Ethernet overriding Wireless Internet Connection

[Dave Schwartz]

Hi. Thank you in advance for reading this and hopefully trying to help me.
I have a Dell laptop running XP which is used only sporadically, mainly when
I travel. My wireless connections always work fine, no matter where I am,
but when I was at a friends's house with no wireless network but with an
Ethernet network, when I plugged the Ethernet cord into the laptop, the
computer recognized it but didn't seem to know what to do with it. I could
not connect to any internet sites.
Do I have to somehow tell the computer what to do with an Ethernet
connection? Is it set to only look for and use a wireless connection? Can
I set it to also use an Ethernet connection even when a wireless network is
present? Can I set it to give an Ether net connection priority?
Did I ask enough questions?
One more question-can anyone help me?
Thanx
Dave Schwartz, Commack, NY

 

[Lem]

Hi. Thank you in advance for reading this and hopefully trying to help me.
I have a Dell laptop running XP which is used only sporadically, mainly when
I travel. My wireless connections always work fine, no matter where I am,
but when I was at a friends's house with no wireless network but with an
Ethernet network, when I plugged the Ethernet cord into the laptop, the
computer recognized it but didn't seem to know what to do with it. I could
not connect to any internet sites.
Do I have to somehow tell the computer what to do with an Ethernet
connection? Is it set to only look for and use a wireless connection? Can
I set it to also use an Ethernet connection even when a wireless network is
present? Can I set it to give an Ether net connection priority?
Did I ask enough questions?
One more question-can anyone help me?
Thanx
Dave Schwartz, Commack, NY

Normally, no.
Normally, no.
Normally, it is.
Normally, it is.
No.
Maybe, if you care to reveal what you mean by "didn't seem to know what
to do with it," and some details about your friend's wired network (e.g,
does the network belong to your friend or were you trying to connect to
some commercial network, and if the latter, what your friend told you to
do in order to do so).

--
Lem -- MS-MVP

To the moon and back with 2K words of RAM and 36K words of ROM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
http://history.nasa.gov/afj/compessay.htm

 

[David Schwartz]

This is a guy who can't see the forest for the trees. Just likes to sit at
his nerd desk and type gibberish so he can go to the newsgroup and see his
name. Like he had no clue as to what I was saying. What a d-bag.

 

[Etal]

Hi. Thank you in advance for reading this and hopefully trying to help me.
I have a Dell laptop running XP which is used only sporadically, mainly when
I travel. My wireless connections always work fine, no matter where I am,
but when I was at a friends's house with no wireless network but with an
Ethernet network, when I plugged the Ethernet cord into the laptop, the
computer recognized it but didn't seem to know what to do with it. I could
not connect to any internet sites.
Do I have to somehow tell the computer what to do with an Ethernet
connection? Is it set to only look for and use a wireless connection? Can
I set it to also use an Ethernet connection even when a wireless network is
present? Can I set it to give an Ether net connection priority?
Did I ask enough questions?
One more question-can anyone help me?
Thanx
Dave Schwartz, Commack, NY

Both the wired and the wireless connection are supposedly
Ethernet. You should be able to assign priority for the different
connections under:

Control Panel : Network Connections (Rightclick and open) :
Advanced(WindowMenu) : Advanced Settings ... : Adapters and
Bindings : Connections : [ArrowUp]or[ArrowDown]