[Extradesk]

The laptop is a Dell and was used in the Solomon Islands and worked well. Here, it doesn't recognize the wireless router although another laptop works fine with it. Is there something that needs changed for it to work here - like an IP address or something?

[smax013]

Extradesk, on 03 November 2009 - 07:16 PM, said:

The laptop is a Dell and was used in the Solomon Islands and worked well. Here, it doesn't recognize the wireless router although another laptop works fine with it. Is there something that needs changed for it to work here - like an IP address or something?

What do you mean by "doesn't recognize the wireless router"?

Do you mean the network SSID (the name of the wireless network) does not show up on the computer, but you get some "bars" on the WiFi signal strength indicator? If so, have you made sure the router is not set to NOT broadcast the SSID?

Do you mean that you do not even get any signal strength (i.e. "bars")?

Is the router running encryption (i.e. WEP, WPA, or WPA2)?

[Extradesk]

More details: It shows up as being connected to the internet. The signal is strong and it sees NetGear but when we go to pull up a page, any page, it says unable to find address because of failure to connect. So I had vista try to "identify and repair problem" and it says "check your connection" as if it isn't seeing that we are already connected. I did go in and try to manually change the settings for the Wireless Adapter because ours was set as "Ad Hoc" and NetGear said it should have been different but it doesn't seem to actually change it, like it is on default or something, for that reason I think it is something with the adapter settings since that is the only thing we really needed to change. Does any of that make sense?

[smax013]

Extradesk, on 06 November 2009 - 07:07 PM, said:

More details: It shows up as being connected to the internet. The signal is strong and it sees NetGear but when we go to pull up a page, any page, it says unable to find address because of failure to connect. So I had vista try to "identify and repair problem" and it says "check your connection" as if it isn't seeing that we are already connected. I did go in and try to manually change the settings for the Wireless Adapter because ours was set as "Ad Hoc" and NetGear said it should have been different but it doesn't seem to actually change it, like it is on default or something, for that reason I think it is something with the adapter settings since that is the only thing we really needed to change. Does any of that make sense?

If the wireless adapter of the computer is somehow set to "ad hoc", then that means it is set to more of a "send" mode rather than a "receive" mode. "Ad hoc" means the wireless card is setting up a WiFi network that other computers can use to connect to that computer. Thus, it is not trying to connect to the router.

If that is true, then I agree it seems to be a problem with WiFi card.