Dell Latitude 2100 netbook with 1510-N WLAN Mini-Card won't acquite IP
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From: Jeff Liebermann on 16 Feb 2010 13:55 On Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:40:46 -0800 (PST), mercury <mercpl(a)gmail.com> wrote: >I should have mentioned that the >Dell has XP sp3 installed. The specs on the Insprion 2100 Netbook indicates that it's not sold with XP. Must be a wipe and reinstall by the school, or a special order from Dell. >I just tried turning off the encryption >and the Dell did connect to the router but then wouldn't connect to >internet. That tells me something but I'm not sure what. Well it said >it was connected and authenticated and had acquireing 192.168.0.4 but >it still wouldn't even open 192.168.0.1 so I could log into the router >admin. My own ASUS notebook with Vista was now refusing to connect >to anything. So I had to stand up, walk 20 metres, plug in the >network cable, then reset the router back, then walk back to the >couch. After all that effort I needed a beer. Beer will be of some help with tolerating the situation, but is not very useful for fixing the problem. Methinks you're doing something rather odd here. As I read the above, you could not configure the router, but you could turn off the encryption. That's impossible as the encryption must be disabled in the router, not the client. Do you perhaps have the Dell setup in some kind of peer-to-peer mode? That's not going to work. Now that I think of it, that also sorta matches the symptoms. This would be a good time to start over with the wireless connection. The hard part is getting rid of the save old settings. System Tray -> Wireless Icon -> right-click -> View available networks -> Change order of preferred networks. Find your Netgear SSID and delete it. Advanced -> check "access point, infrastructure only" Refresh view available networks and try connecting again from scratch. Incidentally, if your wireless SSID happens to be Netgear, log into the router and change it. Connecting to the neighbors router with the same name is an amazingly common problem. >I suppose upgrading the firmware on the router is the next step. Nope. Checking with your cable provider if you have the latest version is the next step. No need to update if there's nothing available. If you're wanna dive deep, turning on connection logging as I previously suggested works with XP WZC. The problem is that it generates HUGE debug logs, which take me forever to find the point of failure. It's worth the exercise and will probably show you where in the negotiation things are failing. >When >I think about it, the school must be using MAC filtering for their >wireless network. I doubt it. Too much work keeping the MAC addresses straight. Some kind of RADIUS login/password authorization and 802.1x authentication is probably what they're doing. It's quite easy to impliment if you have a central server to manage the security. >Helping 1200 students who have forgotten their >password would probably be a bit much. One local charter school charges $5(?) for every forgotten password. I've been told it works. Incidentally, they also assign passwords and don't let students pick their own. That allegedly elinates much of the password hacking, but doesn't help if the students write their passwords where anyone can see it. (Moral: you can't win). >Another option could be to get my old WGR614 out of the cupboard, put >it in her room and configure that as a bridge. I got the WGR 614 free >as part of a previous broadband contract. That will mean that she is >stuck to her desk, which isn't so bad. She will only ever be doing >homework on this thing, she already has a bigger Dual Core Vista >notebook for games, Youtube, MSN and iTunes. Yep, that will also work. Make sure the WGR614 isn't on the same RF channel (1, 6, or 11). Use different SSID's so that you know which wireless AP to connect to. Also, be sure to disable the DHCP server in the WGR614. Incidentally, there are some hardware revisions of the WGR614 that I've found to be unreliable (chronic disconnects). I think it was V5 hardware, but I'm not sure. The latest firmware allegedly fixes the problem, but I haven't bothered to verify it. >Again, thanks for your help. Good luck. -- Jeff Liebermann jeffl(a)cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
From: Jeff Liebermann on 17 Feb 2010 11:52
On Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:20:45 -0800 (PST), mercury <mercpl(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> Find your Netgear SSID and delete it. � >I didn't do that, why would it help? If you had the wrong WPA encryption key or goofy settings saved in the "profile" for that SSID, or you had another access point saved with the same SSID, it's easier to delete than to fix the "profile". Since you can't connect anyway, it doesn't make any sense to leave a profile in place that doesn't work. However, reading onward, both conditions are unlikely and this is probably not necessary. Did you happen to find your SSID listed in the "order of preferred networks" window? That happens with a partial connection, where some experiment partly succeeded and Windoze saved those settings. They're probably wrong or messed up. If you still can't connect, try deleting the saved settings anyway and see if it helps. I'm running out of things to try as you seem to have anticipated most of them. At this point you can connect the 2100 Netbook to most anything except the Netgear router. WPA tests with other wireless routers, the Netgear firmware update, and turning on Windoze connection logging seems to be all that's left. -- Jeff Liebermann jeffl(a)cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558 |