Wireless Access

I have a Pavilion and heard about issues with it's wireless capabilities. Has anyone been able to connect wirelessly with a built-in card to a wireless linksys router?

XP says im connected yet no packets are received from the router and I can't even ping the gateway.

Thanks,
Erik

I use a Linksys wireless router with 4 port switch with my laptop fine. If your laptop shows that you are connected to your router, then you probably have an IP addressing problem. Try hitting the reset button on the back of the router. If that doesn't work, go to run; type "CMD" and return; then type "ipconfig". See if your ip address is something like 192.168.1.[101-105]. If not, type "ipconfig/release", then "ipconfig/renew". Hopefully, that will fix your problem.

I've done it successfully.

As mentioned, on the laptop do an ipconfig from a command prompt and see if you have an IP address and gateway. The default for a LinkSys should be:
IP: 192.168.1.1xx
Gateway: 192.168.1.1

Make sure the laptop NIC is set to DHCP.

You may need to adjust some of the router settings though. From a system direct connected to the router, open IE and go to http://192.168.1.1
If you haven't changed the password, the default is admin.

Things to look for on the "Setup" page:
-If your laptop NIC is 802.11b and the router is 802.11g, make sure Mode is set to "Mixed".
-Make sure the channel the router is working on is the same channel the laptop is scanning on.
-Just for the sake of testing connectivity, disable any WEP settings.

Under the "Advanced" tab, check to see if there is any MAC filtering going on. MAC filtering limits only certain NICs from being able to access a router. (By the way, this is a good feature to get set up afterwards. Right now I can drive down the street with my laptop and pick up one network after another.)

Good luck...
Jim

I have verified that I get an IP and that MAC filtering is off. The laptop just doesn't receive any packets (at least that's what it says in the network connections window). The laptop does have an address: 192.168.1.101 and I have a desktop (192.168.1.100) wired to the router. The laptop connects to network - it seems the router is not sending establishing properly after it allows the laptop to connect.

BTW - here are my settings:
ROUTER:
-SSID: broadcast
-WEP: off
-MAC filtering: off
-Channel: 6
-DHCP: on
-RTS Threshold: 2304
-Frag. Threshold: 2304
-Preamble: long
-Basic rates: 1-2-5.5-11 MBps
-Tx rates: 1-2-5.5-11 MBps
-Authentication type: both
LAPTOP:
-Mixed mode: on (802.11b compatible)
-DHCP: on
-WEP: off
-Channel: 6
-RTS Threshold: 2304
-Frag. Threshold: 2304
-Preamble: short/long(Auto)


Thanks for your help.
Erik

Hmmmm....

I don't have it installed any longer but I know my router came with wireless adapter software that basically stated the signal strength and network status. Maybe that will shed some light? I'm assuming you're doing this testing in close proximity to the router to guarantee a stable signal strenght.

Longshot:
Maybe your picking up interference from a cordless phone or other 2Ghz device, try a different channel, I get much better performance on channels 10-12 than I do 6.

Do you have any friends w/ wireless cards that you could try having connect? Or someone with another wireless router that you could try to connect to. That would rule out hardware issues.

Sorry...I don't have anything more to add. When I get home I will take a look at my girlfirends laptop and see if I notice anything weird in the settings.

Drivers? Router firmware?

Jim

Yeah - I will try the higher channels - as for the phone interference - I don't have a cordless phone. I guess it could be a neighbor's, however this is a consistent problem. I have also consistently have a full signal (since I'm only 3 ft. from the AP) and the sends packets, but says it receives none. I have searched all over and have spent time on the phone w/ Linksys Tech Support to no avail. Thanks for you input!

-Erik

One other possibility: when we first got our ze4365us with wireless card, I made the mistake of applying an updated driver (from the hp site) to the wireless card, the laptop worked much like you described; it would "connect" but it would not access the internet. Once I restored the system to a point before the upgrade, it worked fine. If you upgraded the driver, you may want to restore the old one and see if the problem goes away.

That's exactly what I did! (installed the new driver right away - just as they told me to). Oh well. I tried to revert back to the old driver, but XP said there was no backup driver. Do you know what version works and possibly where I could find it?

Thanks a ton!
Erik

erik,

disable all firewall programs on your portable.