No Wireless Network Connectivity but Excellent Signal

Factual Questions
1

I have a Dell Desktop, Linksys wireless router plugged in, & Toshiba laptop. XP on both PC and laptop.

Everything has worked fine for years. Then, a friend came over with her laptop and tried to tap into my network. It wasn’t working because I couldn’t remember the password to get her into the network. I went into the Linksys setup webpages to see if I could figure out how many characters were in the password, which might jog my memory. Then, I remembered the password and got out of the linksys setup area. She typed in the password, got network access for about a minute, then the whole network went down.

Now, my friend is gone but I am left to fix my network. I get excellent signal strength but also limited or no connectivity on my laptop.

I have tried

  • Cycling the modem and router & rebooting

  • Clicking the “repair” button on the laptop network connection window

  • Winsock fix application

  • Trying to “re-add” the laptop as a network machine

  • A couple other attempts at fixing based upon some Google searching

All I have managed to discover so far is that it is apparently an IP address mix up issue. I have noticed the “Subnet Mask” on the Linksys setup page is 255.255.255.0 but the laptop is showing a mask of 255.255.0.0.

When I go into the laptop and change the TCP/IP from auto to manual, then enter the same IP as shown on the desktop, then it apparently connects to the network. However, once connected, I can’t access the internet or the PC hard drive from the laptop.

Any tips?

Thanks in advance!

2

I dunno why your Linksys seems to have flipped out, but if it were mine, I’d reset it back to factory defaults (hold the reset button in for about 10 seconds or so) and see if I could connect with it with the network unsecured. If so, then go back in and set up the security again, then re-connect.

Bet that’ll do it…

3

So far so good. thanks.