My laptop wont connect to my wirelss network! someone plz help?!

Question

ok...so my laptop connects to the network with a wire adaptor, but not with a wireless one. Does anyone know what can be wrong? When I plug in the adaptor (i have netgear), the netgear smart wizard wireless assistant pops up, but on the bottom it says "scanning", and no signal. When i go into explore (rite click on start menu, clikc explore), and go to "My network places"-->"Entire NEtwork"-->"Microsoft WIndows Netweork"-->"My Home" (the name), nothing shows up. THe Name of my PC and my laptop should show up b/c they all belong in "My Home"...but they don't show up! (I hope i'm not confusing anyone wit this....but i think u should hav a prty good idea what i'm talking about if u know something about computers. so does that mean the adapter's faulty? Cuz my dad's laptop has a built in wireless adaptor thing and it works. I can't connect to the internet either...which is obvious b/c the adapter can't even connect.

Does anyone no wat to do? Thanx sooo much (:

P.S. My IP address goes something like 169.something something...but my main computer's IP address is 192. 168.1.1....which is bad cuz the subnet mask is different too(main comp: 255.255.255.0 laptop: 255.255.0.0). But i changed the subnet mask and IP adress of my laptop so it reads 255.255.255.0 and 192.168.1.2....so thats all good....so thats not the problem

Answer 1

Whoa! Youre doing it all wrong and I think you have mixed some things up!

First of all, your wireless network wont show up in my network places, this is for you network; like accessing your other computers documents and having an intranet going on.

And all them IPs and Technical information you have just given away to the public is not good, and no one can make sense of it because its just numbers and I have a funny feeling you dont know what it means either.

So, how do I connect to my wireless network? If your laptop is capable it should all go ok, ok?

Assuming you are using WinXP or Vista, go to start and look for connect to, show all connections- this should bring up an explorer window with about 2 or more icons- the LAN is the wired connection you are currently using, to use the wireless one I would advise disabling the LAN by right clicking and select disable. Right click the "Wireless Network Connection" presuming you havnt renamed it already, and select enable (if it isnt already enabled) then right click again and select "View available networks" this will bring up a dialog with a few networks in it (if nothing shows, click refresh or F5 a couble of times) find yours and double click it, enter your passkey (read the manual or on the back of the access point) and click connect. If this doesnt work, contact me <[e-mail]> and I will do my best to help :)