I’m trying to connect my computer, wirelessly, to the internet. I am running windows XP and there are no icons in my Network Connections window, there used to be, I don’t know what happened. I am unable to connect to the internet even though my wireless card is recieving a signal from the router. I called the tech support of the wireless card company and he said that I have a network bridge that needs to be disabled. He told me that I should contact the manufacturor of my computer for further assistance. Since I put it together myself I have no one to contact. Snooping around the internet leads to to places that have instructions on removing a network bridge that involve right-clicking icons in Network Connections, since I have no icons there, I’m stuck. Any ideas?
As a first-off, if you haven’t already tried this.
Shut down the computer, the wireless access point and the ADSL connector.
Wait two minutes.
Power up the ADSL connector and wait for it to stabilise, about a minute.
Power up the Wireless access point, same procedure,
Power up the computer.
If you are lucky, all networking will have been re-established.
If not, delete all networking componenets from the PC and reinstall using ONLY the software that came with the wireless networking hardware, do the power-cycling thing again.
Sometimes XP gets a bit too keen and can cripple the manufacturers installation by introducing spurious network bridges.
Don’t let XP do anything at all while installing the network.
If this fails, go the other way and try and let XP install the network itself, but hold back on allowing the manufacturers software from self-starting.
One thing that will definitely produce this symptom is disabling the Windows XP service called “Network Connections”.
Have you been mucking about in the services window?
Go to control panel / administrative tools / services
Look for a service called “Network Connections.”
If it is set to “disabled”, set it to “automatic.”
If it isn’t started, go ahead and start it.
I just reproduced this problem on my own machine just to make sure the same symptom and resolution works for me.
Heh, I’m on break from school and left my wireless card software at school so do go on reinstalling that stuff. NattoGuy, thanks, but that didn’t work. I just found a page that I think has what I need, I’ll see how that goes.