I was having trouble logging into my company’s server for the last week.
I tried everything imaginable, even had the IT guy call me, and he was at a loss to explain it till he came out and fiddled around. Long story short, he said the problem was that he had changed out the router. The new router was configured for WPA (or WEP) 2, and my laptop could only accommodate the former (it’s an older Dell). So, he changed the router to accept both kinds, and, voila! I’m back in business.
So, I’m seeing something like this happening again in the future. When it does, I sense that the person changing it out will not have the slightest idea of what I am talking about. So, I want to know if I can buy some kind of card, or whozit that will make my laptop able to log on to the WPA/WEP 2 kind of configuration.
Can you help?
There are tons of external USB wifi receivers that’ll support it. You could also get a ExpressCard or CardBus (whatever your Dell supports) instead, if a USB device is a hassle. In either case, it’ll cost you like $15 - $25.
I don’t know what your old Dell supports, but a Linksys TL-WN310G is like $15 and will handle everything you need. It’s CardBus.
Have you tried updating the drivers for your existing wireless adaptor? Just visitng Windows Update will often do it - I’ve had really old wireless cards that worked fine with WPA2 after doing that (obviously, you need to connect via a different method, such as enthernet cable to get online for the update)
Hmmm…I clicked on the update driver button when I saw it, and when I was connected to the internet via some other server. That didn’t help any. Is that what you mean?
Thanks,
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I don’t know the exact ins and outs of wifi hardware, but it seems to me that this is a software / driver problem. All modern wifi cards (internal or external) should do WPA 2 - as far as I understand it, all wifi hardware & software since 2003 ~ 2005 should support it, but the manufacturer of your wifi hardware probably hasn’t updated their drivers since somewhere around that time.
Worst case scenario is that you have to get some kind of usb wifi stick if the built-in wifi doesn’t work on the network you’re trying to use. That kind of stick will cost roughly 10 to 15 dollars if you look around.
ETA: WEP is the older and very insecure standard for wifi encryption/authentication and you really shouldn’t use it unless you absolutely have to.
I’m not sure that always works as well as going to windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ and running the whole update process (which will suggest new drivers for your hardware, if any are available, as well as security updates, etc)
Failing that, you might be able to get an updated driver from the hardware manufacturer, if you can identify the brand and model of wireless network adaptor you have
If you find the exact Dell model (better yet, the “service tag” on the bottom of the computer or beneath the battery), you can 1. track down info on its wireless card and 2. find out if an updated, WPA2-compatible driver is available or whether you need to upgrade.
Windows Update drivers will lag behind the manufacturer’s (Dell’s) drivers, which will lag behind the OEM (often Broadcom or Realtek’s) drivers… find the exact card and you’ll have the best chance of finding the best driver.
ETA: But really, a new USB mini-adapter like this one will barely stick out of the USB port; doesn’t get much easier than that.
It may not be the laptop–Windows XP’s built in wireless manager has problems with WPA2. I couldn’t get it to work on my home network. You may want to download Intel’s proprietary wireless manager.
Well, maybe I misspoke-this networking stuff makes NO sense to me. At any rate, he said something like ‘yours is set up for’ or ‘yours is configured for’ something like that. Maybe.
