Hi everyone,
I hope someone can save me here!
About 5 months ago we set up a wireless network in our apartment between 3 people, using a Linksys voice-over-ip device (although nobody has ever used the vioce-over-ip function, we just wanted wireless). The setup is: the router has our internet LAN cable going in one socket, and one other LAN cable coming out and into one non-wireless PC. The other 2 residents in the apartment had wireless enabled laptops. And it all worked fine.
But there was always one thing that bothered me - the guy who set it up (one of the wireless users), was the only one who knew how the thing had been installed, and any time there were problems he would come along and fix it, without explaining what he was doing. Now we are 2. A few weeks ago he moved to another country, and just like I predicted, we are now faced with a connection problem and neither of the 2 of us has a clue how to fix it.
When our friend left, he did not make any changes, and our connection worked fine as usual. Then yesterday, I simply unplugged the router from the power supply for a few seconds just so I could put in an adapter (for my new printer), and as soon as I plugged the router back in, both of us (me, the wireless user, and my boyfriend, the non-wireless PC user) lost our connection.
What is really strange is that when I connect the LAN cable directly to my laptop (bypassing the router) the connection works fine, but when my boyfriend does the same thing to his PC he still cannot get a connection.
This is why it's frustrating that we do not know how this was set up - let's forget the wireless for a min - obviously something was configured differently on my boyfriend's PC than mine that prevents him from using the LAN cable whereas I can.
Someone told me that the IP address of my router has been reset and now I have to log into the linksys configuration utility (http://192... etc) and change the access password for the wireless laptop (we have wireless security enabled as there are other wireless users in our apartment block who once tried to access our network). The other thing I was told to do was to change the DHCP setttings on my boyfriend's PC for him to obtain an IP address automatically.
Is this true? I do not want to meddle with this unless I have to. And if worst comes to the worst, how can I totally remove all traces of that router installation and do it again myself from scratch so at least I can learn what is going on?
Thanks,
Joey