Network password 40 bits or 104bits, 5 or 13 ascii

[americanspirit]

I have an old Compaq presario laptop that runs Windows XP. I haven't started the thing in maybe a year. Today I booted up, and finally got around to putting all my old pictures on an external hard drive. THen I decided to wipe it clean by deleting the partition and re-installing Windows XP and all the HP drivers. So now it's in the same condition as when I bought it 9 years ago. Trouble is I can't get it to connect to my router. I'm not sure if this is because I have the router set to WPA2 or what. nyways, when I enter the network key on my preferred connection I get a popup saying " The Network password needs to be 40 bits or 104 bits depending on your network configuration. This can be entered as 5 or 13ascii character or 10 or 26 hexadecimal characters" HUH? The Network key is my router password, correct? I saw somewhere online that the network key could be a number on a sticker on my router. I entered those numbers too, but still the same results. I now get a "validating identity" popup. I know how to get out of that, but how do I ultimately connect wireless.. no ethernet.
Thanks.

UPDATE: I found this, but still doesn't explain what I should do.

"This means that if you enter the password as hexadecimal characters,
you must type exactly 10 characters (5 bytes) for 40-bit key,
or exactly 26 characters (13 bytes) for 104-bit key).
If you typed other number of characters than 10 or 26, or any
character that is not a hexadecimal digit, this is interpreted as ascii string.
In this mode, each character is a byte by itself.
So, valid length of the string in this case is either 5 or 13 charachers.
If this condition is not met, the string can't be accepted as a valid password.
Please check carefully what you type.
Perhaps you typed letter O instead if zero, or small L instead of 1 etc."

Also, I see someone suggests that WPA2 could be the problem. My router is set to WPA2, but I don't find that option on my old laptop. I see WEP or disable.

 

[USAFRet]

Your old laptop WiFi system apparently does not have the stuff to connect to your router.

WEP
WPA
WPA2

As the years went by, protocols changed. WEP went out long ago. Badly broken and trivial to crack.

Your current router is set for WPA. Your old laptop cannot converse with a WPA device.

You can probably set your router to also converse via WEP, but that is not recommended. Anyone who can see your signal could crack it in a very few minutes.


The WPA key is not the router password.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

....So now it's in the same condition as when I bought it 9 years ago.....

Does this mean that you didn't install Service Pack 3? It's required for WPA2 support. Your WiFi adapter also has to support WPA/WPA2 (9 years old likely doesn't)