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Windows Forum / Windows XP / Networking and Web / February 2006no network address
Hi, I am having problems connecting a Dell laptop to my home wireless network. My setup is with an HP desktop wired to a Netgear wireless router. The desktop is not aquiring its IP address when connecting to the wireless network. Both machines are running Windows XP Home Ed. Everything was working fine until today. The only thing that changed is that I tried to configure the laptop to connect to the wireless network at my wife's office. I ran the network configuration program at her office. When she came home the laptop would not connect. I found that the workgroup name had changed and now both computers are on the same work group. But I can't figure out what else may have been changed. Here is the ipconfig: Windows IP Configuration Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : Judy Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Dell Wireless 1470 Dual Band WLAN Mini-PCI Card Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-14-A5-45-CC-7F Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration IP Address. . . : 169.254.22.117 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) PRO/100 VE Network Connection Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-14-22-B7-29-BB There has to be something simple that I am overlooking, but since I don't know anything that I changed I can't figure out where to look. Thanks. I forgot to mention that I also powered down both computers, the router, then started the router and the computers back up. No change from the problem already mentioned. > Hi, > [quoted text clipped - 36 lines] > > Thanks. > I forgot to mention that I also powered down both computers, the router, then > started the router and the computers back up. No change from the problem [quoted text clipped - 40 lines] > > > > Thanks. You said that your "desktop" (which is wired to the router) isn't acquiring an IP address. But the ipconfig printout you posted looks like it came from the "laptop" which is trying to connect wirelessly. You are correct that the laptop isn't getting an IP address from the router; that 169.254.22.117 is an auto configuration IP set by WinXP when it can't get a response from a DHCP server. Either your router's DCHP server has been turned off (unlikely, but you should be able to check by accessing its configuration pages via the wired desktop), or the laptop really isn't connecting to the correct wireless network. Have you set the laptop to use the correct SSID you setup on your router, made sure the connection is set to "infrastructure mode," and entered the correct encryption passkey? See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314897&sd=tech -- p Thanks Lem. I must have misspoke in my earlier post, the issue was with the laptop not aquiring an IP address from the router. After having a night to think things through I was able to find my setup cheat sheet that had my configuration settings, and previous troubleshooting. I found that DHCP was enabled and the SSID was correct. In the process of checking those things I also noticed that WEP was set to "OPEN". I changed it to "SHARED" and reentered my passkey. After that everything was fine. So either WEP needs to be set to shared, or my passkey got changed. Thanks again. > > I forgot to mention that I also powered down both computers, the router, then > > started the router and the computers back up. No change from the problem [quoted text clipped - 58 lines] > -- > p > Thanks Lem. I must have misspoke in my earlier post, the issue was with the > laptop not aquiring an IP address from the router. After having a night to [quoted text clipped - 64 lines] > > > > See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314897&sd=tech DW, I'm glad that you got things working. Two points, however: 1. If your hardware (both the router and the wifi card in the laptop) will support it, you should be using WPA rather than WEP. And if you have newer hardware, use WPA2. Although better than nothing, WEP is, in fact, easy to crack in a relatively short time -- if someone feels like taking the trouble. If your hardware only supports WEP, then good practice is to change your key often (of course, this usually leads to the common security flaw of writing keys down on Post-Its ...). 2. For better security, you should set your authentication mode to "open" rather than "shared." This may seem counterintuitive, but see, e.g., http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;884787 Make sure to get the authentication mode the same on both the router/access point and the laptop. Your router/access point may have an "automatic" setting for authentication type. Just guessing, I suspect that your router is set to "automatic" and therefore when you changed the laptop from "open" to "shared" the real change that made things work again was re-entering your WEP key. |
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