WPA for SP2

[Guest]

I need help installing WPA for an older version of XP i am running on a
Toshiba laptop which I have not been using for a couple years. I downloaded
SP2 then downloaded WPA2 from msft.com. Still not seeing the additional
setting options when I try to connect to my home network. I am running a
fancy Cisco router which my company gave me, i say fancy b/c it supports my
VOIP phone from corporate. It's a Cisco 800 series router.
I'm not very technical, but follow directions pretty well. Can someone help?
Thanks.
Justin

 

[Bill Sanderson MVP]

Here's the best overview of this that I know of:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/expert/bowman_03july28.mspx

and here's the advice updated for WPA2, which may be more to the point.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/security/expert/bowman_wirelesssecurity.mspx

I suspect that your sticking point is likely the drivers for the nic in the
laptop. In some cases, these drivers are not retrofitted for the newer
encryption--perhaps because of physical hardware issues (in a router, the
cpu has to be able to handle the encryption at full speed with x number of
clients, and some fail at this.) In this case, you are probably going to
need to get an external PC-Card (or USB) device in order to implement WPA2
on that particular machine. You'll need to research the precise details of
that laptop model to find out.

Most if not all WPA2 capable devices can be set to allow connections from
either WPA or WPA2 capable machines--so if you can only manage WPA on the
laptop, you may be OK, if the router can be so configured--which may be up
to company policy. However, the built-in nic could be limited to wep only,
in which case new hardware will be the answer.