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Thread: Vista 64 bit and WPA?

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    Vista 64 bit and WPA?

    Got a strange problem here and I'm going to lay the blame on vista 64 bit. Setup a wifi network that was previously unencrypted to WPA-PSK (TKIP). As WEP is no use anymore, WPA-TKIP is the next step up. I've only ever had problems before with WPA2 (AES) with some versions of XP not letting you put in the right number of characters and etc.
    I've connected 3 different XP machines to this WPA network with different manufacturers of wifi cards/dongles.
    The Vista 64 machine just won't connect. Gives the usual "connecting it taking longer than expected" error. tried 3 different wifi dongles, including 2 that work on the XP computers.
    Any ideas or pointers for whats going wrong? Help would be much appreciated. The PC connected fine before encryption. DHCP is setup and I can't think of anything else to test. Its Vista 64 bit RC1.

    Much thanks as I'm really stuck,
    Dan Gent

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    Re: Vista 64 bit and WPA?

    RC1? Didn't that expire... ages ago? I'd suggest drivers, but chances of finding drivers to support an unsupported OS might be challenging. What's the dongle in question (or at least the chipset)?

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    Re: Vista 64 bit and WPA?

    Until you've upgraded all bets are off. Buy the full version or run a free OS.

    PK

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    Re: Vista 64 bit and WPA?

    I'm not a Vista user. I use ubuntu mainly and XP when I need to run proprietary software. Just read up then that there is a second service pack to Vista and also another major update. I'll check with the user whether he has the latest updates. i could have for some reason written down the wrong service pack :^)
    Splash - "What's the dongle in question (or at least the chipset)?"
    I tried with 3 different dongles. One of which I know was an atheros chipset with plug and play compatibility in Linux, another one a different less supported chipset, the 3rd I'm not sure. Its sounds like either a result of the wrong service pack or a 64 bit thing.
    much thanks! I'll post back

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    Re: Vista 64 bit and WPA?

    Quote Originally Posted by DanGent View Post
    I'm not a Vista user. I use ubuntu mainly and XP when I need to run proprietary software. Just read up then that there is a second service pack to Vista and also another major update. I'll check with the user whether he has the latest updates. i could have for some reason written down the wrong service pack :^)
    Splash - "What's the dongle in question (or at least the chipset)?"
    I tried with 3 different dongles. One of which I know was an atheros chipset with plug and play compatibility in Linux, another one a different less supported chipset, the 3rd I'm not sure. Its sounds like either a result of the wrong service pack or a 64 bit thing.
    much thanks! I'll post back
    You said RC1, as in Release Candidate 1, not SP1. That suggests a beta OS, hence the comments.

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    Re: Vista 64 bit and WPA?

    You can't apply service packs to RC versions of windows - they're unfinished code.

    RC = release candidate
    SP = service pack

    Sure he's not go SP1 and not RC1?
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    Re: Vista 64 bit and WPA?

    I'd also say it's most likely a driver issue - uninstall current drivers from device manager and reinstall the latest ones. Also how close is the PC to the router? On a side note WPA-TKIP is of little use now, I mean it's better than nothing or WEP but it's not considered secure any more. Unfortunately a lot of hardware doesn't support it.

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    Re: Vista 64 bit and WPA?

    I just assumed Vista service packs were called RC as Microsoft likes to rename things for the sake of it. Now I get it. It was SP1, I informed the user to get SP2. He plugged the comp in by ethernet cable but still no luck, so he's downloading every possible update for vista64. I'll post back with what I find when that is done.
    any other glareingly obvious stuff I should be looking out for with Vista64?

    watercooled: interesting post there
    "I'd also say it's most likely a driver issue" - 3 different dongles i tried though (all with different chipsets I think.)
    "Also how close is the PC to the router?" same floor of the same house. Do you need a better signal strength for encrypted networks? i wasnt aware of that but the thought did cross my mind.

    "On a side note WPA-TKIP is of little use now, I mean it's better than nothing or WEP but it's not considered secure any more. Unfortunately a lot of hardware doesn't support it."
    From the reading I've done, WPA-TKIP has been broken. but not to the same level as WEP. All that has been done is decoding of a WPA-TKIP encrypted packet (please do correct me if this is wrong!). Unlike WEP where the network key can be found in 4 minutes.
    WPA2 has hardware support issues from the few times I've tried to use it but i thought WPA-TKIP was universally supported now?

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    Re: Vista 64 bit and WPA?

    I've had this issue for some time with my old router. Vista has issues with it's implementation of WPA. There's a very long thread on technet about the problem going back to 2006 !
    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...-86bd02630822/

    The long and the short of it, is that Vista is perfectly happy with WEP or WPA2, but doesn't play well with WPA. I solved the problem by running WEP (I had no neighbours at the time) until I got a new router that offered WPA2.
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    Re: Vista 64 bit and WPA?

    Quote Originally Posted by Phage View Post
    I've had this issue for some time with my old router. Vista has issues with it's implementation of WPA. There's a very long thread on technet about the problem going back to 2006 !
    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...-86bd02630822/

    The long and the short of it, is that Vista is perfectly happy with WEP or WPA2, but doesn't play well with WPA. I solved the problem by running WEP (I had no neighbours at the time) until I got a new router that offered WPA2.
    Windows Mobile in its various iterations also has problems with WPA but not WPA2 or WEP IME.

    WEP is almost completely useless for encryption. It only stops normal people form using your wireless. Anyone with access to google and a spare 2 hours (including the faffing getting it working) can crack WEP.
    WPA although "cracked" is actually realistically still secure if you followed best practice guidelines when WPA was originally ratified. IIRC the PSK should be 20 characters or more.
    I am unaware of any weaknesses of WPA2 bar users using short PSK's.
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    Re: Vista 64 bit and WPA?

    No, WPA-TKIP isn't broken to the extent of WEP which is just trivial to break (hmm I think 'normal people' might have been a bad choice of words badass ), it might stop neighbours' computers from automatically picking your access point or deter them from stealing your bandwidth but as mentioned anyone who knows a bit about it could crack it and have full access in just a few minutes. If you have the choice, WPA2-AES is far better then WPA-TKIP but then WPA-TKIP is far better than nothing or WEP. WPA-TKIP isn't quite universally supported, there are a lot of devices which only support WEP or even nothing but yeah nearly everything does support it. Not supporting WPA2-AES is a bad choice really since WPA-TKIP was only intended to be a stop-gap between the increasingly broken WEP and an upcoming 'proper' protocol. Weak keys shouldn't be used either, even on WPA2-AES - why bother trying to break the encryption if you can guess the password? No dictionary words or phrases should be used, using a long, random key is the best thing to do but it involves putting it in a text document and moving it between PCs unless you feel like typing it, here's a good random key generator, the middle box is best for WPA(2): https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

    Anyway onto your problem - you shouldn't need a stronger signal for an encrypted network, if it's working non-encrypted then it should work encrypted but sometimes even if you can see the network in the list the signal isn't strong enough to establish a connection and it could keep dropping out but that doesn't sound like the case here. You could try downloading and running inssider to see if there's any other networks using the same channel as yours which could be causing interference - I doubt that's the case but it's worth checking. Also are you using the Windows wireless network utility or the software supplied with the dongles?

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    Re: Vista 64 bit and WPA?

    Just like to thank you for all your help as this problems now been fixed.
    Running windows update repeatedly until all the updates were downloaded and also, quite importantly, running windows update with the wifi dongle plugged in, has fixed the problem.
    It now connects first time, everytime

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