop could connect easily but when I set up the security it wont connect, it connects briefly for a second then goes off constantly. The 3com wireless card software for connecting to the internet is a little confusing so we used the windows wireless connection for the laptop

I wasnt sure what to put in the security settings so maybe I've done them wrong

It asked what security I wanted out of these

wep 64bit
wep 128bit
wpa personal
wpa2 personal

I selected wpa personal, which is best?

It then asked TKIP or AES I chose tkip is this ok?

Then I chose a password from http://www.grc.com/password, a 63 random printable ASCII characters one

Any ideas on what to try to get it connecting properly?

espresso

What OS is on the laptop? If it's not XP SP2 it won't handle WPA-PSK. Other settings seem OK.

Toxteth_OGrady

It's not clear from your post - are you applying the same security settings in both the laptop and the router?

:cool:

TOG

Lady_K

The pc is xp sp2 and the laptop is xp professional sp2

I mean the security settings for the router, I didn't think I have to set any security settings on the laptop for the wireless to work but its strange it wont connect properly when the security is set up. My daughters been trying to connect the laptop I havent looked at that. I've had to put it back on disabled so the laptop can get online but I don't want to leave it on an open connection like that.

I think when my daughter tried to connect when the security settings were in place on the router it asked her to choose from a dropdown menu for some but what settings should she have put there?

I just keeps flicking from signal 100% for 1 second then off again to not connected

everythingblogcast

Good for you using www.grc.com/passwords for security wireless.

If it is an old wireless card then it will not have the ability to connect to a password protection wireless network.
You could be adding or having a blank space to the key making it the wrong password.

Lady_K

The card isnt that old she bought it about 18 months ago. Shes used the same card and same router in the uni house but now shes brought them both home as they moved houses to one that already had internet in so didnt need it there. I'm not sure if it was set up using the same password site though but it did have security settings in place

albertross_2

I'd try it with an 8 character pwd first, then move to 63 when you get it working.

It needs to be done on laptop and router, wpa-personal/tkip

Lady_K

On the laptop I know it didnt give a choice of wpa personal just the wpa will that be ok? thats how we set it before but then we tried them both on the wpa2 and it was still the same

albertross_2

probably just wpa/tkip in windows

buglawton

My old router allowed a password to be typed in that is the same as the one you enter on a connecting computer. The new one allows a password to be entered but it generates a passkey based on that password. This passkey (which is long, and hard to remember) has to be entered into any computer that connects to the router. It totally threw me on setting up and needed a call to support before I saw the light.

Lady_K

We have tried various ways using the wpa and the long encryption with windows and the card software and its still the same. Sometimes in the password bit there are some dots seeming to be a shorter password so I don't know if its confused with previous settings or not but anyway my daughter said she never used one of the generated long passwords from that site before just the one generated in the router settings. So I've now set it to wep 128 even though its not as secure just to see how it works in the morning. It said choose no longer than 16 characters so I chose 16 then generated it and it came up with one 25 characters long so I hope its ok and not too long. I really want to set it with the wpa settings though and the longer pw if possible so its more secure.

Should she still put TKIP with the wep128 setting?

Whsts the difference in wpa2 and just wpa and wpa personal?