Why won't it connect?!

[lurcher_2000]

Hi folks. Sorry if I come across as a bit useless - not good at this computer stuff... yet. Here goes:

I'm trying to get my desktop to talk to a Netgear pre-N router. I have bought a Belkin pre-N adapter which seems to work. However:

Using the belkin software it sees the network (nameless as no SSID beingbroadcast) with a 60% signal strength, but it's WPA-PSK (TKIP) protected which the belkin software doesn't seem to support (ie. no facility to input the passkey)

Using windows network setup thingy there seems to be the right boxes for putting the right info into (SSID, WPA TKIP enable, etc) but it just doesn't connect, or show it in available networks (not sure it would anyway with SSID turned off).

It's our landlord/neighbour's router (which they've given us all the passcodes/names/etc for) but it does mean it's tricky to get access to the router to change settings (otherwise i'd have switched it to G by now and not had to buy a new card!) so is there anything I can do from my end?

BTW, our laptop talks fairly happily to the router but a nice engineer-type chap came round and sorted that out for us...

Any help greatly appreciated

Rich

[mjc]

I'm trying to get my desktop to talk to a Netgear pre-N router. I have bought a Belkin pre-N adapter which seems to work.

Pre-N is not really set in stone...so one company's interpretation of the standard may not allow another company's hardware to 'talk' to it...

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035-6140524.html (see #6)

[lurcher_2000]

Thanks for your response.

Since it does see the router I've tried removing all the belkin software and tried again just using windows.

Now the computer connects and even sees the interweb but tends to drop the connection every minute or so (or often much more frquently)...

Any further ideas i can use to keep the connection going?

ta

[mjc]

Other than checking obvious things, like signal strength, matching channels, sources of interference, no, 'cause I haven't played around with any pre-N gear...

[classicsoftware]

What brand of router do you have? I would make the card match the router for best results....

[jlreich]

With draft-N, I agree with Classic. Because of no standard being set as of yet, interoperability between different manufactures is shaky at best.

One thing you can do since the laptop connects OK is to compare network settings on each machine. Although the interface will be somewhat different on the different cards the settings should be the same.