I had a Toshiba laptop that crashed more than a year ago—it wouldn't start up, and it wouldn't even let me reformat the hard drive. I ended up just getting a new computer. A Mac.

However, yesterday I decided to try to reformat the old PC. Amazingly, it booted up as if nothing had ever gone wrong.

However, for some reason, I cannot get it online *via my home connection.* It WILL connect to other wireless connections, but no matter what I've tried, I cannot get it to connect to my home connection either wirelessly or directly from the cable.

I have a Belkin F5D6130 wireless router. I was able to get the Toshiba to connect to the Belkin's signal, but it wouldn't allow me to connect to the Internet, even after I "officially" connected it via Belkin's software. I installed the Windows patch that was supposed to resolve SP2 connection issues, but it did nothing. I've fiddled with every setting I could think of to no avail.

Finally, I figured I would just plug the cable in directly so I could at least get online and get the software updates. However, I had the exact same problems, even after rebooting and trying to "repair" the connection.

My Mac iBook connects easily to my home Internet connection both through the Belkin router and through the cable, so I'm pretty sure it's not an ISP issue. But I can't figure out what settings must be goofy on my computer.

In case it's relevant, before the Toshiba crashed, I used Earthlink DSL, which required me to sign in whenever the connection had been broken and was re-established. I now have a cable Internet connection that does not require me to sign in. Is it possible the computer's "home" network connection is still somehow configured for Earthlink??

Any help or advice anyone can offer would be appreciated.

First thing I'd look at is what IP addresses are allowed on the router and compare that with your computer's IP address.

When I'm diagging networks at work (specifically, trying to find out if the computer has a problem) for people I usually like to reset the router and turn off security, then set it up from scratch. It avoids having to get bogged down with lots of settings people might have changed.

Thanks, SnowDog.

If I manually enter the router's IP address into Windows XP2, I can connect to the wireless hub, but the Internet connection doesn't actually work.

If I tell Windows XP to assign an IP address automatically, it assigns a completely different IP address (I neglected to write it down, but it starts with 169, and I read somewhere it's the default Microsoft IP address, I think) and doesn't connect to the Internet.

I tried turning off the firewalls and rebooting, but the problems continue. I also installed and ran WinsockXPfix...no help.

Since the Mac connects to it without incident and I can receive and connect to other wireless networks without any problems, I have to assume this is an issue unique the the Belkin hub. But I haven't had any luck tracking down a solution.

The annoying thing is that before the computer crashed, it connected to the wireless hub without any problems with two different ISPs. The fact that it won't connect now is incredibly annoying, to say the least!

Thanks again for your tips; they were all good, I just seem to have an extremely cranky situation...

Look. maybe it is that your old computer does not recognize your Belkin router but it recognises all the other modems, It may also be that the Belkin router uses wireless 802.11g stantards and the old computer's wireless card runs on an older standard so you may change the wireless card to an 802.11g standards wireless card.

As I said, the computer *did* work fine with the wireless hub before it crashed, and it had XP2 before it crashed, so unless the crash messed with something, there's nothing in either the computer or the hub that should be a problem. And as I also said, I did run WinsockXPfix, which others who've had similar-sounding problems suggested would help. In my case, it did not.

It's a tricky problem; maybe I need to have an expert come and take a look at it. I just hoped it was a problem someone else had had and could help me resolve.