Suggestions to trouble-shoot mobile broadband?

A friend of mine who lives out in the boonies has just signed up for Sprint's mobile broadband (EVDO) service, and it's working quite well for him.

But he also got a Linksys WRT54G3G-ST router, which seems to me to be a very slick deal. You take the Sprint laptop card out of the laptop, and plug it into the compatible port on the router, and that's your WAN connection. But the router also includes a standard wireless router for the LAN side.

My friend can connnect to the Linksys by ethernet cable with no problem. In addition, his son-in-law's Blackberry will connect wirelessly to the Linksys. But my friend's second desktop computer, with a Belkin PCI client card, will not connect wirelessly. The card finds the Linksys router, but when he clicks on Connect, it is unable to do so, and says something like "Windows is unable to connect - use other software if available."

Now the Belkin card DID connect to his old Belkin wireless router when last checked. So we're trying to figure out which setting is screwed up.

For the moment, all encryption has been turned off. I've been through every setting I can think of with him over the phone, and everything seems ok.

One thing that I've thought of since talking to him last is that he has his Workgroup name set the same as the router SSID. Could that be confusing Windows?

Otherwise, I would appreciate any suggestions anyone might have. Conceptually, what I can't figure out is why the router works with the Blackberry, but not the Belkin card. And, of course, I'm not physically there, but rather trying to help over the phone, which is difficult.

Reply to
Peabody
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Try and figure out which software is handling the Belkin wireless connections. Belkin may have supplied their own and make not work well. Windows has its own software built in that handles the wireless connections It uses a system service call Wireless Zero Configuration service. ( Make sure its started in the control panel under services. Also, Try and click on the wireless icon (right click properties) and go to the wireless tab and see if the option :"use windows to configure my wireless network settings. The computer name and SSID have no effect on each other.

I have the same router with a Sprint Merlin 720 and havn't had any connection isses and I use WEP.

Hope that helps

Reply to
lremaley

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