Help for old fart please - Virgin connection

[sovereignv12]

Er.... Hmmm. Is it that obvious that I'm really new to this internet thing, yet really old relative to the vast majority of you. I'm telling you that cos I'd rather not get a good answer in pc speak (i.e. to fix my problem I need to ramificate my prognosticator by google plexing the zab donk settings on my flim flam shish kebabometer! - it all sounds like that to me!!) So here's the problem. The nice man from Virgin came today, to set up my internet and phone line. It all went jolly well, and my desktop computer in the bedroom is running the wireless internet fine. The laptop (an Acer if that's relevant) works, it 'sees' the network, but keeps listing it as 'unidentified' and so won't load internet pages. If I connect to the router using the ethernet cable (I at least know what one of those is.... sort of!) it works fine. It keeps telling me there is a problem with the modem, but it works fine on the desk top and on the cable. Can anyone help - in English, or shall I just recalibrate my zimvan-dinger-stonkers? By the way - apparently I can add up to 5 tags to this - that's so cool, or would be if I knew what a tag is?!!!!

[g8ina]

Sounds like you havent set up the security passwords on the laptop for your wireless network.

See if you can find a local geek to come help, Kent is full of em.

Oh and welcome to Hexus, the best place to be online for techie stuff...

[peterb]

It is either a problem with the password used to secure the wireless connection from evesdroppers, or a problem with the Windows firewall (software designed to help protect your computer from certain types of malidciscious software "malware" which is preventing a full connection.

Usualkly if it is a password problem, yo are invited to enter a passphrase or password.

If it is a windows firwall set up, you probably need to tell windows what sort of network you are connection to. select "home" from the widows firewall network settings. (You are connecting to a home network with a gateway to the wider internet. That gateway is also providing you with some protection. (I'm assuming that as this is new, you are using Windows 7)

[Zak33]

may we ask whether it's Win XP, or Vista or Win7?

None are bad... just helps a tad with what to click upon.

[sovereignv12]

Hi Zak,

I have Windows Vista. For what it's worth, I reckon peterb and g8ina are probably right - it's something to do with passwords, the desktop is fine wireless and the laptop works fine on the ethernet cable, but on wireless it cannot identify the network.

If I'm honest, there might be another problem.... It's an old laptop which was made before mains electricity so I've attached an alternator to a hamster wheel.... But its an old Hamster, bless him. Or is that not likely to be the problem? Oh well, back to re-aligning the kersplunge valves!!

[MercutioUK]

Have a wee look at the various buttons next to the time in the bottom right corner. One of these should have something to do with wireless networks.
Once you find it, open it up, it should give you a list of all the networks in range and it SHOULD be pretty obvious from there (find yours, tell it to connect, stick the password in, usually on a sticker on your virgin box it will say "SSID: G3m2gfn1f1" etc.
That's the most obvious thing it will be. Though you have likely done this already?

After that if you still don't have any joy. Open up my computer, there should be a "network" link on the left built into the frame for the open window. If you get this far, again on the left should be "network connections" in this window should be 2+ bigish icons for each network interface you have, find the one that looks like the wireless and either right click "reset" or right click "repair" (I forget which option you get).

If none of that works, head back and i'll go over it again with my (vista running) laptop infront of me.

[sovereignv12]

Hi,
Thanks, I'll try both and let you know tomorrow.

[g8ina]

Ahhhh, old computer, then maybe security level problem, cannot handle wpa ?? Thoughts guys ?

[Phage]

Ahhhh, old computer, then maybe security level problem, cannot handle wpa ?? Thoughts guys ?

Sounds very likely. I had the same issue when running XP. However his is Vista, it should be OK with WPA(2). Easy to check though. Set it to WEP and see what happens.

[guinn]

Sounds very likely. I had the same issue when running XP. However his is Vista, it should be OK with WPA(2). Easy to check though. Set it to WEP and see what happens.

Or drivers not allowing WPA, seen that on old cards. Again, WEP to test.

[gss03]

If it is coming up with "un-identified network" it might be that the network stack is knackered.

I've seen lots of Win Vista machines with this that just stop in their tracks with this issue.
To fix it all you need to do is open up a command prompt type "Netsh winsock reset" let windows do it's stuff and reboot the machine.
That unidentified network will start working (once you find your network and add the key back in)