Hi,

About a week ago, one of our laptops has started having problems
connecting with the router. The laptop is an inspiron 5100, xp home
sp2, and the router is a netgear. The router's a couple years old and
doesn't have wpa.

The laptop will connect without encryption, but when wep is turned on,
it will detect the network but can't connect. No software changes
recently, and the router settings haven't been touched since it's been
working. The only thing I can think of that might have changed the
wireless software is an automatic update. I've tried system restore,
but no luck. I reset the router as well, but no change.

Any ideas?


Thanks

I have'nt yet encounter such a problem. It seems that you should contact your provider to solve the problem.

When you turn on WEP encryption on your router, make sure you enter the correct key for the notebooks that is connecting to the encrypted router network. Only if the key, or the password, matches the router's key, the connection is established. Otherwise, you will be treated by the router as an unauthorised user of the network.

Therefore, make sure you enter the correct key for all your notebooks that are connecting to the router wirelessly. Also, make sure that DHCP is enabled on your router so that a connected computer will be assigned a valid IP address automatically. Otherwise, remember to manually set a static IP address for each of all computers, wired or wireless, connecting to the same router.

Verify that you accidently don´t set any MAC address block... on router configuration.
Some system restores don´t solve conflit problems so if you have tried everything and the problem persists, and if you don´t have important data on hdd i suggest reinstall windows.
In Device manager under wireless card propertis you have other options that could improve wireless signal, check them.
Regs.