Suprise suprise... problems with wireless router! (Linksys WRT54G)

[JayArr]

Hi everyone, great forums, just what I need as long as some can help!
Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢ve just bought a new wireless router and PCMIA card (Linksys †“ wireless router is WRT54G) from Comet, but am having some problems. Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢m a bit naÃÃâ€*’¯ve about the whole IP addresses etc. so let it set itself up. This seemed to work for a while, but then after about twenty minutes, my laptop disconnected from the internet and seems now to have various problems, from not seeing the network at all, to seeing it but refusing to connect to it, even when the password is entered.
I put the MAC number thingy of the laptop card into the MAC address filtering so that it would only accept that card on and added a password. Have doing these things been a bit too much for it and not let it connect? Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢ve read through loads of other posts about wireless routers and read various things about TCP/IPs and DHCPs but am a bit clueless as to what they are. I used to be good at this sort of thing in the days of DOS but Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢m afraid Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢ve lost my touch!
Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢m connecting through a cable modem and computer, which seem to be working fine through all of this. Has anyone had similar problems? Can you help?
Thanks in anticipation
Jon

[Ramrod]

I'd turn off the password and other security on the router and the lappy and see if you can get the laptop to reconnect. Once it does then start to reinstate the security......starting with the firewall on the lappy.

Wireless can be a pain like this - my Belkin router and card is just the same, especially the seeing but refusing to connect thing. It may be as simple as 'stopping' the wireless card, ejecting it and reinserting it in the slot. That should force the thing to re-acquire its connection to the wireless network from scratch.

If that solves the problem, then the likely root cause is poor signal strength from the router. Check that it is sited properly for good coverage, and try changing the broadcast channel ('fraid I can't advise you how to do this on a Linksys, but if you can access the router config screen it should be pretty easy). Cordless phones, baby monitors and low-wattage light bulbs can all affect the signal if they get too close. I have heard it said that good practice is to set the channel as far away from factory default as possible!

---------- Post added at 14:59 ---------- Previous post was at 14:59 ----------

And to the forum, by the way.

[JayArr]

Hmmm, it doesn't want to work at all tonight

Just got home to try these suggestions and now nothing seems to be working. The laptop will pick up the network, but then when I click connect it displays a dialogue box saying "Waiting for the network" which then seems to time out (the message doesn't change) and delivers me back to the list of networks, where my netowrk has disappeared. When I click refresh, it appears again. All indications are that the signal strength is good (full bars on the XP display thingy)

Sometimes the network remains on display in the listof networks, but I am not given any indication as to why it didn't connect.

Aaaaaaargh! I thought they were supposed to be easy!

Any more ideas greatly appreciated

[Aragorn]

When I had a similar problem with one of my wireless cards, I had to 'repair' XP to replace a conflicting file somewhere.

If you have an XP CD, boot from it, hit enter to 'Install' and then 'R' to repair the existing installation. It loads the XP files but keeps your data and programs intact.

[Gareth]

Had a problem with a Linksys wireless router that I installed for my big sis recently... only managed to resolve the issue by wiring the lappy up to the router, getting online and then browsing to the Linksys site where I ran their Easy Connect utility to install latest driver, configure automagically, do a bit of magic, etc...

Originally Posted by JayArr

Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢m connecting through a cable modem and computer, which seem to be working fine through all of this. Has anyone had similar problems? Jon

Just to clarify - you have the WAN port of the router connected to the cable modem, a PC connected to a LAN port on the router, and are trying to connect a laptop wirelessly?

[JayArr]

Hmmmm. Probably.

From the wall, a big thick cable goes in to the cable modem. From the cable modem an ethernet cable connects to the router in a port labelled 'internet' and then from another port labelled computer 1 (or something similar) an ethernet cable connects to the computer

Had a problem with a Linksys wireless router that I installed for my big sis recently... only managed to resolve the issue by wiring the lappy up to the router, getting online and then browsing to the Linksys site where I ran their Easy Connect utility to install latest driver, configure automagically, do a bit of magic, etc...

Does that mean running an ethernet cable from the laptop to the router? So that both computers would be connected to it while it's setting up?

Thanks everybody!

--edit for spelling mistakes!--

[Gareth]

Originally Posted by JayArr

Does that mean running an ethernet cable from the laptop to the router? So that both computers would be connected to it while it's setting up?

Thanks everybody!

That's it exactly... I had a few problems getting the wireless side working, but the router worked fine when the laptop was hooked up to it via an ethernet cable. So I plugged-in the ethernet cable and browsed to the Linksys site where I ran the Easy Connect tool, and that did everything for me. Still not sure what was wrong with it in the first place, but once it was working I didn't really care any more

[JayArr]

Hey everyone!

Good news, I am writing this reply from my lounge on my wireless laptop! I tried all the things you said, but with no luck. I think it was a bit more complicated than I originally thought.

Anyway, I ended up ringing the linksys support line and spoke to a nice guy who managed to sort it out for me. So thankyou to him and if you own a linksys product, then try the stuff on the internet first then ring their support line. Best of all, it's free!

Good customer service is great, isn't it?