Wireless woes - please help me

[Corsairpro]

I have 2 related problems.

Background: I am your run of the mill college student. Networking has been something I've had little experience with, but when myself and 3 other people moved into a house this year, the thought of not being allowed to drill holes to run cable made us decide to go with wireless. I bought a Netgear MR814 Wireless router and 2 PCI cards and 2 PCMCIA cards for us. We have DSL through SBC and its working fine.

First problem: I have a NETGEAR MR814 Wireless Router w/ 4 port switch. The problem is that I cannot get any wireless device to associate with it. I made sure the adapters are on infrastructure and placed them at varying distances from the router (1' - 50') and that didn't make a difference. I can log into the router using a standard RJ-45 connection, and i can get DSL/internet access that way... but that defeats the purpose of having wireless. This leads to my second problem

Second Problem: Because we couldn't get the router to work, I decided to blindly try AD HOC method. At first i could get 3 of 4 computers to get internet access this way. (1 computer getting DSL and then internet connection sharing) but the 4th would connect, be recongnized, but would never get an IP address... even when the other 2 were shut off and not connected. So then hooked the DSL up to this problem computer... it had DSL fine but would not share the connection like the first one did. Both have XP Pro.

Optimal solution would be to get the router working.... but if i can get all 4 online without it i'd still be less stressed than I am now

Thanks!

 

[viper118]

log into your router using the standard rj45 connection... check all your wireless settings.. for now, disable the use of wep keys and enable ssid broadcasting... one more thing, make sure that your router and your wireless cards are on the same channel... after you do this, you shouldn't run into any problems detecting a network connection..

when you do get a connection, you can start implimenting security such as disabling ssid broadcasting and enabling the use of wep keys.

 

[Corsairpro]

i've made sure WEP was disabled... i set the SSIDs on the computer and double checked channel... still nothing.... this is what confuses me.

Please help

 

[ryandmiller]

Sometimes you need to enable the connection on the pc. For example, it may find the connection but not connect because it isn't secure. Does the network connection icon appear connected in the system tray? If it is there, right click on it and click to connect even though it isn't secure.

You may find a third party app to be useful like netstumbler.