Wireless problems

[dragonfire]

My friend wants to network there computer's with D-Link wireless... they have a problem though . the computers wont pick each other up ... it is saying that all is working though , yet nothing is happening ... anyone got any idea ?

[Lord Smelly]

So you have a wireless card in both computers and a wireless router/access point. Each computer can speak to the router/access point but not to each other?

What is the model of router and cards you are using?

[dragonfire]

d link dwl g510 cards and dlink dsl g604 wireless router modem

Only 1 computer could speak to the router for a few seconds

[Lord Smelly]

You will need to setup security and encryption, but before you worry about that. My suggestion would be to disable any onboard and wired ethernet interfaces on both machines.

Disable the wireless ethernet cards on the machines now also.

Then at the back of the router there will be a reset button. Following the instructions which came with the router, use that button and reset the router to factory defaults.

Start up the router again and re-enable one of the machines wireless cards, check the SSID is detecting. I can't remember the default for Dlink but the SSID will either be DLINK or similar. See if one of the machines can connect to the wireless network and gain an ip address.

Once you have one of the machines connected, do the same for the other machine. Once they are all connected then look at securing the wireless by enabling MAC filtering, WEP and IP based restrictions.

[dragonfire]

Thanks Smelly I will give that a go tomorrow , too late now for me to be thinking , I will let you know how it went . :) thanks again

[Lord Smelly]

Thanks Smelly I will give that a go tomorrow , too late now for me to be thinking , I will let you know how it went . :) thanks again

The only thing I forgot to include is to make sure your machines are set up for DHCP. I would suspect they are, but it is worth checking your network settings are set to DHCP.

[SA000584]

My friend wants to network there computer's with D-Link wireless... they have a problem though . the computers wont pick each other up ... it is saying that all is working though , yet nothing is happening ... anyone got any idea ?


Best way to check that they can see each other is go the ms dos prompt and see whether you can ping the machines.

Type "Ping 192.168.0.3" or what ever the IP address of the other computer.

If the ping comes back saying that all packets are lost then the wireless cards are not set up properly. In this case it is easier to set up wireless cards with all encryption/mac address security turned off. You can set this security up after you got it working.

If the ping comes back saying that all packets were received then you may need to map the other computers to a drive in windows explorer.

Open up windows explorer, Click on "tools", then "Map Network Drive" then pick a drive and then type in the folder name of the drive eg \\pchome\pchome

Best of luck..

[Poppa]

The first time I networked wireless machines together I got them talking to each other sufficiently to enable one to use the internet connection of the other, but they still couldn't find each other to be able to access anything else on either machine. Obviously I could ping since I could get through for the internet access.

I found that I had to play around with the sharing of files and printers a lot before I could get the machines talking. This was without a hub/router in the way, just machine to machine. Eventually I got it working by sharing everything that I could find in the printer area (including printers that I'd set up for one off occasions but not used for ages) and shared all of the major folders in the c: drive (I'd set sharing on the c: drive first up to no avail).

Since then I've set up an ADSL gateway/hub with ethernet and wireless access for three machines. Again, I had to set the sharing up right for each machine to be able to see the others.

So if your machines can ping each other (also check that they can ping the hub) and still don't recognise each other play with the sharing settings. You pretty much also have to reboot a lot between changing sharing settings.

Edit: Oh, I did all of the above with machines running XP Home, with different wireless/ethernet cards and a Linksys wireless ADSL hub with 4 ethernet ports. Just in case that makes a difference.