Help! I thought I might try out some of the free wifi connections available, at the library and cafes. So I got a PCMCIA card for wireless connections and plugged it into my six-year-old Gateway laptop (running on XP Pro). The computer recognizes the signal, and shows it at nearly 100% most of the time. But my browsers (IE and Firefox) don’t say there’s any connection–no server.
What do I have to do? The computer recognizes the connection (and even shows the MAC address), but the browsers don’t get it. Is this a port thing? I’ve tried everything. Please help!
a) Have you actually told the Wifi card to connect to the access point? Was it successful?
b) Is DHCP enabled? To check this, go to the Control Panel and open Network Connections(or something similar). You should see several network devices listed(likely 2). Right-click the one for your Wifi card, and select Properties. You should see a window with a list of options. Select the one containing the word “TCP/IP”. Now click the Properties button(it may be called Advanced something, but I’m pretty sure that it’s Properties). Select the options that say something along the lines of, get a network address automatically and get DNS servers automatically.
Sorry if that was vague, but I had to do it from memory.
From an IE window, go to Tools, then Internet Options, connections tab, Setup button, to access the internet setup wizard. That will likely get you connected.