I returned home from an internship a few weeks ago, and I found that my father finally got high-speed internet. He's had dial-up since I was a kid, so any time I visited from school I counted on having no internet access unless I went in to the local library. It's now a dish setup, running to a local tower not a satellite. It was great being able to actually use email and watch Netflix, but then he asked me to help him get one of his computers on wi-fi with a USB adapter. That's when the problem came.
It let us connect to the network, but there was no internet access. The signal was only two out of five bars, but the connection quality was up in the 90%s. After working with it for hours last Saturday, I decided to call the local computer guy who sold my father the refurbished computer and the adapter (he owns the local Radio Shack). I called on Monday and he said he had no clue what the problem could be, so he couldn't help. I called the company that manufactured the adapter, and in my time with the tech on the phone, he said that it sounds like the device was working properly and that there should be an internet connection. He asked whether I had pinged another computer, which I hadn't. I did afterwards, and it came back just fine.
Before returning the adapter, my father decided to install it on another XP that was then plugged straight into the router. It worked fine, so there were no problems there. It installed and worked on the wireless just fine. Then I had him bring the computer over to the router to plug it straight in. The same thing happened here that happened with the adapter: this computer connected to the network just fine, pinging other computers, even, but refused to use the LAN for an internet connection. It keeps saying that the browser is offline and needs to connect, but the only connections it presents as options are via dial-up.
So this other XP works via cable and the adapter, a Jellybean Android tablet works via wireless, and my own windows 8.1 works via wireless. This is extremely frustrating, it defies everything I know about networking, and it has sucked a number of hours out of my time this past week. Please, if anyone has any ideas, please notify me. I am getting married in a few weeks, and then I will be traveling from one state to another four times in the next month, so this does not need to be on my mind -- but I don't want my dad to be stuck with the other XP as his only option because it is extremely slow and crappy.
It let us connect to the network, but there was no internet access. The signal was only two out of five bars, but the connection quality was up in the 90%s. After working with it for hours last Saturday, I decided to call the local computer guy who sold my father the refurbished computer and the adapter (he owns the local Radio Shack). I called on Monday and he said he had no clue what the problem could be, so he couldn't help. I called the company that manufactured the adapter, and in my time with the tech on the phone, he said that it sounds like the device was working properly and that there should be an internet connection. He asked whether I had pinged another computer, which I hadn't. I did afterwards, and it came back just fine.
Before returning the adapter, my father decided to install it on another XP that was then plugged straight into the router. It worked fine, so there were no problems there. It installed and worked on the wireless just fine. Then I had him bring the computer over to the router to plug it straight in. The same thing happened here that happened with the adapter: this computer connected to the network just fine, pinging other computers, even, but refused to use the LAN for an internet connection. It keeps saying that the browser is offline and needs to connect, but the only connections it presents as options are via dial-up.
So this other XP works via cable and the adapter, a Jellybean Android tablet works via wireless, and my own windows 8.1 works via wireless. This is extremely frustrating, it defies everything I know about networking, and it has sucked a number of hours out of my time this past week. Please, if anyone has any ideas, please notify me. I am getting married in a few weeks, and then I will be traveling from one state to another four times in the next month, so this does not need to be on my mind -- but I don't want my dad to be stuck with the other XP as his only option because it is extremely slow and crappy.