Can see, but can't connect to wireless network

[Geeyoff]

Hi. I'm using a Netgear MA-101 to try to connect to an SMC 2404WBR wireless router, and I'm running Windows XP Home with service pack 1 installed.

A little while ago, I could connect to the wireless network without any trouble. There's no encryption, so when Windows would start up, I'd get a bubble saying "One or more wireless networks are available. To see a list of available networks, click here." When I'd click that bubble, it'd bring up a dialog box where I could specify that I wanted to connect to the only listed network, even though it's not secure. Then I'd click the "connect" button, and viola, everything would work.

After messing around a little with the computer's hardware (NOTHING that should have affected Windows or the network--just a case fan), I can't connect to the network anymore. I get the same bubble saying "One or more wireless networks are available..." but after I go through the process of telling Windows to connect to it, that same bubble just pops up again. And again. Windows is aware that the wireless network exists, but it just won't connect anymore. I've experiment with different channels and preambles, I've messed around with the Wireless Zero Configuration, I've tried different drivers... but nothing has worked.

Has anybody had this or a similar problem before? Can anybody provide any insight? Thanks for any and all help.

--Geeyoff

 

[chanachana]

The only thing I can think of other than a hardware issue would be that you turned on MAC filtering of some sort. I MAC filter on my own wireless lan, and with unidentified MAC addresses, it does what you described.

 

[Geeyoff]

Thanks for responding. After reading your message, I experimented with different settings in my router--I made sure that MAC filtering was off, then I tried enabling it and including the MAC address of the wifi adapter in question, and then I disabled it again as well as disabling the router's firewall completely. None of this has had any effect. Any other ideas, anybody?

I'm thinking about borrowing a different brand of USB adapter from Best Buy for a couple of weeks, just to see if the same thing happens there... Gotta love their 30-day full-refund policy.

--Geeyoff

 

[Kaiynne]

Man have i had to deal with this problem too many times.
The main problem is that the MA 101 was originally designed to use its own drivers to configure wireless settings in the OS, i guess no one told netgear that win xp was also deigned to provide wireless config for all devices. So out of the box you have a nifty little conflict. Now with the last few 101s i have installed they have worked much better out of the box, however, there is still one bug which is yet to be fixed. Which is that occasionally the win xp config software corrupts the data file which holds your settings. So what you do is right click on the networks available bubble and select configure, then click on the settings tab to get into the area where you entered WEP info the first time, you need to select any existing wireless profiles and delete them and then create a new one, which has correct ssid and wep info then save those settings and you should find you can now reconnect to your network.

Now that was from memory so if something doesn't make sense then PM and i will try to clarify, now all of that presupposes that you are using xp to configue your settings if you are using the netgear utility cease and desist, download the latest drivers from netgear unistall everything related to the card and then reinstall with the new drivers. use the XP utility to configure as above and you should be set.

 

[Geeyoff]

Ah-ha! Thanks a ton. I'd been starting to think that I was the only one who'd ever had this problem. It was getting lonely...

All's well, now.

--Geeyoff