I am at the point of pulling all the hair out of my head and I could really use some help.

I moved into a new house about three weeks ago and knowing that my neighbors have a wireless router I bought a wireless network card for my desktop computer. For the first three days everything was great. Then, I lost connection. I had bought a cheap network card off eBay so I figured that was the problem and I went to radio shack and bought a nice linksys card. Still would not connect. It would locate the router, but never acquire and IP address. I read online that people were having problems with linksys cards so i put my computer in the shop and said "make it work." 65 dollars later it still didn't work when i got it home. The computer tech swears it worked in the store. All this time, my laptop is picking up like eight signals and connecting fine.

So, as a last ditch effort I bought a Super Cantenna. It's like a giant frequency tuned Pringles can that is supposed to boost your card's ability to connect to wireless. I plugged it in today and my signal jumped up to "Very Good" but it still won't connect!!!!!

Is there some setting I have wrong on my computer that is inhibiting it from renewing an ip adress? My laptop connects fine and I can verify that there is no security on the router.

PLEASE HELP!!!

And you asked the neighbors for permission to use their network, right? :mrgreen:

Because otherwise, of course, you would be asking us to help you get unauthorized network access, which is something that we don't do here.

Yes, I assumed that was understood. Sorry for the confusion. Yes, my neighbors are aware and if I can get the internet to connect consistently to their router we are going to split the cost of internet.

Actually, most people just sort of curl up and slink away quietly when I ask that question; apparently you're one of the rare honest ones... :mrgreen:

Seeing that you are doing this with their consent, there are a few things you can try which might narrow down the cause:

1. Take the lappy over to their house, plug it in to the router via a CAT5 cable, and see if the wired connection works.

2. Go in to the router's configuration and look closely at all of the option settings in the Wireless and DHCP areas. Double-check that no wireless security/restrictions are in place, ensure that the router's DHCP range/scope isn't restricted, check (if it exists) the wireless MAC client list to see if your computer's MAC appears there.

3. Write down any custom router settings or save the router's config file to one of the attached computers, and then give the router a hard reset. See if you can then connect. Restore the saved config after that and see if you can still connect.

I have the same problem as well. Thank you

ok thanks. I am pretty new to routers so a lot of what you said is like a different language to me, but I will try when my neighbor gets back tonight. Anything I can try before then on my local computer? (I'm getting desperate)

If you can post the exact make/model of the router, I can probably give you more specific directions in terms of what to do/look for in the router's configuration utility.


Hmm... if the situation is that you can seem to connect to the network, but don't get an IP after that, try:

* Click on the "Run..." option in your Start menu. In the "Open:" box of the resulting window, type "cmd" (omit the quotes) and hit Enter. This will bring up a DOS window.
* At the DOS prompt, type the following command and hit Enter. You won't see any result from the command, but when it completes, a second prompt with a flashing cursor will be displayed; close the DOS box once that happens:
ipconfig /all >ipconfig.txt

The above command will have created a text file on you desktop named ipconfig.txt; double-click on the file to open it in Notepad, and then cut-n-paste the file's contents in your next post here. The contents of the file will give us some important details of your IP configuration.

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tried the ipconfig thing, but no text file popped up on the desktop.

Sorry- my mistake; the command I gave was incomplete. It should have been:
ipconfig /all >"%userprofile%"\desktop\ipconfig.txt

If you used the syntax I originally posted, you'll probably find the ipconfig.txt file in the C:\Documents and Settings\your_user_name folder.

I have a very similar problem. When I hook up a wireless router ( I have tried two different ones) the laptop connects ok, but the desktop, when now connected to the router with cat5 cable, no longer has any network connection..
The desktop has a network connection when connected to the modem, but not when connected to the router. If I disconnect the router and connect the desktop back to the modem, the network connection returns