no network address

[Guest]

Hi,

I am having problems connecting a Dell laptop to my home wireless network.
My setup is with an HP desktop wired to a Netgear wireless router. The
desktop is not aquiring its IP address when connecting to the wireless
network. Both machines are running Windows XP Home Ed. Everything was
working fine until today. The only thing that changed is that I tried to
configure the laptop to connect to the wireless network at my wife's office.
I ran the network configuration program at her office. When she came home
the laptop would not connect. I found that the workgroup name had changed
and now both computers are on the same work group. But I can't figure out
what else may have been changed. Here is the ipconfig:
Windows IP Configuration
Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : Judy
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Dell Wireless 1470 Dual Band
WLAN Mini-PCI Card
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-14-A5-45-CC-7F
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration IP Address. . . : 169.254.22.117
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:
Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) PRO/100 VE Network
Connection
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-14-22-B7-29-BB

There has to be something simple that I am overlooking, but since I don't
know anything that I changed I can't figure out where to look.

Thanks.

 

[Guest]

I forgot to mention that I also powered down both computers, the router, then
started the router and the computers back up. No change from the problem
already mentioned.

 

[Lem]

I forgot to mention that I also powered down both computers, the router, then
started the router and the computers back up. No change from the problem
already mentioned.

You said that your "desktop" (which is wired to the router) isn't acquiring an IP
address. But the ipconfig printout you posted looks like it came from the
"laptop" which is trying to connect wirelessly.

You are correct that the laptop isn't getting an IP address from the router; that
169.254.22.117 is an auto configuration IP set by WinXP when it can't get a
response from a DHCP server. Either your router's DCHP server has been turned off
(unlikely, but you should be able to check by accessing its configuration pages
via the wired desktop), or the laptop really isn't connecting to the correct
wireless network. Have you set the laptop to use the correct SSID you setup on
your router, made sure the connection is set to "infrastructure mode," and entered
the correct encryption passkey?

See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314897&sd=tech

 

[Guest]

Thanks Lem. I must have misspoke in my earlier post, the issue was with the
laptop not aquiring an IP address from the router. After having a night to
think things through I was able to find my setup cheat sheet that had my
configuration settings, and previous troubleshooting. I found that DHCP was
enabled and the SSID was correct. In the process of checking those things I
also noticed that WEP was set to "OPEN". I changed it to "SHARED" and
reentered my passkey. After that everything was fine. So either WEP needs
to be set to shared, or my passkey got changed. Thanks again.

 

[Lem]

Thanks Lem. I must have misspoke in my earlier post, the issue was with the
laptop not aquiring an IP address from the router. After having a night to
think things through I was able to find my setup cheat sheet that had my
configuration settings, and previous troubleshooting. I found that DHCP was
enabled and the SSID was correct. In the process of checking those things I
also noticed that WEP was set to "OPEN". I changed it to "SHARED" and
reentered my passkey. After that everything was fine. So either WEP needs
to be set to shared, or my passkey got changed. Thanks again.

DW,
I'm glad that you got things working. Two points, however:

1. If your hardware (both the router and the wifi card in the laptop) will support it,
you should be using WPA rather than WEP. And if you have newer hardware, use WPA2.
Although better than nothing, WEP is, in fact, easy to crack in a relatively short time
-- if someone feels like taking the trouble. If your hardware only supports WEP, then
good practice is to change your key often (of course, this usually leads to the common
security flaw of writing keys down on Post-Its ...).

2. For better security, you should set your authentication mode to "open" rather than
"shared." This may seem counterintuitive, but see, e.g.,
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;884787 Make sure to get the
authentication mode the same on both the router/access point and the laptop. Your
router/access point may have an "automatic" setting for authentication type. Just
guessing, I suspect that your router is set to "automatic" and therefore when you
changed the laptop from "open" to "shared" the real change that made things work again
was re-entering your WEP key.