Wireless in Vista

[dave87]

Hey all,

Just received my sisters new laptop, and she wants to connect it to the wireless. Unfortunately, as our router uses channel 13, Vista doesn't see it at all. I think this is due to the regional settings as the US 1-11 channels are the only ones approved for use, but in the UK we have 1-13. US laptops don't see wireless available on channels 12 or 13

Thing is, I could go through and change all the other devices on the network, but, that would be more hassle than asking here, if anyone has any idea on how to change the localisation in Vista? The region settings are all correct (English, UK) but not the ones for the wireless?

Help?

Cheers,

Dave

[aidanjt]

Is the system locale en_GB or just for the users? You should get a UAC prompt if you attempt to change the locale system wide..

Honestly though I don't use wireless, much less Vista wireless subsystem, perhaps the WLAN drivers might have it's own wireless subsystem that would work.

[dave87]

I've tried the system locale, and that is correct.

If it helps, its currently using the Dell Wireless drivers that came pre-installed, whereas my inspiron came with Intel Wireless which has been brilliant, picks up all network situations perfectly....

Dave

[Paul Adams]

I would guess the problem is either with:

a) the network adapter driver, hard-coded to only offer channels 1-11

or

b) the firmware on the network adapter itself, and the drivers query the "permitted" channels and get 1-11 from the device

It could be that the hardware itself is actually identical, while the model numbers are being reported as different in the European and US markets, with appropriate firmware revisions.

Personally I stick to the tried & trusted channel options of 1, 6 or 11 as the most compatible and least likely to cause interference with each other (and avoid that 802.11a standard altogether).

You should check out Dell's website and see if there is a driver for the European model whose device IDs match and allow you to install, and you get lucky.

Otherwise, it might be a "hack the firmware" job which is in all honesty a waste of time if you can just change to a different channel.
(My principle being "what if you need a future firmware revision which addresses an issue, but it would break your WLAN connectivity again?")

[dave87]

Cheers Paul,

The only thing I would say is that my neighbours have stuck to the tried & tested channels (one bright sod caused me no end of troubles by selecting the same channel as me), hence the selection of channel 13.

No other way round it?

[Paul Adams]

Not that I can think of - when it comes to wireless, a huge majority of the code used to establish the connection with the access point and handle the traffic is actually 3rd party, very little is controlled by the OS directly.

I don't think it would have anything to do with the locale settings in Windows Vista, that is more for character set defaults and currency symbols, etc.

[dave87]

The only reason I suggested local settings is because when I had a belkin card (desktop pc) if you didn't set the OS region to UK the wireless drivers would reset to using US defaults on reboot. This was in XP, however.

I'm just trying to set it up on channel 11, but it still doesn't seem to want to recognise it

[dave87]

Right, now to blow all theories out of the water - downloaded some updated software for the Dell Wireless, and the dell wireless utility registers the network on channel 13, but Vista still won't find it?

[Paul Adams]

Okay, so the drivers were the reason channels 12 & 13 were not available, but you are unable to connect to the WLAN on 11 or 13 anyway...

Did you disable SSID broadcasting on the access point?

What encryption are you using?

[dave87]

Found that Windows was still using the old drivers or something, a restart cured it

Cheers for the help Paul, I'm not up to scratch on Vista yet