[mellieh]

Hi,

I have some knowledge of computers but I am new to wireless networks. I am sure some of the information I will give is irrelevant but I will include everything I can think of because I'm not sure which info is irrelevant. Please excuse my verboseness.

I am trying to set-up a network in my house. These are the machines I am trying to network:

• Brand-new laptop - HP G60-230US Notebook PC with Windows Vista
• 2 year old Desktop - HP Pavilion Media Center PC m7480n with Windows XP
• Nintendo Wii
• Very Old desktop - running Windows 95
• D-Link Wireless N Router with WPA encryption

I have been adding machines to the item incrementally and waiting until the network is stable before adding another machine. I have run into problems before even attempting to add the Windows 95 box, so I don't have much information on it yet.

Here is what I have done:

• The desktop was the only machine hooked up to the internet with a bellsouth modem.
• I attached the router to the Pavilion with an Ethernet wire and to the modem.
• The router came with Pure Network Net Magic software and I have installed that on the Pavilion and tried to use that to setup the router. However, the software detected an already installed router. I was not aware of another router and could not find one. I could not follow the directions provided by this software because of the assumption of an original router. I tried to kluge it but this, of course, failed.
• The router came with one sheet of instructions. Fortunately, it showed the proper connections. I connected the Pavilion's Ethernet port to the blue port labeled "1" on the router. I connected the Ethernet "internet" port on the router to the modem.
• This worked and the desktop was connected to the router.
• The laptop found the network easily and connected to it.
• Everything was in the same room, at this point, but to do what I need to do, I need things to be in separate rooms. The router won't be in the same room as the Pavilion.
• I removed the Ethernet connection from the Pavilion to the router. I found the wireless adapter which came with the Pavilion and plugged it in. It is a Liteon WN5301A.
• It took a couple of tries and a reboot but the Pavilion was connected to the network and the internet.
• I turned on the Wii and it found the network. I had to manually enter the MAC address for the Wii, but it connected to the internet successfully.
• Now, I moved the router to another room. The Pavilion could not access the network. The laptop and Wii had no problem. The Pavilion said it was connected but no internet. I tried pinging the router from the command line. It did not work. Yet, the wireless icon in the system tray said the Pavilion was connected.
• I moved the router back into the room with the Pavilion and the laptop. I had to shutdown the laptop and the Wii. The Pavilion re-aquired internet access. Then I was able to startup the laptop and the Wii again.
• I moved the desktop to a room closer to the router. Still not the same room that the router is in.
• I shut down everything. I tried connecting the Pavilion to the router first. I have had no luck.
• I tried to find a new driver for the wireless adapter. I currently have version 4.1.2.112. I have found evidence of a 4.3.3 version but have not been able to download a copy.
• I have moved the wireless adapter around to try a closer spot but could not get it close enough to recreate the one room network.
• I played with the antennas on the router to make them perpendicular with each other for better reception.
• Eventually, I want to hardwire the Windows 95 box to the network as it does not have a wireless connection. This is my daughter's computer and is in a public area in the house. To accomplish this, I can't have the router in the same room as the Pavilion.

I can't think of anything else to try. Any suggestions?

Thanx for your help in advance,
Mellie

[Frank4d]

When you moved the router to another room, did it remain wired to the modem?

[mellieh]

yes. I moved both modem and router to other room. They are wired as they were when they were in the room with the pavilion. The modem is plugged in to a different phone jack but it is plugged in.

[Frank4d]

I can think of a couple of possibilities here. Do you get a DSL light on the modem in the room where internet does not work? If not, plug a phone into it to see if you get a dial tone. The phone jack may be wired to another phone line. Another possibility is that a POTS splitter was wired so only one jack works with DSL and others are filtered so DSL will not work on them..

[mellieh]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. The modem and router are in the Kitchen on a phone jack that works. The modem lights come on and my laptop and wii are still on the network and getting out OK. At this point, only the pavilion desktop computer is having connectivity issues.

Mellie

[jpnavarrette]

You said that your pc indicates you are connected but you cant ping the router. Does your router indicate the pavilion is still connected? Also, are you using DHCP or static IPs for your home machines? You mentioned entering your MAC for the Wii...you also did this for the pavilion wireless adapter right?

[mellieh]

Hi,

Thank you for these questions. I will do my best to answer them.

I am logged in to my routers webpage which gives me all kinds of information. Much of which I don't understand yet. I believe the router does not know the pavilion is connected. Under status, under wireless, it says I have two clients. It gives the mac addresses. one is for the wii and one is for the laptop. The wii is shut off right now so I don't know why it shows up on the status. The pavilion is turned on and says connected.

Connection type = DHCP Client

The page for the Mac filters already has the pavilion MAC address. I am assuming the software which I set up on the pavilion provided this information without any interference from me.

does the wireless adapter have a different MAC address than the pavilion?
Could part of this problem be caused by the initial setup of the network when the PC was connected on a LAN ethernet connection? Was the wrong info provided?

[jpnavarrette]

The MAC address is the physical address of your network interface hardware...you would have one for your wired and one for your wireless network adapters.

Lets get the following out of the way...

start-run-cmd

type: ipconfig /all

Post the output...also verify that your pavilion wireless 'physical address' is listed in the MAC filter on the router while you have the output from the above command.

[mellieh]

Windows IP Configuration



Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : Gertrude

Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :

Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid

IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : launchmodem.com



Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection 2:



Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : launchmodem.com

Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Wireless LAN PCI 802.11 b/g adapter WN5301A

Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-C0-A8-B1-E7-AB

Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes

Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.101

Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0

Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1

DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1

DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1

Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Sunday, February 01, 2009 1:06:08 PM

Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Sunday, February 08, 2009 1:06:08 PM



Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:



Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected

Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) PRO/100 VE Network Connection

Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-17-31-24-E8-A1



Pinging 192.168.0.1 with 32 bytes of data:



Request timed out.

Request timed out.

Request timed out.

Request timed out.



Ping statistics for 192.168.0.1:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),



The mac address on the router for the pavilion is the physical address of the wireless adapter

[jpnavarrette]

OK, sounds like you will need to reconfigure a few things...

Please verify your current router WAN and LAN IP's before we move forward though.

[JohnWill]

FIRST! Uninstall that useless Network Magic package!!! This will only confuse the issue and make it difficult to sort out the real issues.

Your inability to ping appears to be a firewall configuration issue, so I'd first disable any firewalls on that machine and see if that doesn't change that issue.

We need to address one machine at a time before moving onto the next one, so let's see where this leads us.

[jpnavarrette]

From his post above it looks like the network magic software detected his previously installed Bellsouth software for the dsl modem. My initial assumption is that his pavilion pc is configuring itself to talk to the DSL Modem instead of the WAP which means his tcp/ip settings are incorrect for the routers LAN subnet. This would prevent him from reaching anything outside of the routers local lan.

[mellieh]

Hi,

Thanks for all the help. I have partially fixed the problem but things are not working great. But they are working now, which is something.

Here are some of the things which I did:
- I uninstalled Net magic software.
- I changed the channel (?) on the router. I noticed my laptop was going down whenever I used the cordless phone to try to get help to get things working.
- I lowered the security on the network from WPA to WEP. I am a little concerned about this but this got the desktop (with XP) onto the network
- I turned off MAC filtering

Problems I am still having:
- I think my security is too low and I would like to beef it up but I am still a little clueless about what I should do.

- The desktop connection is hinky. It does not stay up all the time. I have to reboot. I am trying to get files copied from the desktop to the laptop and the connection fails in the middle of the copy and I often have to reboot.

- HP chat (worse than useless) had me uninstall IE. I use firefox so this is not my biggest problem, but it has caused other issues and error messages.

- I also spoke to the folks at Dlink. They said the new router was broken and I would have to return it. (This was before we figured out the channel fix.) They would not accept a return until 30 days had past. I could not return it to the store since it was circuit city and they are not accepting returns. Dlink said the only solution was to wait the 30 days This is a messed up policy.

So we did some checking and learned about the channel problem and noticed that when we were on the phone with the laptop connection would fail but as soon as we hung up it would work again. We put two and two together then called dlink and they said "oh yeah, that could be it"

Let me know if you have any ideas about these additional/new problems. Thanks again for all your help so far.

Mellie