# Wireless Network Help

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wireless-network-help/217373>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 6, 2003, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wireless-network-help/217373 "2003-12-06T14:00:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dead0man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/edb3f5/32.png) [@dead0man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dead0man)\
**Post date:** [December 6, 2003, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wireless-network-help/217373/1 "2003-12-06T14:00:56Z")

</div>

This isn’t the first time I’ve ran here after a couple of days of head banging.

Ok, I have a Linksys router. I have 4 PC’s wired up to it. Everything works fine. I got the wife a laptop(HP ZE4400 series) for Christmas. It has a built a in 802.11g card. I had read on [Tomshardware.com](http://www.tomshardware.com/network/20030807/index.html) that I could use one of my XP boxes to “bridge” a connection to my laptop if it had a wireless network interface. So I purchased a [802.11g PCI card](http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?DEPA=1&sumit=Go&description=33%2D127%2D118&searchdepa=1) to do this. Well day 1 nothing worked. Day 2 I discovered I had turned off the wireless service. Day 3 I finally get the network available on the laptop. I still can’t ping or anything. I can only get the network up using the Dlink software on the desktop. If I try to use windows’s software, the network doesn’t connect.

I’m halfass computer nerd to say the least. But what I know about wireless, I have more or less learned in the past 3 days. Right now, I just want to be able to ping the computers. I know eventually I will have to deal with the “bridging”, but I can cross that bridge when I come to it.