New Laptop-Vista-Connecting to Internet?

Question

I just bought a new Toshiba Laptop with Vista Home on it.

I have a desktop upstairs with Windows XP..

I have cable internet service through a cable modem and then to a linksys wireless & broadband router. With my old laptop, which also ran XP, I never had a problem locating the linksys network or availability and it ran fine.

With the new laptop, it shows several available networks that are secured but not my linksys network. Laptop is in the same room downstairs as was the old laptop.

How do I get the new laptop to identify and connect to my existing linksys wireless router?

To make things a bit more confusing, at one stage in messing around with the new laptop, a screen came up and it shows the linksys network and that it would load it automatically upon startup.....but it doesn't. Now what? What am I doing wrong? How can i fix it?

Answer 1

First off, I would try to set up my Linksys wireless router with a specific SSID with wireless encryption. Try to set up WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access) with at least personal. If you try to set up WPA2 - Enterprise, you will need something called a RADIUS server as an AAA server; but let me not go in a tangent here.

Reason being, you really don't want other people utilizing your Internet connection. Believe it or not, in several states, without the proper consent of an individual who owns the Internet connection and wi-fi connection, is unlawful. Plus, it is a security issue.

When setting up WPA2, select AES encryption and setup a strong passphrase. Write that all down and put on a piece of paper - secure it and a safe area.

Now, back on your Vista laptop, refresh the listing of Wireless access points (or routers). Highlight the SSID that you named your wifi router. Provide the WPA2 Personal passphrase that you have set on your WiFi router. And you should be set to go.

Answer 2

vista is always the problem

Answer 3

Problem may not be your problem. What are the settings on your router? Is it a secured or unsecured network, is there MAC address filtering. I would start there.

Answer 4

You may want to give a few more details about ur network.  Did you put wireless security on it?  If so which protocol did you use?  WEP?  WPA?

Did you change the networks name to something unique?  (instead of "linksys").

You can figure alot of this out by going to your Windows XP computer and opening up a web browser.  From there try putting in the address "http://192.168.1.1" - (or if that doesn't work, try http://192.168.0.1).  If a log in screen comes up leave the username blank and put the password "admin".

Browse through your routers settings and and check out the wireless setting n c**p.  It is a good idea to use security on your network.  I'd suggest WEP to newbies since its a little more simple and people really don't try and hack them that often... if ever.

If you discover all your settings are good and your comptuer just isn't locating your access point,  it would be a good idea to first try restarting your laptop and seeing if it finds it then, and if that still fails you can go back to your browser with your router's setting and try doing a settings reset on it.  This has ultimately fixed all my problems I've ever had with my router.

And to the other guy, Windows Vista does not "suck."  You are just ignorant.

Hope this helps!

Tim