Another Computer Question

[SnowRidge]

After rereading all the posts, I have come up with the following:

You have a Netgear wireless router connected to the Internet. You bought a used Win 2000 desktop that will work with a Netgear USB wireless adapter, but won't work with a generic USB wireless adapter. What the heck is a generic USB wireless adapter? Does that mean no name, house brand, or something like that? If so, it sounds like that adapter or its driver isn't any good, or is configured differently than the Netgear stuff.

One thing I have noticed with ALL brands of wireless networking equipment. Each brand has a slightly different set of defaults. They will usually work with other products of the same brand, but often will not work out of the box with products of a different brand, UNTIL you configure everything alike.

A lot of people don't know how to do that, and then start throwing stuff out because they think it isn't any good. In reality, it usually isn't configured correctly.

Wireless networking can be really difficult to set up, especially if multiple brands are involved. Encryption, especially WPA encryption, which is a must if you don't want to be at risk, makes it even trickier to get it right.

I'm betting on the problem being a configuration issue. It could be something as simple as not all the wireless device are configured with the same SSID (Wireless Network Name), which is one of the first things that should be checked.

 

[Tig]

If his antivirus will connect and auto update then the adapter/router is working. Banks lock their OS down tight in many cases to avoid problems. Could be firewall, proxy, or just not getting a DNS
Probably would get on the net if booted in safe mode with network support. May have to manually configure a DNS. I'm curious to know if he can access the router management screens from this PC. That would give us some insight.

 

[MossRoad]

As was mentioned earlier, if your AVG is updating, your network connection is fine.

As also was mentioned earlier, you should launch Internet Explorer and go to the TOOLS pull down menu and select INTERNET OPTIONS.

From the INTERNET OPTIONS box, select the CONNECTIONS TAB.

At the bottom of the CONNECTIONS TAB select LAN SETTINGS.

In the LAN SETTINGS window uncheck everything and hit O.K.

O.K. the INTERNET OPTIONS box.

Test I.E. and see if it now works and report back.

 

[SnowRidge]

Moss, he said it works if he takes his laptop's Netgear usb wireless adapter and tries it on the Win2000 machine, but not with the generic usb adapter he bought for it.

Also, it's not clear to me that AVG is really updating. That particular anti-virus tries to update as soon as you boot, and it puts a message up saying so, but is it really getting the update? I don't know and can't tell for sure from the posts so far, but he says that if he manually tells it to update, it says there is no Internet connection.

Nowhere do I see any indication that any wireless configuration has been done.

 

[MossRoad]

O.K. So either the generic adapter is not functioning or the network settings for it are incorrect.

He should install the adapter that is working, then record all of its network settings.

Then he should install the adapter that is not working, and make sure it has the same settings as the one that works.

If it still does not work, the adapter is probably defective or incompatible.

 

[SnowRidge]

That should work, if the generic adapter can use the Wireless Zero configuration settings. It may need to install its own driver, though.

I have quite a bit of wireless networking experience, but none of it has been with USB wireless adapters, so I'm not sure what kind of factor the USB part is, if any.

 

[jdbower]

I think a bigger factor than the USB issue is that WiFi on Win2k was always a bit kludgey. Hopefully the WiFi drivers kept up with their Win2k component, but I'd guess the drivers would be much more cleanly integrated in XP if it's available. Of course, I've got an XP laptop that doesn't seem to like my home WiFi network for more than a few minutes at a time but I've been too lazy to look into it since I'm typically working wired.

If you can move the PC close enough to wire it to the router that may allow you to connect long enough to download the latest WiFi drivers and hit http://update.microsoft.com to get the latest service packs.

 

[SnowRidge]

Hmmmm. Does Win2000 even have Wireless Zero configuration? Methinks maybe not, which means all configuration data will have to be hand entered. Back to Moss's last post.

 

[MossRoad]

Well, this sounds like fun! I have a PC for my daughter that I want to use a USB wireless adapter on later this month rather than running more CAT5 wire in the house. It's XP though, so that's a plus.

 

[MossRoad]

I never heard of the term "Wireless Zero" before, so I had to look it up. Neato! I guess I've been fortunate enough to never have had that many wireless networking problems.