Trouble connecting a laptop through my wireless router?

[Orrex]

The laptop is newly acquired, and the original owner made only very limited use of it. Although she connected through her cable modem, I've verified that the laptop is wireless-ready because it's been able to access the internet just fine via public servers. The laptop is running Windows Vista Basic.

However, when I try to access through my own wireless router, no dice. I mean, I can access the router, but I can't access anything through it, most notably not the internets. From my router manager I can see the "guest" laptop, but that's all. The connection shows "excellent" signal strength, by the way, so I don't think that's the issue. My current connection status shows "Local only."

I'm limited in my ability to provide technical details about the setup, but I was hoping for a more general suggestion from those in the know. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong? Other than our Wii--which works just fine for NetFlix etc.--I haven't tried to set up any other users on this router. Seems like it should be a simple fix, so what's the problem?


One other thing that I just now noticed--when I rebooted, the computer appeared to briefly connect to the internet because it updated my "Weather" gadget with the current local temperature, but shortly after that the connection reverted to "Local Only" again.

Help!

[canetoad]

1. Go into control panel

and find network connections or whatever it's called in Vista. You need to connect to a network. It should show you which ones are available (your own obviously being one of these) and will ask you for security password. Don't foget to check the box to connect automatically to this network.

[Orrex]

2. Thanks, but I'm afraid that wasn't it

It finds the local network (my router) just fine, but it doesn't yield more than local access to that network. Heck, I don't even know what good "local access" does me, since I can't access files, drive space, or printers on that network.

I should also have mentioned that the laptop is an Acer, though of the top of my head I'm not sure which model. I've been googling a bit, and apparently this problem is fairly widespread with Acers.

[canetoad]

3. I've never really used Vista

So can't be too precise. Are all your machines in the same workgroup?

XP by default calls it's network MSHOME, Win 7 calls it WORKGROUP. Check by right clicking my computer, Properties, Computer Name and you should see the workgroup name. Then maybe try running the network setup wizard on all machines, turning them off and rebooting one at a time.

[Orrex]

4. Thanks for the follow-up; I'll give that a try

I've had almost no problems at all with Vista, I'm happy to say, but this network access issue is driving me batty.

I should have a chance tomorrow to do the analysis that you describe. I'll post the results when I'm done.

[woo me with science]

5. Were you able to get it fixed?

I'm curious, because I had the same problem show up out of the blue on XP recently, and I never was able to identify the cause.

I did everything I found online, including checking that DHCP and wireless services were on, checking TCP/IP settings, releasing and renewing the IP address, resetting the winsock catalog, running malware scans, and even doing a system restore. I ended up reformatting.

I hope you are able to figure it out and fix it. I'd be interested to hear what the problem was for you, if you care to share.

[Orrex]

7. No luck yet, but I'll certainly share when I get it sorted out.

In the meantime: :mad:

[woo me with science]

10. I so understand

the :mad:.

Good luck.

[ChromeFoundry]

6. Have you tried going to a CMD prompt...

Start => Run => type: "CMD" <enter>

type "IPCONFIG /ALL" <enter>, in the command window.

See if your IP Address is a 192.168.x.x address and your default gateway is on the same subnet, 192.168.x.1 (most likely)

You should also see addresses for your DHCP configured DNS Servers... If your router is set to forward DNS requests, the addresses of the DNS Server will be the same as your default gateway address.

[Orrex]

8. My IP address and default gateway are set up as you describe

Dammit!

[ChromeFoundry]

9. It could be that your

DHCP server (probably your router) was rebooted recently and there is a conflicting IP address.

Check your system event log to see if there are problems showing up.

I recently found that deleting the network interface and allow Windows to reinstall it fix the majority of problems with wireless networks under Vista and 7. All the user friendly features seem to get a bit hokay at times.

[darkstar3]

11. Check your proxy settings:

The last time I saw a problem like this, someone had set an illegitimate proxy. The first few steps in the page linked below will show you how to get to your proxy settings. Once you get to the right screen, ignore the further instructions in the link and, instead, make sure that ALL of the checkboxes are unchecked.

Then see if you can use the internet.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Change-proxy-settings-in-Internet-Explorer