Blimmin' Wireless Router

[Oojamaflip]

All of a sudden my Belkin wireless router on my girl's old PC wanted to connect to my neighbour (I know it's him because he's used his Christian name!). She's arriving home for the Christmas Holidays next week, so I want this up and running in her room for her. I went into Wireless Network Connection from the icon in the taskbar (it's now calling itself Wireless Network Connection 3), searched for available wireless networks: ignored my neighbour's and tried to connect to my own.

I keep telling it to connect to me, it tells me I'm connected but waiting for the network to be ready. I know it's ready 'cos it's working perfectly on my laptop and my phone. Then it just stops trying, and tells me I'm not connected and to consult my network administrator.

I've tried, 'repairing', I've tried keying in the full 30 number key, I've tried breaking it down into groups of only 10 numbers. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the Belkin dongle thingy. The old router is SO old and the Belkin dongle so old I've no idea where the manuals or the installation stuff is lurking. I think all my attempts to get it working again have confused the blimmin thing.

ETA, I've just noticed it tells me it's connected but cannot renew the IP address. I'm with Virgin.

Help?

[Oojamaflip]

Another addendum: After searching t'internet, I ran a command line "netsh winsock reset" but it's still not able to renew/acquire network (IP??) address.

Do I sound like I know what I'm doing? I've no idea!!

[Workingman]

Try the command >ipconfig /renew

[Oojamaflip]

Try the command >ipconfig /renew

Thanks WM.

I'm just waiting for the thing to reboot after trying this:

Reset TCP/IP stack to installation defaults. netsh int ip reset reset.log

Reset WINSOCK entries to installation defaults: netsh winsock reset catalog

I'm recording everything here just for info/interest. If that's not worked, I'll try your thing. I've got less than week before she gets home. I've already paid 90squids to have the graphics mended at PC world. She'll know I've been messing with her machine. Ooopsie.

[Oojamaflip]

Nope!

Tried all of the above. The message is now:

"Windows could not finish repairing the problem because Windows could not connect to the wireless network. "

Oh well, getting ready for a telling off . . .

[Oojamaflip]

I can connect using my neighbours unsecured network!! But try and use my own encrypted service - grrrr! I've noticed that, when trying to connect to me, it changes the type of encryption from I think it was ANS (?) to something else which I can't remember but it wasn't WEP or similar.

PS, I've also done the switching off and back on again 'cure all' at the mains.

[Oojamaflip]

I tried the release and renew thing again. This time I got a message on the DOS screen: An error occurred while renewing interface Wireless Network Connection 2 : unable to contact your DHCP server. Request has timed out.

Data encryption kept changing from TKIP to AES. Network Authentication is WAPA2-PSK.

[Oojamaflip]

Woo hoo! Solved it.

As always with these things it was simple! I'd plugged the Belkin dongle thingy into a different USB port. As soon as I put it back in the original place, everything works again.

They're male, they are, I tell you. I don't understand how they work, but give them some TLC and some gentle persuasion and they'll just quietly get on with it. It's a Mars/Venus thing.

Phew! Only one day wasted messing about.

[Nanna]

Well don Ooj. We had similar problems with our Belkin router (found out it was plugged into the PC and not the Mac)

[Oojamaflip]

Thanks nanna. I must say I was rather pleased with myself after spending the whole day sounding like Muttley under my breath. After several months of using this Apple laptop, I must say I have rather less problems with it than I do Windows. But then again, if anything at all went wrong with the Mac I wouldn't have the foggiest idea where to start 'fiddling'.