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Wireless networking woes, can anyone help?
tbloxham
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I've recently moved home for a few weeks where I am faced with the horror of having to use wireless networking rather than good old reliable cable networking. Living at home for a few weeks will be arduous enough without the use of a proper computer for the internet!
My parents use a WPA-PSK encrypted network, broadcast from a SpeedTouch 580 router. It has both wireless and wired connectivity, but my parents refuse to have a wire running around the house. Multiple other machines are connected wirelessly. It is running 802.11 g and b mode, if thats any help.
I bought a Belkin G+ MIMO USB wireless router and intend to run it on Windows XP. It's a little brick like thing that connects onto a USB port on my computer. I installed the drivers and added the USB card. The belkin wireless management system saw a strong signal on my parents network and I connected. I entered the WPA-PSK hex encryption key I had been given and everything connected perfectly. Things started working, and for a minute or so all was great. However then the "Wireless connection has connected" bubble popped up again and the connection no longer functioned.
It still said it was connected, boasted an excellent signal strength, its just that nothing could access anything on the network.
I changed from belkin connection management to default windows management, restarted and reconnected. The same thing occurred. 1 minute of function and then nothing more, even though the signal strength was still good.
I noticed that what appeared to happen when it changed is that if I looked at the network details in network connection the encryption changed from "enabled" when it worked, to "disabled" when it broke on the little side info panel.
I changed the properties of the network connection from auto aquire IP to set the details myself, which is what the other computers in the network do. I copied their settings for subnet mask, dns etc, but changed the last number of the IP address to a unique one. Now the computer connected but was encryption was already disabled and I got no functionality at all, although as ever signal strength was good and the overall icon indicated no connection problems.
I updated the drivers of the USB thing with no effect.
Every time I try to log on to the network it asks for the encryption key, unless the network was "active" broken or not when the computer was last reset. So it knows the network requires an encryption key. The key I have is the same as the one used by the other computers.
I'm sure that somewhere there must be a "dont switch off the encryption please" setting, does anyone have any idea what I might do? Its driving me mad
My parents use a WPA-PSK encrypted network, broadcast from a SpeedTouch 580 router. It has both wireless and wired connectivity, but my parents refuse to have a wire running around the house. Multiple other machines are connected wirelessly. It is running 802.11 g and b mode, if thats any help.
I bought a Belkin G+ MIMO USB wireless router and intend to run it on Windows XP. It's a little brick like thing that connects onto a USB port on my computer. I installed the drivers and added the USB card. The belkin wireless management system saw a strong signal on my parents network and I connected. I entered the WPA-PSK hex encryption key I had been given and everything connected perfectly. Things started working, and for a minute or so all was great. However then the "Wireless connection has connected" bubble popped up again and the connection no longer functioned.
It still said it was connected, boasted an excellent signal strength, its just that nothing could access anything on the network.
I changed from belkin connection management to default windows management, restarted and reconnected. The same thing occurred. 1 minute of function and then nothing more, even though the signal strength was still good.
I noticed that what appeared to happen when it changed is that if I looked at the network details in network connection the encryption changed from "enabled" when it worked, to "disabled" when it broke on the little side info panel.
I changed the properties of the network connection from auto aquire IP to set the details myself, which is what the other computers in the network do. I copied their settings for subnet mask, dns etc, but changed the last number of the IP address to a unique one. Now the computer connected but was encryption was already disabled and I got no functionality at all, although as ever signal strength was good and the overall icon indicated no connection problems.
I updated the drivers of the USB thing with no effect.
Every time I try to log on to the network it asks for the encryption key, unless the network was "active" broken or not when the computer was last reset. So it knows the network requires an encryption key. The key I have is the same as the one used by the other computers.
I'm sure that somewhere there must be a "dont switch off the encryption please" setting, does anyone have any idea what I might do? Its driving me mad
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
tbloxham on
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I might be able to get another one to try tomorrow, which would resolve whether this was the case. Any thoughts as to anything else it might be, or is it so odd that it must be something broken?
Buy a Wireless G USB adapter (none of the G+/MIMO/N stuff, just Wireless G) from someone other than Belkin (I'm not a Belkin fan, but you can try it if you wish). Keep the receipt and make sure your old USB software is completely uninstalled. Then try the new one out and see if it works. If it doesn't then it's a computer setting and you can work to resolve the issue... Then return the new adapter from wherever you bought it. That's my first step to fixing stuff like this.
Another one, is there anything about your laptop power management set to power off any internal stuff (like, say, usb ports) when the power is removed or some such? I know my laptop shuts down certain aspects when the AC adapter isn't plugged in, but you can change these things.
And its plugged into a desktop, I bought it for a laptop a while back when I was on a trip but never needed it and thought it might be worth trying it now.
However, it sounds like your USB adapter is not updating its encryption keys when the router cycles them with TKIP. TKIP basically auto-negotiates a new encryption key for your connection every X seconds. 60 seconds is a pretty standard default value here. See if your adapter has a setting to enable WPA + TKIP.