[Jason08]

Hi all,
The Internet was working fine for me up until yesterday evening, when after leaving the Internet alone for a couple hours, I came back and couldn't connect on a wireless connection. This was the case with both a desktop and a laptop that is wireless in the house. However, a computer with a wired connection still worked. I rebooted the device from the configuration page (I know some of you know, but I'll say it here, the router is a D-link DIR-615), and did not do anything. I also noticed that there was a computer connected to my network that is not in my house, so I suspected a neighbor/and/or hacker. I reset the router to factory default settings from inside the router, and although that took the neighbor or hacker off, it still did not allow the wireless computers in my house to connect. I did a hard reset with a paper clip, and although I do believe that really worked as well as a factory default reset, the PCs still would not connect. After unplugging the router and plugging it back in, we then immediately without checking to see if the wireless could connect tried to setup encryption on the router, WPA Personal. After doing that, neither wireless computer (desktop has a D-link DWL-G122 adapter, and laptop built-in Acer adapter) could see any networks in range, including my own network, as the wireless icon was completely missing from the system tray, but yet in the router's status page it said the WPA Personal and Wireless LAN radio was enabled. We then took off the encryption, and both wireless machines could connect. Then we tried WEP, and although I could see the wireless icon and on the network list my network (saying security enabled), when I connected, it said little or no connectivity, and that's where I am now. On the Acer laptop (with Acer adapter), it automatically transferred to another network in range, but on the desktop with the DWL-G122 wireless adapter, I thought maybe the problem was it did not support WPA, because it would not even see the network, and especially since it is an old adapter (several years old, and no longer being manufactured), but I read even it supports WPA.
And I don't know why I got limited or no connectivity with WEP, even though I was able to connect. What I would like to do is enable either WEP or WPA, but I can't seem to do that and have the PCs connect. Also, the PCs were restarted in the process after enabling WPA, but that did not make any difference in trying to detect wireless networks in range. Right now I am connected to my wireless network, but right now the only way it's working is without encryption.

Thanks, Jason

[Jason08]

13 minutes shy of the recommended bump, lol.

[TerryNet]

Make sure you have the latest driver for each of those wireless adapters. One from D-Link; I assume the other is an integrated adapter so the driver should be from Acer.

Does that help with the detection of WPA? By the way, I forget exactly what options that router has. If you can choose WPA (only) use that as the adapters may not support WPA2 and may have trouble with WPA/WPA2 mixed.

When trying WEP use a HEX key, not an ascii passcode because sometimes the passcode is translated differently on the adapter than on the router.

[Jason08]

There are only 3 wireless security modes, WEP, WPA Personal, and WPA Enterprise. We tried WPA Personal again, but from the manual setup, and chose WPA only. However, the same problem occured, and although I did not check on both wireless machines, on the one with the DWL-G122 adapter, it still could not see the router in the wireless network. Then trying WEP again, we assigned the 64 Bit Hex keys, chose shared key autentication, but still same issue. I entered in the key, and the wireless adapter was able to connect, and the signal strength was excellent, but there was no connectivity.
I saw a place to download the driver for the DWL-G122, and the version was 1.13 compared to 3.0 that I currently have. I didn't check the Acer laptop for drivers, but since there was no update for the DWLG122, I don't think updating it there would have made much of a difference.
So unfortunatley, I thought at least one of the changes in WPA and WEP would work, but they did not.

[TerryNet]

Are you looking on D-Link's web site? Without the version number I couldn't go beyond this.

I'm kinda suspecting the router is getting flaky, but since you can still connect w/o encryption and did not use encryption before (do I have that correct?) it's too early to point the finger of blame.

[TerryNet]

I don't like MAC address filtering 'cause it makes your network harder to use, and is not real security, but it does work to keep most people off your network. If you can't get encryption working it's better than no protection at all. On your router it's called "Network Filters" and is on page 30 of the manual.

[Jason08]

Yes, that's it, and the security was set to none on it before this problem occured. I suppose I could try MAC filtering, espseically if an unknown(to me) computer connects to my network again.
Thanks for the help though.

[tek guy]

Yes you can enabled Mac filtering, but one thing is is selected as open system instead of shared key when you enabled WEP into your router?

[Jason08]

The only options are "both" and "shared key" for the authentication for WEP, and I had it set to shared key.

[tek guy]

Select both instead of shared key unless you know to set up the wireless connection of your computer to share key, because the default settings for the WEP on the computer is open system that might conflict between the option that you selected which is "shared key".

[Jason08]

Ok, I guess I can give it a try, although I have a feeling it won't make much difference.

[Jason08]

New Information…


On one computer, the status was stuck at validating the connection for WEP.
Earlier this week, a cow-worker at my dad's job said (which I already knew from TSG) that WPA is much stronger than WEP. He said that when we enabled WPA, we did not remove the wireless profiles on the computers. What I thought he said, was under Change the order of Prefferred Networks, under Prefferred Networks, click Remove from the network(s) that is displayed. Does that remove the wireless profiles? If so, we tried that on one computer and it did not make a difference. We removed it, enabled WPA Personal, restarted the computer, and same problem, the router didn't seem to broadcast.

[TerryNet]

What service pack level on your XP? If you don't have SP2 or SP3 you'll have trouble with WPA.

I am not at all convinced that you have the latest correct driver for the D-Link adapter. You indicated that the correct version (on the D-Link site) is 1.13; yet you have 3.0, which indicates that you have the wrong driver; maybe one for a different version of the adapter.

[Jason08]

I have SP3.
I do think it's strange that I went to another site that had the driver for the adapter (Rev.A2, the one that I have), and that site also said 1.13. I don't think I mentioned it before, but the driver has been installed from the disk that came with the adapter, so I certainly should have the right one. Just now, I found a website that had 3.0 version. The exact version it lists is 3.00.22.0, and the one I have is 3.0.22.0. The only difference in the 2 is one has an extra 0, but I'm thinking they still are the exact same version.

[Jason08]

I guess I'll just assume there's a bug in this router.
Thanks guys for the help.