Wireless Help

[Gansmiller]

Hello, I just got a new gaming computer, the thing runs great except for the wireless adapter or the router I'm using. I'm normally pretty good at setting stuff up but this has stumped be so far. I have a 120N Linksys router and an Edimax EW-7722In PCI network adapter. I set up our network with static IPs from before, just gave my new computer a new IP (There are no IP conflicts) Using WPA-2 AES encryption.

Ok if i turn the computer on, it says unidentified network and resetting the network adapter does nothing to fix this ( Sometimes the name of the network will resolve but I will still have limited connectivity)

Resetting the router fixes the problem, and it works again, until I shut down, and boot my computer again, then I have to go through the same things again. Any help would be great! Thanks

 

[RealBeast]

Your hardware is fully compatible so you just need to adjust your settings. I suggest setting up the network over from scratch and rather than using static settings, turn on the DHCP service in the router and allow it to assign the wireless computer IP.

So go into the Linksys configuration page, turn on the DHCP service, pick an SSID (network name), give the router a gateway address -- something like 192.168.1.1, subnet mask 255.255.255.0, and set the WPA/WPA2 passphrase and set the encrytion to TKIP.

Then go into the computer network settings and choose to have the wireless network obtain an ip address automatically and obtain DNS sever address automatically.

If you are using Windows 7, those settings are in the network connections control panel, right click on the wireless network, select properties, click on Internet Protocol Version 4, click the properties button, and select those settings.

Then restart your computer and select the network by clicking on the system tray wireless icon, check connect automatically and enter the security passphrase. That should do it.

 

[Gansmiller]

I've already tried that before. I've tried both static and automatic settings. Weird thing is that on my old computer I used the same IP as this before I got rid of it and never had any problems. As for the TKIP, I can only set it to TKIP/AES using WPA2 and if I try logging in with TKIP it says it doesn't match the network. Only unplugging the router gets everything working again. All other computers on the network right now don't seem to have a problem.

 

[RealBeast]

Double check the network setting in the problem machine to see if it has the correct ip gateway and subnet mask, since all the others are working it sounds like that computer has the issue.

 

[Gansmiller]

Yeah, its all the same. I agree it should be this computer that has the issue. But why does resetting the router fix the problem then?

 

[RealBeast]

Resetting the router refreshes the dhcp service connections and my guess would be that probably gives the computer a new ip address, or at least reconnects that device to the network.

Still the easiest fix would be to be to use dynamic addresses for all the wireless machines. Other than for access points and printers, I don't usually use static addresses, and even then I generally use reserved dynamic addresses. You can use static addresses but they need to be in the network but outside the dhcp service assignment range or things will go wrong.