Acer Laptop trouble shooting issue

[fastman]

I have a new Acer Aspire 5003.

I flushed the installed XP Home Ed and put in XP MCE 2005 but can not seem to connect via the wireless.

I remember when I first got it that it didn't connect then either, but I assumed that was I didn't set it up yet for my secured network.

After setting it up I am still not able to connect to my network.

I can see my secure network and other unsecured networks in my neighborhood, but when I try to connect to mine it keeps saying "Acquiring network address"

I can seem to connect to others (unsecured) in my area but can not get on the net?

I would think if I can connect to another network the problem would be in the setup on my end, but not being able to get on the net on other networks makes me think otherwise.

Any ideas, solutions, thanks in advance.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Try disabling encryption on your router and see if you can connect.

I've had problems with out of the box systems connecting to my encrypted networks, IIRC it was mainly on an older netgear router.

What WiFi card is installed? Acer probably doesn't have newer drivers for it, but the mfr of the card may on their site. Also check to see if there are MCE-specific drivers; probly aren't for just a WiFi card, but GPU's and such do have them.

Also update your router firmware and of course reboot your router.

A couple neat tricks to force IP acquisition:
*Right click network connection and choose "Repair," that or choose "Status" and click "Repair"
*Open command line window (Start-->Run-->"cmd"), type "ipconfig release", enter, and then choose "ipconfig renew" enter