Wireless problem

[caLLous]

My workplace has just bought a couple of Compaq laptops with Vista Home Premium on them. No matter what we do we cannot get them to find the wireless network. There's also a Vaio and a Dell there with XP and no problems at all.

Is there anything obvious I should be looking at? I feel it's a bit unfair to be blaming Vista because it could be just a coincidence but it is looking kind of guilty here...

 

[soze]

Try changing your wireless channel if your on 13 some brands do not see it as its UK only i belive?

Also is it a unsecure wireless network? If it is you might have to do something special in the windows network center place to allow unsecure networks

 

[Guest]

manually add the SSID of the wireless network (its name) into Vista, possibly the wireless network at work doesnt broadcast its SSID, make sure wireless zero configuration service is started, make sure the security key is correct (wep etc)

 

[Jupitus]

Just a comment on the Vista thing - I recently set up my wireless router at home for 2 new laptops, both running Vista Home and both connected up without any issues...

 

[caLLous]

Yeah Jup the owner of one of the Vista Compaqs can connect flawlessly at home and in his other places of business. Which infuriates him even more when he visits us and can't do anything without plugging his laptop into the wired network. I think it might be the firmware on the router, it's an old Netgear (I'm not at work at the moment but I couldn't find it on their website so I presume it's been discontinued.

I'm going to take my Belkin N1 router in and see if that fixes anything. If it does they can buy it off me and everyone will live happily ever after.

Thanks for suggestions/help so far.

 

[Mazling]

I've had no problems with Vista/Wireless myself. Very sorry

 

[Clown]

I set up my neighbour's Vista laptop with my wireless network and it's fine too. Silly question, but some lappys have a switch on the case to turn the wireless adapter on, even if the network adapter is enabled in the Network Connections page. Is that on?

 

[toxii]

i had a wireless router mac-address blocked in default-factory settings, maybe check if theres such a case


specific router was a sagem wg150 who had only 1 wireless port available and rest was blocked unless you stated the specific mac-address of the lappys-wireless comps and allowed them in the network

 

[caLLous]

Silly question, but some lappys have a switch on the case to turn the wireless adapter on, even if the network adapter is enabled in the Network Connections page. Is that on?

Yeah, there was a sort of embarrassed silence while we looked at that, but it was on everywhere it could be on. Plus he can connect at home and other wifi sites without changing anything.

We had a network engineer out a couple of weeks ago whose only advice was to patch the Small Business Server so it would find XP. And he also googled (£850 a day for him to google stuff?!) the problem and found a couple of commands that could be entered to turn something on or off in Vista. But all of that was just to get them working on the network, wired or not. We still have this wireless issue.

 

[nath]

How comfortable are you with fiddling with the netgear router settings?

As some others have suggested what you want to do is confirm whether or not the SSID is being broadcast. If it is (and it's broadcasting on channel 1-11, 12 and 13 as previously said can cause problems) then it really should be picked up by the laptops - regardless of mac address access control.

 

[soze]

When you browse for avalible wireless networks dose it display it? If so what happens when you try to connect?

If it lets you connect but you cant access anything this is almost like a DHCP problem but is basically the AP dose not like the WEP WPA key you have used try a new one.

If it dose not let you connect check on the AP that MAC control is not turned on if it is add the machine to the allowed group.

If the laptops do not even see it make sure its running the right protocol for the laptop the ap could be set to B only and the laptop needs G ect.