After four hours, he left scratching his head........

Ok, see what you think.....

Called my network friend over......he's about 65 years old.

Came over to solve my router problem that had us perplexed. Our wireless router was up and working, then my husband unplugged the modem and poof! My network was gone, never to return, despite the suggestions from many gurus here.

He decided that our router was bad.....sent husband off to buy another wireless G router at Wal-Mart.

Not the router.

Then he decides that something on my machine has "captured and hidden" my network connections because he can't see any and can't add any.

I'm not really sure what is going on but in the end the man is blaming software on my machine, and AOL. Everyone blames AOL for everything, sorry, I gotta use it for my business email and I have family members using screen names that are too poor to pay for it. It was working with AOL before!

Anyway, if any of you can gleen anything from this, bottom line is, my wireless router was working, my laptop worked fine with it, now ever since the modem was unplugged it doesn't. This man was releasing IP's on the router and the modem....nothing. He was changing things until I got scared that I would no longer recognize anything.

Is there something I'm missing here????????? I'm just about insane because I cannot get anyone over here with any sense to figure this out. I build, sell and repair pc's on a regular basis, but will have NOTHING to do with networking, just don't want to know it, don't want to learn it. Can anyone suggest an online manual, some kind of troubleshooting tips or maybe some known issues with XP on setting this up?

He made me uninstall my firewall, trying to get me to uninstall AOL and now I think I want to set it on fire.

Thanks in advance,
Sharon

Does the NIC work? I have went nuts sorting out wireless issues... only to find out that it's because I forgot to set the DNS properly or some other setting related issue.

My question is, does the hardware show up in the laptop? Meaning does the wireless NIC work?

First thing I would do, is rollback the laptop prior to any change done using the sys restore.

Then I would check that all the hardware on the laptop is working specifically the NIC.

Then I would go into the router, and check the settings there. Make sure that you have your settings properly configured and using another wired/wireless desktop or laptop make sure that everything works *you can go on the web, download, check email etc...

If the web is working on the PC with a wired connection, but you don't get anything with the wireless then I would:

Check the wireless settings in the router (especially if you have WEP or WAP enabled)... if so, then when you go to laptop you need to make sure that your WEP or WAP passwords/info match.

I'd check to see if you have DHCP enabled in the router. If so then your laptop should auto connect and obtain an IP automatically. If not, then you need to make sure you have configured the IPs in the laptop correctly.

If the router works, and the laptop hardware checks out, and the settings are fine, and you still cannot connect, even after doing a system restore, and resetting the modem, etc...

I'd after extensively exhausting all options, like removing the firewall completely (uninstall any third parties or disable windows built in firewall) get rid of the Antivirus (temporarily) even uninstalling it as necessary. And remove the AOL software from the system (again temporarily) just to see what if any software troubles might be causing the issue.

It has to be one of the following

hardware
software
configuration

Narrow it down one by one.

To setup your wireless network:

https://www.microsoft.com/athome/mor...lesssetup.mspx

What does the networking properties say on the laptop? Is there an icon in the networking connections area? Does the wireless icon popup in the taskbar ?

Do you have any other wireless device to check the router with?

Make sure that you haven't disabled stuff in the system configuration utility before you start troubleshooting. Many people use this as a kind startup control panel (which it isn't) and then forget all about it.

First task when troubleshooting is to isolate the problem, first to which device then to hardware or software. You can do this by swapping out equipment and by booting to a 'Live' CD/DVD, it's not really on for most home users but if you are a tech then you will have loads of equipment laying about.

Laptops often have a physical on/off switch for the WLAN card as well and on some that I have seen it is almost invisible, make sure it's not OFF and the software off switch isn't enabled, on this DELL it's 'fn + F2'.

Also make sure you are logged in as an admin user.

Once you are sure about your computers HW, You can go somewhere that offers free wifi and test it there. At least that lets you know that your system works or not.

My husband takes our babysitter home last night......he sits with her husband, shooting the $hit, and he brings up the router problem with him.

Says, "yup, I had the same problem. Unplug this, unplug that, then do this and that exactly in that order, it'll work."

-------> This man knows little to nothing about computers <---------

He came home, did what the man said, our wireless router worked in 2 minutes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Apparently, network friend who was here for 5 hours never unplugged the router and modem (neither did we) for a longer period of time then lets say, a minute or so.

:smash: :msncrazy: :crazy: <--------- How we are feeling right now!

Thank you for all of your help and suggestions, you are the greatest!

mm hmm. Resetting the modem and router is always a good place to start.

yup I have to do that like 2-3 x a month. sharon what I do is turn off all pc's then power off the router and modem. wait a few min. then turn on the modem. wait for all the green lights then power on the router....wait for the green lights again. then lastly turn on each of the 5 pc's one at a time.
while I wait for my network to come up I'm usually surfing Techzonez on my neighbors unprotected wireless network;)

Make sure you fire this 'network guy' and never recommend him to anybody. When diagnosing broadband and router issues what your husband did when he came home is the first thing you always do.