Problem w/ 802.11g Wireless Connection

Factual Questions
1

Hey all. I’m beginning to think my particular problem may be hardware related but I thought I’d seek clarification from the SDMB tech gurus before I subject myself to the trials and tribulations of support call hell.

I recently purchased a USR 802.11g wireless router/access point and a USR Wireless Turbo PC card for my laptop. I’ve hooked my desktops up to the router via cat5 ethernet and was able to configure my router using the usual web page setup forms. After configuration, my desktops see each other on the LAN and access the internet without any difficulty.

The problem comes when I try to establish a wireless connection through the laptop. In short, I can’t. Whenever my laptop PC card scans for access points I get a big, fat zero. The USR help pages recommend moving closer to the access point which is a joke as I was 5’ away from the router when trying to establish the connection. I also tried disabling WEP, enabling SSID broadcast and numerous other settings in an effort to establish a connection but I’ve had no luck.

All of this brings me to my question: When I look at the router device status page I see info for my both my LAN and WAN connections whch include MAC address, IP,DNS servers, etc., but under the Wireless heading I merely see the SSID, the channel and the MAC address is listed as 00-00-00-00-00-00. This is what’s making me think it may be a hardware/firmware problem as I’ve never seen a blank MAC address before.

Could this be faulty hardware? Or is it a configuration issue? Or am I on the wrong track altogether? Are there any third party utils that might help me diagnose the problem? I’m waiting for a reply to the tech support email I sent USR but I’d like to exhaust all my options before I make the dreaded phone call.

2

I have wireless 802.11B standard so I am not sure that all is the same but it sounds like the same setup.I don’t think you will get the MAC address until a connection is made although I suppose you could manually enter it to see if that helps. What is configuratiion on the wireless card? Is the IP address on the same network as the other PCs and the router? I would go back to the wireless card and manually set up a profile that matches the routers settings. I’m sorry if you have already done this but you didn’t say in the OP. If the card already has a IP adress ping it to make sure it is working.

3

Some more info:

I’ve configured the Desktops & Laptop with static IPs, 192.168.123.XXX and the router’s IP, 192.168.123.123, is set as the default gateway, so I can set up port forwarding in the future.

ipconfig returns “Media disconnected” for the wireless network connection. PC card and drivers appear to be correctly installed and Device Manager indicates the card is working properly with no IRQ conflicts.

It’s looking more & more like a hardware problem to me. I’ll post again when/if I get a reply from USR.

4

It sounds as though you have the configuration right. If there is a firmware upgrade I would install it at this point and the only thing I can further suggest is trying to borrow another PC card to narrow in on the problem device.