I've spent 3 or 4 hours on the phone with Linksys support (two different techs.) trying to get my wireless network up & running, all to no avail! Half that time was spent asking them to repeat themselves because of their heavy accents.
Here's my problem: I'm using a WRT54G router hardwired to my main computer (Windows XP) and a WPC54G notebook adapter in my laptop (Windows Me)! The installation of the router went very smoothly, it automatically detected my settings and I'm able to get on-line without a problem. The notebook adapter installation went well too, but I can't get the network to work! When I open the configuration utility on my laptop, it tells me that I'm connected to the Access Point, but it can't find the Internet, and there's 'zero' signal between my two computers.
I've tried everything I can think of trying, and the little help that I got from from Linksys just had me going around in circles with things that I've already tried. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Fine. You need to determine which Linksys device is the problem. Drag your laptop and WPC54G to another access point, coffee shop hot spot, or just scan for the neighbors wireless access points. If the laptop alone doesn't work, the problem is either the WPC54G or the WinME installation.
Same test with the access point. Bribe a friend into bringing their known working laptop and see if they can connect to your WRT54G. In other words, divide and conquer.
Most wireless drivers will stupidly claim zero signal strength if the WEP/WPA key exchange fails. Try it without any encryption. Duz it work with no encryption?
"When all else has been eliminated, that which remains, no matter how improbable, is the culprit". (paraphrased Sherlock Holmes).
I beg to differ somewhat. I have WinME on 2 of my laptops and my office desktop. I also deal with it on many customers systems. There are some stability problems with WinME but they can be worked around. The biggest headache is system restore. That doesn't work on ME, hogs huge amounts of CPU time, and should be disabled. There are also a bunch of junk daemons that runs by default that should be disabled. I can keep my Windoze ME desktop up for about a day or two with one exception. If I run Adobe Acrobat 6.0.3 in a browser window, ME will crash within about 10 minutes, unless I first kill the ACRO32(?) daemon. There are a few other programs with memory leaks that will kill WinME.
However, I do agree that W2K and XP are more stable than ME. I can keep these up for many days without any problems (unless I'm doing my usual learn by destroying exercises).
What *REALLY* pisses me off is that there is no in place upgrade path from WinME to W2K. I tried that recently and discovered that since WinME came out after W2K, Microsoft never bothered to write and test and upgrade script. Grrrrr....
Thanks for the suggestions Jeff! I started out with the encryption disabled, but I was told by one of the Linksys techs that in order for things to work, I would at least need to use WEP, but this didn't help!
As for finding a friend with a wireless network, I have no geeky computer friends, my friends/family can barely spell 'computer'! Plus, I live in a very isolated small town on the Oregon coast where wireless networks are probably rare, I'm surprised that they have DSL here! (only been here 3 months)!
By the way, I have a friend (retired school teacher) who lives in Ben Lomand! I also see that you must have something to do with radio/cell-phones? I was a radio tech with the US Forest Service until I retired, and your photos of repeater sites brought back some memories!
Join the club, I got one problem sorted and then created another. I uninstalled the software on the laptop and now I can't reinstall it because it says a previous installation is incomplete. I beginning to regret going the Linksys way. It all sounds good, but when you can't even get an open unencrypted connection, what's the point of the rest ?
Wrong. Wireless will function just fine with encryption disabled. All coffee shop hot spots run this way, with encryption off. See if it works without encryption.
What support probably meant was that it's not a great idea to run your home wireless network with encryption off. Too many evil people, like me, wander around with sniffers looking for open wireless networks to exploit.
Install Netstumbler 0.4.0 on your XP laptop. Drive around sniffing for wireless access points. They're everywhere. If Netstumbler finds some, your laptop is working. If you had disclosed the name of your town, I could have looked up on one of many wireless hotspot directories for any open or for pay hot spots. Worst case is find an excuse to go to the nearest big city, where you're sure to find wireless hot spots.
Another trick is to find a suitable geek in the big city and bring them both the router and the laptop. Since you already have the DSL part of the puzzle working, just memorize or print the first page of the router setup: http://192.168.1.1 Then, drag both to the nearest computer store and have them do the wireless part of the setup. If you can see the web based setup page at the above URL via wireless, you're done. However, make sure that you have encryption running before you bring it home.
Small world. It's Ben Lomond. I don't know everyone in town, but retired skool teacher sounds like about 5 people I know.
Argh. Those old photos are nightmares from a previous company I worked for and later owned. For entertainment, I cleaned house last weekend and made a large pile of heavy metal radios (Motrac, Motran, Micor, Mitrec, GE Exec, GE Mastr, and other oddities. I figure about
150 lbs worth plus cables and heads. Nobody seems to want them so they go to the scrap metal recyclers (after I yank the reeds and channel elements). Bummer.
I am somewhat involved in the cell phone industry, but I'd rather not discuss my involvement as I've signed too many NDA's.
Incidentally, we did some contract work for the USFS in the Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead area in the 1960's. Nothing like a 15 mile 4x4 drive through the snow for half the day, replace one tube, and drive back. Most of the site had doors in the roof for when the snow got too deep. I have a photo of what's left of a Cushman CE-3 after I dropped it through the roof from about 15ft up. Also a nifty photo of what was left of the comm building under a big TV tower when the de-icer didn't kick in on time and ice blocks the size of desks started falling when someone finally turned it on. Ah, nostalgia.
These are always fun to trace, either a file is still present, or a registry key either has or hasn't been set that is going to present the install. Tell you what, here's an offer, zip up the contents of the CD and mail it to me, I'll try to install (I don't have a Linksys card so expect the install to fail) but I'll see if I can find the dopey bit of install that's hanging around.
Unlike Linksys, people here aren't paid to provide support. :)
What IP does the laptop have when you enter IPConfig /all at the DOS Command Prompt?
If the IP starts with 169, then the O/S is timing out and cannot get an IP from the router's DHCP server and the machine cannot access the Internet with that IP, since it's not using an IP from the router. This is due to some mis-configuration between the router and/or the wireless card. The 169 IP will allow the two machines to network.
Secondly, trying to get the XP and ME O/S to share resources is a PITA. You should try and match what the NIC protocol and services are on XP and dump Netbeui off of ME.
I also found ME and wireless is a PITA too and the O/S had constant crashes due to the wireless. I dumped ME for Win 2K Pro and now XP Pro on the laptop and it's been stable.
I've spent most of the weekend on this and it was getting to me :-)
I have now got both Notebooks wireless connected off the Linksys AP. Although as yet The encription is fine for the rest of the street . Bust I have it running and a benchmark that I can build up from.
Basically, it appears to have been a conflict of IP addresses. Any given Notebook appears to require a different (interface IP address) for both LAN and Wireless.
I've had a bottle of red wine now and all seems a lot better :-)
Thanks.
And yes I know no one has to offer help or support on here and any is for free, thankyou and sorry for my firing from the hip.
If I understand what you're talking about, there are two different cards being used on the machine one for wire and the other wireless and they both have MAC(s). The DHCP server on the router or AP (never used a standalone AP) is going to issue an IP to the MAC of the card the machine is using and will have two different IP(s) if the computer's NIC has been configured by the O/S to *Obtain and IP Automatically.
The problem with ME like the Win 9'x O/S is that they are not protected O/S(s) and anything running on the 16 bit thread that the O/S shares with everything else running on the machine can hang or crash the thread taking the O/S with it.
ME and wireless with it's 16 bit driver on my laptop back in 2001 would crash and reboot itself everytime a car, truck, motorcycle, or whatever went by that put out heavy frequencies and down it went with the crash and reboot. I happened to call Dell Tech Support on another matter at the time and the conversation lead to the crash problems I was having and he gave me the clue on the problem. I then started watching what was happening and sure enough it was due to the problems being stated with that piece of
*CRAP* ME O/S.
As opposed to the NT based O/S where the O/S is a protected O/S and nothing shares the O/S(s) processing thread that makes the O/S less crash prone than ME or Win 9'x. I switched to the NT based O/S and the crash problem with the wireless never happened again and I never looked back.
IMHO, M$ should have never put out the ME O/S as it was a rush to glory to cash in on the year 2000 thing. They should have come from Win 98 SE to XP and should have never put out that ME piece of junk.
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